"Stand in the place where you live, now face north. Think about direction, wonder why you haven't before." -R.E.M.

Poets, Prophets & Preachers

Poets, Prophets & Preachers: Mini-Entry

07/07/2009 07:47 AM Filed in: Pastoral Stuff | Personal

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I’m currently sitting in the performance hall for Poets, Prophets and Preachers and I thought I’d go ahead and post a mini-entry about one of the things that captured me last night.

Rob Bell said he was speaking with a book editor a few weeks ago. This editor goes through hundreds of books on a regular basis. She told Rob that when she starts going through a new book to see if it’s worthy of publication, she necessarily does so with her editor’s hat on looking for the things that an editor would look for; she doesn’t really get to enjoy and take the book in.

But she told him there are rare occasions where she can remove her editor’s hat completely after the first few well-written pages because she says, “I know I’m in good hands.”

Bell went on to explain that the preacher should be able to evoke the same trust within the first couple of minutes of a message. To put in the hard work required to master the art of the sermon is to allow other people to let down their guard, put away their critique, and “know they are in good hands.”

Tags: Poets, Prophets & Preachers, Rob Bell, Mars Hill Church

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Poets, Prophets & Preachers: Day 2

07/06/2009 10:42 PM Filed in: Pastoral Stuff | Personal

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I want to apologize in advance for failing. Day 2 of Poets, Prophets and Preachers: Recalling the Art of the Sermon will be impossible for me to recount in any sort of encompassing manner. We listened intently for around eight hours of pure brilliance today; trying to summarize it would be difficult.

So I’ve decided to take a different approach. Tomorrow is the final day of the conference; instead of giving a “play-by-play” I’m going to take tomorrow and Wednesday to process some of the things we’ve been discussing. I’ll then post a few entries to let you know the things that resonated with me most deeply and why.

Please continue praying for us. It’s been a great week, but we still feel like there’s so much more to learn and take in.

Shalom,
Josh

Tags: Rob Bell, Mars Hill Church, Poets, Prophets & Preachers, Shane Hipps, Peter Rollins

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Poets, Prophets & Preachers: Day 1

07/05/2009 10:26 PM Filed in: Pastoral Stuff | Personal

This was the first night of the pastoral conference Poets, Prophets and Preachers: Recalling the Art of the Sermon in Grand Rapids, Michigan. What follows is a recap intermingled with a few personal thoughts and explications on the week thus far.

Rob Bell was tonight’s featured speaker. This session felt like an introduction to the week and, as such, it served its purpose: to build anticipation and lay a little groundwork for the sessions to follow.

Bell began by announcing quite convincingly that the time has come to reclaim the art form of the sermon. He asked a rhetorical question: if you were to petition an average person on the street to share words they associated with “sermon,” what would they tell you? Would they say “exciting,” “engaging,” “life-altering,” “intelligent,” “artful,” “passionate,” etc.?

The obvious answer is “no.” Many words may come to mind for the average person, but the aforementioned list is unlikely to be recited. It’s likely that the average person sees the sermon as something to be endured, evaluated, or disregarded as utter propaganda (often understandably so).

It’s time to reclaim the art form of the sermon.

Bell went on to talk about the “naked vulnerability” that often comes with delivering messages to an audience: doubting whether anyone listens, hearing crickets while sharing a potentially life-altering message, and the baggage that comes from your own body of work. The examples he gave are difficult to fully understand unless you are a regular preacher; they resonated deeply with me.

For those of you preparing to embark on your first pastorate, you likely have some idea that delivering a sermon week in and week out is a towering task. I assure you that doing it with excellence is a much more difficult task than you can possibly realize at the moment. And that’s why Rob Bell’s next statement needs to be well remembered:

We need to stop preaching because we have to say something and start preaching because we have something to say.

People should look forward to the sermon. They should be excited to hear the burning words that have welled up inside of the preacher all week; words that will cause their emissary to spontaneously combust if he or she cannot finally release the pressure valve by spewing forth the message that has been howling to be set loose.

To preach such a message is to:

witness (testify to the truth you have learned)
remind (point to the fact that God has more in mind than this)
return (call for repentance and change)
sub-vert (show there’s another story going on besides what we see)
provocate (use loaded language to warn)

If we understand that preaching is a subversive act, Bell points out that we’ll open ourselves up to the possibility of being ill-received. We open ourselves up to the possibility of misinterpretation, confusion, anger, ignorance, fear, jealousy, critique, and agendas.

But...

...we also open up the possibility of truth, light, hope, repentance, comfort, inspiration, solidarity, compassion, revolution, and resurrection.

It’s a beautiful and timeless truth that we can’t bring about the possibility of good if we’re unwilling to open up the possibility for bad. In my estimation the whole of the Biblical account speaks of a God who has worked within the tension of this paradigm since the dawn of creation.

Bell says the words of the preacher can create new worlds for people; new perspectives from which to view existence, new categories from which to gain understanding.

But the message of the preacher shouldn’t stop at the end of the sermon. Bell described a fallacy of the modern age: that the message ends when the public speaker concludes; that the speaker has the power to once and for all finally settle the topic at hand.

Life-changing messages don’t work in this way. Life-changing messages pose more questions; they invite the listener to wade into the great depths and complexities of the preacher’s words. They can’t possibly resolve themselves in the time it takes to deliver them, and thus they invite their listeners to trade passive roles for active ones.

Life-changing talks start talks. They don’t end them. It’s less about the last word and more about the first word.

I arrived this week in near-burn-out mode. Since helping plant Milestone Church a year ago life has been relentless; a pastor is never “off the clock” and that can make for stressful and tiring days. Tonight’s message began a restorative process that I pray will continue for the rest of the week.

Truth be told, my church needs me to be rested as much as I need to rest.

Tags: Rob Bell, Mars Hill Church, Poets, Prophets & Preachers

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