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They are More Evil than the Rest of us Walking Pavement

In his novel/novella, Ray, Barry Hannah has a preacher with suppressed urges murder the love of the main character’s life (The ‘flying’ is a reference to being a pilot in WWII):

In their secret hearts, such perversities as Maynard know there are things they can never have, things they have wanted with all their hearts. So they kill them. Most preachers are this way. Their messages seem benevolent, but they are more evil than the rest of us walking pavement.

When I fly again, it will be against the preachers.

-Barry Hannah, Ray, p. 54

I am a preacher, so I take statements like this, even in a novel, to heart. Hannah had a love/hate relationship with the church for a long time. He openly confessed Christ later in his life (and I’m thankful for this), but that’s not what’s important here. The issue here is actually taking such a statement seriously: Preacher, be careful what you do with your urges, and how you mortify them. Suppression is not enough. The Apostle Paul called himself the chief of sinners. Do you think that you’re better?

If would have gone up the way you came down…

There’s a story told about a brash young Scottish preacher that went into the pulpit with an easily-apparent confidence or swagger. He knew this sermon would be good. Then the sermon bombed and he stepped down from the pulpit dejected and humbled.

An elder says to him, basically, “If you would have gone up the way you came down, then you may have come down the way you went up.”

Don’t Talk About it Unless You’re Excited About It

Recently I’ve started to change the first question I ask of my executive clients who want to become better communicators. In his last major public presentation, Steve Jobs said, “It’s the intersection of technology and liberal arts that makes our hearts sing.” So today I’ve replaced “What are you passionate about” with “What makes your heart sing?”

-Carmine Gallo, Talk Like TED, Kindle Loc. 280.

Is there anything you are so excited about sharing that you can’t wait until you get to that part of the message? If not, you aren’t ready. You don’t have a burden. You may have pages of information and it may all be true, but if you don’t have something that people need so badly that you feel compelled to share it, you still have work to do.

-Andy Stanley, Communicating for Change, Kindle Loc. 1498.

Note to self and to other preachers: if nothing in your sermon prep has excited you, then you’re not done with your prep yet. Keep digging until you find something compelling, then turn your primary attention to that.

 

Pastoral Counseling: Teaching People How to Think

My pastoral work of personal dealing, considerable though it is, has been greatly reduced through the years because the building up of people’s faith, by the ministry of the Word of God, solves so much in their lives. It enables those who receive it and seek to live by it to understand and solve so much in other lives, that instead of becoming a liability on my time and energy, they become pastors themselves. Indeed, one of the features of such a radical and total ministry of the Word is that it thrusts so many into spiritual and social work that I can hardly keep a congregation together on account of their scattering throughout the land, and indeed, the earth.

– William Still, The Work of the Pastor, Kindle Loc. 323

All this has to be faced in the ministry of the Word: nevertheless, it is that ministry which makes Christian character, so that healthy feeders need the pastor less and less. At last they need him no more as clinician or nurse. They have found the solution to their problems and, much more important, have learned to live with those which will only be fully solved in heaven. Now they are able to become, as I said before, pastors to others, to help them solve their problems through the Word (Loc. 448).

The goal for Still is to teach people how to apply the Word to themselves so that they can learn to counsel themselves and thus become less dependent upon you. The end result is that they will begin to counsel others effectively as well.

 

 

As Manure Belongs to a Fruitful Garden

Another thing: to minister fruitfully (and God does not call us to anything else) we must minister as those who have died. This is really the same point as the last, but it has total ramifications in the life. It is only out of a life that is dead not only to sin (obvious) but to self in all its various and subtle aspects, that God will bring resurrection to others. Death works in us, but life in others (2 Cor. 4:12). That is the profoundest and most practical principle in the Bible. Every time we essay to minister there must be a new death. ‘Deaths oft…I die daily,’ said Paul. It is the glorious agony of those who are used of God amidst the oppositions of the world, the church, and certainly the devil, that we are ever dying men and women…

You can see what a death this is to die to those who think you are nothing if not popular. If we are not prepared to suffer (and suffering is not fun nor is it meant to be fun), we shall not reign. The two belong together, as Peter says over and over again in his first epistle. Hurt and fruit, death and life, sorrow and joy. They belong together, as manure belongs to a fruitful garden.

-William Still, The Work of the Pastor, Kindle Loc. 1191, 1210

That’s great use of imagery. Suffering and joy, etc. go together as manure and a fruitful garden go together.

 

 

Don’t be so busy fighting off the world that you forget to feed the sheep (Saved to Starve)

To put it otherwise and more simply: a shepherd is no mere warder-off of wild beasts. To save the sheep from wild beasts and all other dangers is not to feed them; and if they are not fed, what matters whether they are safe or not? What is the good of being saved to starve?

-William Still, The Work of the Pastor, Kindle Loc. 1361

Don’t be so busy fighting off the world that you forget to feed the sheep actual food.