Why I’m Not Excited To Preach

I remember being so excited to preach my first year of being a pastor.

During the week I’d spend time studying a myriad of subjects, argue with a Calvinist or two, and then get so pumped Saturday night I could hardly contain myself. On Sunday I would enter the pulpit ready to blaze through my text, make a few points, and close with a verse or two of “Just As I Am” while encouraging the people to come down to the “altar” and spend some time in prayer.

Preaching on Sunday was a complete adrenaline rush. I would preach in the same manner as those I had seen and heard at my school. I would use the same speaking techniques and mannerism to draw them in and try to keep their attention. I believe D. M. Lloyd-Jones would have called me a pulpiteer.

And all of that was fine and dandy until I stood on a pew one day while I was hollerin’ up a preachin’ storm. I remember trying to emphatically drive home a point when I glanced down at an elderly lady sitting two pews away and saw a completely bewildered look on her face. I do believe she genuinely thought I had lost my mind. And it forever changed the way I preach.

When I was younger, finding something to preach was easy.

If I ever published a “Preaching for Dummies” book (I won’t, it’s been done) I would talk about three types of seeds for message.

The first seed would be the “For such moment as this!” type verses. The type of verses that sound like Slogans For The Christian Soul© and work as great springboard verses for whatever American sin you want to preach against (See one other verse in Esther as well as that verse in Two Chronicles). Great for use during holiday weeks, anniversary banquets, baby showers, weddings, AM/PM/Midweek services. Pretty much your general practice verses.

Next, you have your “go to” gospel passages like John 3:16, the Romans Road, and maybe — MAYBE — that John 4 passage about the woman at the well. Simply read the verse and jump right into everyone’s need to get saved. Yell about sin in general, but only mention specific issues that you think won’t get you into too much trouble (only the world struggles with homosexuality, right? RIGHt!?). When you’re about the close throw in a story about a dad having to choose between train passengers and brutally crushing his child to death and bada-bing you’ve got yourself a message.

The last of the “Three Seeds That Will Grow A Message” would be “something happened to me and I’m sure there’s a message in there somewhere” seed. In case you don’t know about those, let me give you an example. I once spilled some mustard on my shirt and turned it into a message about how we have messed up lives but that’s ok. Just find a few random verses, shave off the context, and you’re ready to go.

But the look on that faithful lady’s face…

I won’t bore you with the details of the next several years, but instead I’ll just get to the point of this whole post. I don’t go into the pulpit all pumped up anymore. In fact, I find that before I start preaching I’m a little sick to my stomach and often need a higher level of personal space to work it out. The reason for this is not that I don’t enjoy preaching anymore, because I do. I love to preach. But in the years I’ve been preaching I’ve come to realize that no matter what I say about the text, it’s still saying more to me than I could ever say about it.

Don’t believe me? Put ten preachers in the same room with the same text and if they’re good preachers they’ll have similar themes. The difference is that each one of them is going to glean something just a little bit different from the text — something that seems almost like a crucial piece when you hear it and you’ll sit and wonder how you missed it. This is the nature of a book that is alive. Whenever I preach, I know there’s always more that could be said about the text and walk away knowing that I’ve probably left something on the table. Sometimes I realize it before I’ve finished.

And that’s ok.

God didn’t intend for me to glean everything all at once and even if I live my entire life faithfully preaching, I’ll still leave something on the table.

So my challenge is not to get pumped and throw out a few zingers. In fact these days, when I hear this type of theatrical preaching, it turns my stomach just a bit. Can God use it? He used a donkey once and I’m sure he’s still using them. But I don’t want to be a donkey. I want to be a man who has studied, prayed, and combed through a text so many times that it feels like it’s part of me.

And when I’m finished preaching a text I want to walk away knowing there’s more to be said.

PG

P.S. Don’t think for a second I didn’t think about using the KJV1611 word for Donkey.