A preacher who dreads sermon preparation?

February 18, 2010  David Murray   1 comment

“Can I be called to the ministry, if I dread sermon preparation?” I was recently asked.

“You can still be called to the ministry and yet, at least sometimes, dread sermon preparation,” was my reply. Right or wrong?

If it was a constant and long-term dread, of course I would be seriously concerned. But I still think that just as the “flesh” makes a builder prefer to relax at home than to pour cement, and just as the “flesh” makes a mother of young children prefer facebooking to home-making, so the “flesh” can make a preacher prefer to read good books than to write a sermon. The curse on the ground affects preachers as well as gardeners.

I’ve often approached my sermon preparation with joy and enthusiasm. But, if I’m honest, I’ve also had times when I’ve dragged myself to the desk and “whipped” myself to do the hard mental, emotional and spiritual work of exegesis. Sometimes it’s a difficult text that’s going to require 10-15 hours of work to make it digestible for my hearers. That’s daunting. More often, I get started with great gusto only to hit a “wall” within a short time, and wish I could find some important blogs to read or papers to file.

I recently read about the four stages of software development, and couldn’t help but notice the parallels with sermon “developers”:

  1. Oh Boy! – Excitement about the anticipated benefits of the software (sermon?)
  2. Oh No! – Discouragement about the anticipated work required to write the software (sermon?)
  3. Oh Well – Resignation that the work just needs to be done.
  4. Oh Wow! – Excitement about the realized benefits from the software (sermon?)

I know all the twists and turns of that roller-coaster! So, if at times you dread sermon preparation, or lose heart in the middle of it, don’t despair. It’s still consistent with a call to the ministry and is to be expected as long as we remain fallen creatures in a fallen world.

The Attention Project

February 16, 2010  David Murray   2 comments

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“I think that perhaps 80% of my work depends on my listening to someone, or on someone listening to me.”

“I’ve been thinking back about things that have gone wrong over the past couple of years, and I suddenly realized that many of the troubles have resulted from someone not hearing something, or getting it in a distorted way.”

“It’s interesting to me that we have considered so many facets of communication [here], but have inadvertently overlooked listening.”

The comments of pastors? No, the results of a 1957 survey about the role of workplace-listening at a major manufacturing plant in the Chicago area.

If it was true in factories, how much more in churches? And if it was true then, how much more now!

Pastor Thabiti Anyabwile has begun to address this in a helpful series of blogs on how to listen to sermons. The authors of the Chicago survey also offered some tips on “efficient listening” to spoken addresses:

  1. The listener thinks ahead of the talker, trying to anticipate what the oral discourse is leading to and what conclusions will be drawn from the words spoken at the moment.
  2. The listener weighs the evidence used by the talker to support the points that he makes. “Is this evidence valid?” the listener asks himself. “Is it the complete evidence?”
  3. Periodically the listener reviews and mentally summarizes the points of the talk completed thus far.
  4. Throughout the talk, the listener “listens between the lines” in search of meaning that is not necessarily put into spoken words. He pays attention to nonverbal communication (facial expressions, gestures, tone of voice) to see if it adds meaning to the spoken words. He asks himself, “Is the talker purposely skirting some area of the subject? Why is he doing so?”

But, of course, the problem goes beyond listening to sermons. For example, when was the last time you had a phone conversation without checking your email, or filing, or driving, etc., at the same time?  When was the last time you had a face-to-face conversation that you stayed with mentally and emotionally from start to finish?

Gretchen Rubin’s Happiness Project stormed it’s way to the top of the New York Times Bestsellers List, but Linda Stone’s Attention Project might actually be the best way to start any Happiness Project. Stone argues that most of us operate with “continual partial attention,” She distinguishes CPA from the simple and useful multi-tasking of the past, and warns that it leads to over-stimulation, a cascade of stress hormones, and a lack of fulfillment. The remedy, she says is to re-train ourselves to pay attention:

Attention is the most powerful tool of the human spirit. We can enhance or augment our attention with practices like meditation and exercise, diffuse it with technologies like email and Blackberries, or alter it with phamaceuticals. In the end, though, we are fully responsible for how we choose to use this extraordinary tool.

How much more Christ-like we would be if we we used this extraordinary tool as He used it.

Further Resources for CPA
Speed Listening 1
Speed Listening 2
Speed Listening 3

Picture: 2006 © Yuri Arcurs. Image from BigStockPhoto.com

Pastoral ministry like having a baby

February 15, 2010  David Murray   0 comments

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If you want to know what having a baby is like, you could ask any mother…or any faithful Pastor. And before I’m clobbered for even daring to suggest a comparison, my authority is the apostle Paul, who wrote to the Galatians: “My little children, of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you…” (Gal. 4:19).

Paul had been the spiritual mother of the Galatians (Acts 13, 14). God had used him to turn the Galatians from “ceremony-salvation” to Gospel salvation, a painful and traumatic experience which he likened to having a baby. But just when Paul thought that the Galatians had been delivered from the suffocating womb of ritualism and were now breathing the pure life-giving oxygen of Christ’s grace, he discovers to his horror that they are reversing back up the birth canal, and turning back to circumcision and other ceremonies as a way of salvation.

So Paul re-enters the labor suite and starts pushing them back to grace. In between the agonizing pangs, he can be heard whispering, “My little children, of whom I travail in birth until Christ be formed in you.” There are piercing contractions, baffling complications, stubborn obstructions, and constant resistance. But he won’t give up or give in until he sees Christ formed in them. He’s going to push and persevere and fight for their lives until they take the shape of Christ, until their whole being proclaims Christ, until they look like Christ, sound like Christ and live like Christ. As John Calvin said, “If ministers wish to do any good, let them labor to form Christ, not to form themselves, in their hearers.”

Is it any wonder, pastors, that you feel so exhausted this Monday morning? You’ve been in the labor suite again. Indeed, do you ever leave it?

The Connector of the Disconnected

February 13, 2010  David Murray   1 comment

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In a week when more “Buzz” was added to our lives, I was relieved to read Seven Simple Ways to Disconnect. In summary:

1. Take a social network hiatus.

 

2. Ignore all calls.

 

3. Don’t check your email.

 

4. Spend a day in silence.

 

5. Refuse to buy anything.

 

6. Don’t use any electricity.

 

7. Don’t use transportation.

And, having disconnected, how about reconnecting…with the great Connector of the disconnected. “For thus saith the Lord GOD, the Holy One of Israel; In returning and rest shall ye be saved; in quietness and in confidence shall be your strength: and ye would not” (Isa. 30:15).

So why am I writing this? And why are you reading this?