13 Sep 07 Preaching III (Retrospective Embarrassment)

News of the 6 minute sermon or the consistent 8 to 10 minute sermon must have spread like wildfire across south Texas.  Suddenly I found myself with more opportunities to fill in at surrounding churches when the local preacher was out of town.  Sure the six million dollar man was an engineering marvel, but how much greater marvel than a six minute preacher?

The great thing about being a visiting preacher is you can take your best sermon with you and be "spectacular" in many places.  The great preachers are those who have the discipline to be "spectacular" in the same place year after year.  The bad thing about being a visiting preacher is you start to believing that you are spectacular.

I even got to fill in a time or two at our home church where my dad was the preacher.  This presented two unique challenges.  First, my dad was (is) a good preacher.  Second, up to this point I was still preaching his sermons.  You see the difficulty?

Pressed to come up with my own material, at our home church, I once delivered a sermon (that still embarrasses me when I think about it) how the worship service can go as long as it needs to because 1 hour just may not cut it.  I said something like "the bulletin says what time the assembly begins not what time it ends."  It wasn’t that I was saying anything wrong (the reason for my retrospective embarrassment) it’s just not the place to waste time with such nonsense.  It’s the first taste I had of preaching issues or agendas instead of Christ.  Not to mention, how do you transition to an invitation after a sermon like that?

I had passion and conviction as a young man but it was greatly misdirected.  I had (have) three qualities that lend themselves to being a great orator:  First, I can read rather quickly and retain an immense amount of information.  Second, I’m quick on my feet and can improv / adlib as necessary.  Third, I have an enormous amount of confidence and stage presence in front of people.  The problem was (is) that no one likes to listen to an arrogant, self-righteous twerp.  I had (have) three qualities that lend themselves to being a horrible messenger of God.  First, I had to be right.  Second, I had to be affirmed / approved.  Third, I had to be the best. 

I understand that we are the product of our church environment and our churches positioned themselves on quite a few three-legged stools.  I probably wasn’t much fun to be around.  Surrounded by like people of like mind and practice probably obscured those negative qualities in me.  We tend to confuse arrogance with passion, self-righteous behavior with conviction.  I thought the Bible was a weapon to be used for winning arguments not an instrument to be used to win people. 

Preaching was (and in some places, is) more about getting people to tow the line rather than inviting people to walk with Christ.  I preached a lot of sermons at a young age.  It would not be until some time later that I quit preaching sermons and began to deliver messages. 

My next stop was Abilene Christian University and a myriad of preaching opportunities.