Preaching It Real

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)