Kingdom Harbor

Sitting at my 9-year old daughter’s softball tournament recently, I was bookended by two other dad’s talking about life, family, and business.

I often feel out of place with “successful” business men talking about their boat, lake home, and country club lifestyle. These two guys were as kind and down-to-earth as can be, but I was still a bit intimidated by them. I was caught off guard when the conversation suddenly turned toward my work. Both are loosely affiliated with the Roman Catholic Church in town, but neither are regular attenders. One asked me the question:

Where do you get the material for your sermon each week? 

Sounds like a simple question, and for the initiated it has a pretty simple answer. Uhhh…the Bible. But I tried to put myself into the shoes of a person completely unacquainted with church culture, someone who’s never heard of a Bible study, homiletics, morning devotions, life application study Bibles, and so on. The question wasn’t What is the basis of your sermon or How do you decide what topic to preach on? It was more basic and innocent than that. Where do you get the material? 

I don’t know what kind of preaching they have been exposed to, but I can imagine them thinking pastors just go to sermon.com and print out a sermon each week to share with the congregation. I fumbled to find words to explain my weekly rhythm of sitting in an ancient text, listening for the still soft whisper of God in a Book, waiting for the Holy Spirit to land on it and give me a particularly relevant word for our people.

How strange my life and work week must sound to these driven, hardworking, enterprising, results-oriented business guys. Some work for a paycheck, some work to meet the bottom line, some for personal gain and prestige. Some us work for…well, we work (literally) for God and to faithfully carry out this strange and perplexing vocation of preacher. 

I briefly mentioned different preaching approaches—expository (verse by verse), topical, or lectionary-based sermons—but I saw their eyes quickly glazing over. I mentioned I’m a writer and a theology professor, and that these roles help fuel my thinking and sermon prep. They asked if I ever got writer’s block, probably unable to imagine coming up with something fresh to say week after week. The more I tried to explain, the more I realized how culturally odd the work pastors and writers do must sound to many people. 

This was a rare opportunity to give two guys a spellbinding glimpse into the curious and fascinating vocational life of a preacher—a God-employed “Word-worker.” And I feel like I blew it. I’ve been replaying the scene for days now, ruminating on what I said and what I wish I would have said in answer to his question.

I imagine many people unacquainted with the life of preaching and sermon prep, especially those who rarely attend church, have a very “unspiritual” and human picture of the process in their minds. Perhaps they see pastors as basically preparing a weekly speech or presentation much like a TED Talk or sales pitch in the boardroom. A message cold and calculated, clever or even manipulative—anything to grab the audience and stir their emotions. Nothing could be further than the truth for me. 

I wish I could rewind the tape and give these guys a more spiritually honest answer even if the truth of a pastor’s life evokes quizzical looks or outright ridicule. The answer to the question Where do you get your material for your sermon? is so unbelievably unique and countercultural so as to scandalize many a CEO or organizational leader. Let me take a stab at putting some of it in words. Where do I get the material for my sermons? 

• I often take long walks in quiet contemplation, turning the volume of the world and my own thoughts down and turning the volume of God’s whisper and Word up.

• I spend hours reading and meditating on an ancient text originally written in Hebrew and Greek, trying to understand the message in its original context in order to apply its message appropriately today. 

• I often sit in a particular passage for days, letting it percolate in my brain, reading and re-reading, asking the Holy Spirit to give me insight, direction and to inspire a particular message for our present moment.

• Like Karl Barth, I try to hold the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other—staying abreast of current events and letting the ancient text speak to and weigh in on current issues. 

• I try to have the pulse on the state of the souls in my small congregation, making sure sermons and teaching series speak sensitively and tenderly to their soul’s condition. 

• Personally, I use writing as a primary mode of engaging with Scripture and getting deeper into the meaning and message of the week’s text. While many pastors craft one message each week, I will sometimes write several articles—each of which could be a sermon of sorts. Writer’s block is not usually a problem; narrowing down which message to bring and trying to organize all the loose strands of thought is my particular struggle. 

