I am a
preacher. Every Sunday, I get up and preach a 30-40 minute message from the
Word of God. The amount of thought and research that go into my sermons is pretty
substantial. I try to share things that have the potential to promote radical
life change, should someone choose to apply what they are hearing. I take risks
in my preaching. I risk offending people. Sometimes I offend those who are more
worldly and sometimes I offend those who consider themselves more godly, and
sometimes I offend just about everyone in the room, including myself. I do not
preach safe sermons. I preach real, hopefully eye-opening, definitely eye-brow-raising
sermons. I’m pretty sure that’s what Jesus did.
There will
always be those pharisaical Christians who meet the slightest bit of
open-minded thought with condemnation. There will always be those souls who simply
want to hear the things they have always heard presented in the same way
they’ve always heard them presented. They will not be happy with my preaching.
There will
also always be those who want to hear the latest pop-psychology, feel-good, all-encouraging, ear-tickling nonsense, rather than the exposition of God’s
ancient, unchanging truth. They will not be happy with my preaching either.
I am
starting to realize how surprising it is that people keep coming back to listen
to me preach… and more all the time. Is it because I am real? I am that, if
nothing else. Is it because most of them have heard enough safe sermons? My
sermons are seldom safe. Almost every week I expect that someone will probably take
issue with something I have said.
I was
thinking today about the fact that I am a person of very strong conviction who
is also still open minded. Strange as that may sound, it is true. [Right in the
middle of writing this blog, I received an email from our Associate Pastor
complimenting me for being willing to tweak my doctrinal position based on a
discussion we have been having.] The fact is that I consider myself in a state
of flux on many of my beliefs. I am still learning. I have absolutely changed
my view on several issues over the last twenty-five years of ministry. How can
someone of such strong conviction, still also be a person who can change his
positions? I don’t think this is a coincidence.
My
convictions are strong because I continue to feed them, and because I know that
if they are proven wrong, they can still be changed. I am still listening and
I’m still convincing myself and I’m still open to the fact that I could have
been wrong about some things MY WHOLE LIFE. I believe this actually makes me
stronger.
[I’m
feeling very me, me, me with this blog… talking about myself so much, but oh
well, it is MY blog.]
In many
cases, those issues I am strongest on are the ones I have struggled with the most.
In other words, since it is possible that I can change my mind, even on many important
issues, I feel the need to convince myself repeatedly. So yes, even many of my
strongest convictions still include a sliver of open-mindedness. Now that
scares people.
People don’t
want a pastor who might change his mind.
That could lead to speaking in tongues. Sorry…. And yet they do want a pastor
who is real. The problem is that those two desires are incongruent. One cannot
be closed-minded and real at the same time. Why? Because if it is impossible
that I could be persuaded to change my position, regardless of the evidence, then
I have made an a priori decision to fake myself out at all costs. I have
decided to keep the wool pulled over my eyes and to close my ears and to say
“la la la la la” to whomever or whatever would try to convince me otherwise,
and there is nothing real about that. A real person doesn’t fool himself. A
real person knows he surely isn’t right about everything and therefore he keeps
open the possibility that he could change his mind about any particular thing.
Can I ask less of myself than I would ask of the audience I seek to persuade,
about one thing or another, every week?
People have
said that I can be persuasive. My wife jokingly says I should have been a
lawyer. My daughter-in-law recently said, “Just do that thing you do, and
everyone will change their minds in like fifteen minutes.” She’s such a
sweetheart. But I think that if I am no longer persuadable, I will no longer be
persuasive. And someone will probably say I don’t need to be persuasive, to
which I respond, “Oh please.” Even the Apostle Paul was out to persuade as many
as possible (Acts 26:28, 2 Corinthians 5:11).
Now,
keeping it real… there are some topics about which I am closed-minded. There
are those areas where I feel I have completely exhausted the argument. You’ll
never convince me that abortion is okay. Sorry. You’ll never convince me that
Jesus didn’t die on the Cross and rise again. I no longer spend any time
wrestling with those issues. These are things that I know at a whole other
level. However, if I were to tell you the list of things that I could potentially
change my mind about, well then I’d have church members really concerned. The
truth is that many of the things I feel strongest about are areas where I
struggle to believe what I believe.
Why am I so
uber-committed to a supernatural, six-day creation that did not take place
billions of years ago? Because I am so constantly challenged by the other side
that I wear myself out arguing against it. Does that mean I could change my
mind on this issue. Yes. I’m not going
to change my mind, but yes, theoretically I could (heh heh). I continue to research
this issue regularly. I wrestle with it. I think. And there are SO MANY areas
like this in my life, wherein I can argue both sides, and yet I land strongly
on one side or the other. That’s just who I am… and it is part of why I preach
the way I preach.
I never was
the preacher boy with all of his positions charted out, perfectly confident in
the absolute truth of his own systematic theology. No not at all. I have too
much respect for the unfathomability of God and my own ant-like place in the
world. That doesn’t mean I don’t think I know anything. In truth, I think I
know a lot. It’s just that I also know that what I think I know, I may not
really know and, oh yes, there is also that too-true-truth that I don’t know
what I don’t know. So do I know anything? Yes. I know Jesus.
Maybe I’ll
just close out my rambling by quoting the words of someone my wife says I’m a lot
like in many ways. The Apostle Paul said,
And when I came to you, brethren, I
did not come with superiority of speech or of wisdom, proclaiming to you the
testimony of God. For I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus
Christ, and Him crucified. I was with you in weakness and in fear and in
much trembling, and my message and my preaching were not in persuasive words of
wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith
would not rest on the wisdom of men, but on the power of God. Yet we do speak
wisdom among those who are mature; a wisdom, however, not of this age nor of
the rulers of this age, who are passing away; but we speak God’s wisdom in a
mystery, the hidden wisdom which God predestined before the ages to our glory.... 1 Corinthians 2:1-7 (NASB)