I don’t know what these guys would think of me and my weekly rhythm of walks the woods, sitting in a cozy chair with nose buried in the Bible, ears listening for God’s voice and direction, and the audacious attempt to let God’s authoritative Word loose in a room through my feeble and fallible words.

This probably all sounds so passive and unproductive. Lazy even. I imagine the business executive asking, “You get paid to sit, read, walk and talk, and pray?” Indeed. And it’s actually much harder than it sounds. “You try sitting still for once,” I want to respond to many highly driven business owners. “You try turning off your phone in order to tune into the quiet and neglected voice of your inner soul.

You try squeezing a meeting with God into your busy calendar. You try to plummet the depths of ancient, timeless wisdom, and when you’ve found a precious diamond of truth that could set anxious hearts free, you try to get a hearing in our shallow, mind-numbingly distracted world of materialistic and soul-denying vanity.”

I find it quite grueling and soul-crushing work being productively irrelevant to most of the people I pass by each day. It’s hard being a voice in the 21st century wilderness, weighed down and bent over carrying a message everyone needs to hear but few are interested in hearing. It’s takes a thick and sturdy soul, a kind of stubbornness or holy folly, to keep setting up a lemonade stand day after day in a world full of people seemingly allergic to lemons or who don’t believe they are thirsty.

But they are, even if they don’t realize it.

Jesus has wisdom to address our political rancor and inability to love our enemies, if we’ll take his radical teaching to heart. Jesus has the cure for the rising mental health crisis in our country, if we’ll sit under the wisdom of a preacher who spends all week sitting with God’s wisdom on soul-full satisfaction. The Scriptures teach us how to be fully human, if we’ll have the courage to make some space in our overly full lives of endless activity. 

A tired and overworked world is crying out for a new breed of pastors who are wise sages and soul-doctors to replace a generation of CEO pastors who unintentionally turned the church and its ministries into one more enterprising business or spiritual social club offering just more and more spiritual programs and activities to squeeze into an already overly busy family schedule. 

I admit that sitting between those two guys at the softball field, I wanted to be respected in their performance-oriented eyes. I wanted to boast of a large and successful church I lead, but I shepherd a small ragtag house church community who simply gather in a circle sharing our spiritual needs and longings together. Nothing sexy, but precious and real and quite rare, actually.

I wanted to sound like an important senior pastor who earns his paycheck working 80 hours a week running meetings, commanding a full staff, casting vision, and boldly leading the organizational ship forward into a bright future. But that’s not me. I’m a shy and withdrawing steward of ancient wisdom and gospel truth, who spends much of my week trying to discover and live into these deep truths, and then inviting others to do the same through my writing, podcasting, teaching and preaching. 

In a world that wants pastors to run a successful vineyard and supper club, I’m running a humble lemonade stand. God has called me to be a faithful sower of Kingdom seed, and a humble shepherd to the people who keep showing up in our circle of holy chaos each Sunday, hungry and needy at the Lord’s Table.

But some people are thirsting for more. Some do enjoy the taste of a cold glass of lemonade on a hot day, or perhaps I should say a grace-filled cup of grape-juice on spiritually dry day. Let’s turn that lemonade stand image into a eucharistic oasis set up in the middle of our busy world for the thirsty souls who admit their need for a holy pit stop in the midst of their rat-race lives. A mobile Holy Spirit refreshment station for those trying to heed Paul’s admonition to “not get drunk on wine, but be filled with the Holy Spirit” (Eph. 5:18).

So, back at the softball field with those two men asking: Where do you get the material for your sermons? Perhaps a better way to ask the question would be: Where do you get the food to feed your flock each Sunday? Answer: Many weeks its as simple (and as as painful) as paying attention to my own deep hunger, going in search of spiritual nourishment all week long, and then sharing that meager morsel with others on Sunday.

Charles Spurgeon said preaching good news is essentially “one beggar telling another beggar where to get bread.” While I may not be the greatest leader, the wisest teacher, or the most compelling preacher, I know what is to hunger for more, and I know where to find the Bread of Life.