Volume 1, Number 7
GATEKEEPERS FOR THE SERMON—A LITMUS TEST
Here’s a simple rule to apply when evaluating a sermon you are about to preach. If the sermon can’t pass these tests, it’s best not to allow it past the gate.
- Gospel Gate: Where is the “gospel” in this? Gospel is always good news. Judgment must always be balanced by redemption. Unless there is good news, the sermon is likely sub-Christian.
- Intention Gate: Do my words reveal the intentions of my text? It is easy to drag in a text, kicking and screaming, trying to make it say what we want it to say. We only have biblical authority when we proclaim what the text “intends” for us to proclaim.
- Frustration Gate: Is this sermon born of my frustration? Sermons born of pastoral frustration are rarely inspiring or motivational, and consequently do little to resolve the frustration that spawns them.
- Personal Gate: Am I preaching at specific individuals? Aiming your sermon at a particular person or group will destroy your credibility and eliminate your people’s ability to trust you with confidences.
- Wesleyan Gate: Does this message fit comfortably within the basic framework of our Wesleyan world view? We are the folks of radical optimism, the people who believe that by God’s grace, the impossible can happen. Any message that weakens our grasp of God’s power, that hinders our hope in Him, that diminishes our ability to trust the Savior is inconsistent with who we are as Nazarenes.
- Application Gate: How will my people apply this message? A message without a means of application may be an exercise in futility.
WAYS TO MAXIMIZE YOUR CHURCH’S SPIRITUAL POTENTIAL
Let’s begin to make the church the powerful, life-changing, absolutely unique force God intended it to be. To accomplish this new-old adventure, we must find specific ways to fulfill the mission Christ gave the church. You are the key player in the effort.
- Give your church a Christ-saturated leader. Think of the sheer adventures of ministry when Christ invades and enriches our thoughts, our decisions, our feelings, our actions, our opportunities, and our reactions.
- Build intentional intercession into the church’s schedule. Try a half night of prayer. Retool the mid-week prayer meeting. Enlist the shut-ins to pray. Every great movement of God has had a prayer support system. Don’t worry if the group is not large.
- Schedule significant annual renewal efforts. View renewal as necessary for the church’s spiritual health as oxygen is for physical life and electricity is for power.
- Develop your church board into a spiritual core group. Urge every lay leader to take responsibilities for spiritual leadership in the church and then resource them so they can do it effectively. Build prayer and Scripture into your regular board meetings.
- Create meaningful encounters with Scripture. Help people read, study, and apply the Bible to their living. Speak about the Bible with clarity, excitement, and affection.
- Refuel people in public services. Feed their faith and give them encouragement. Multiply affirmation and appreciation. Triple the love and eliminate reprimands. Often the world has battered them all week, so they need healing and grace at church.
- Celebrate victories. Every church has many victories the congregation never hears about. Teach people to share their victories. Make praise a part of every sermon, every prayer, and every testimony.
- Teach people to practice the Presence. Think of the possibilities that God is near every Christian at every moment. The way to start is by following Paul’s advice to pray without ceasing and to give thanks in everything.
- Rediscover the supernatural. It need not be spectacular but it is the power of God to change lives, to anoint preaching, to resource pastoral care, to guide in administrative issues, and to add the awe factor in worship. We dare not try to do on our own what God has promised to empower.
- Test your efforts by the perspective of Jesus. This means increasing your accountability to Christ for what we do in our churches. It means we often ask what does the Lord want done in this church by us at this time in the ministries of our church.
A fuller discussion of these issues can be found in the book, Maximizing Your Church’s Spiritual Potential, by Neil B. Wiseman, Beacon Hill.
DROPPING OUT OF WARP DRIVE, OR REFUSING TO TRAVEL AT THE “SPEED OF LIFE”
Leonard Sweet proclaims, “Warp drive can warp the soul. You can’t increase life’s speed and stress without affecting the body.” How do we, then, protect ourselves? How do we drop out of warp drive?
- Create instant sabbaticals. The rhythms of ministry allow for frequent breaks in the action. Balance can be achieved by finding rest and restoration as soon as we need it, not waiting for later to catch up. When the demands of ministry have sapped your strength, take a nap.
- Embrace “Embering”. Leonard Sweet talks about “Ember Days” and our need to revive their observance. Ember Days were a group of days, four times a year, for catching up with the seasons. Slated for the beginning and end of summer, just after Christmas and during Lent, these seasonal respites give opportunity for a break in the action. Measuring time in seasons may be a more realistic tool than living by the clock.
- Consider Christian Retreating. Retreats, private and with groups, offer time for reflection and processing. Hearing the still, small Voice sometimes requires being in a place sufficiently quiet for a period of time. Inviting certain others to retreat with you annually might be a method for accountability and mutual encouragement.
- Revisit the Conventional Wisdom. Silence and solitude nourish the soul. The old adage is still good advice: an hour a week, a day a month, a week a year.
- Luxuriate in Leisure. There is a healthy place for leisure in the life of the Christian. Leisure follows after work, never precedes it. Leisure time, filled with non-ministry work, doesn’t provide rest. How often have you heard, “By the time I get home from vacation, I need a vacation!”? Plan time to accomplish nothing, and then schedule nothing during that time.
TIME MANAGEMENT—EXCEPTIONS TO THE RULES
Corporate Time Management principles cannot always be applied directly to ministry lifestyles. Here are a few areas where the conventional wisdom of the business world regarding time management might not serve in the pastorate.
Give attention to People. Ministry requires investing time in people. Jesus, our magnificent model for ministry, went to weddings, funerals, and worship with His disciples. To read the New Testament is to be impressed by how He entered into the details of their lives.
Availability saves energy and guilt and missed opportunity. It often takes a lot more energy and effort to avoid phone calls than it does to take them.
Interruptions often provide magnificent ministry opportunities. When a person says, “Sorry to interrupt you but . . .,” you can be sure they think what they are about to tell you is important and that they need your help. Allow flexibility in your schedule so you can deal with interruptions as opportunities.
Activity is not achievement. The notion that activity is the way we judge the effectiveness of ministry is a bad mistake. Achievement needs activity, but it must be activity with a purpose.
Imitation reaches beyond delegation. Model what you want to see. Don’t ask laity to do what you are not willing to do. It is true that the pastor has been given the duty “to prepare God's people for works of service” (Ephesians 4:12, NIV). That directive from Scripture always works better when the pastor becomes a playing coach rather than the resident expert.
Crises are times to forget the schedule. When emergencies come, the people need their pastor. A minister who says, “This is my day off,” on the day a member is having cancer surgery is something less than a faithful shepherd of the flock.
Sort the urgent from the eternal. President Dwight Eisenhower said, “Urgent things are seldom important and important things are seldom urgent” (Leadership When the Heat’s On, 95). One time management specialist recommends that time be set aside every day—as much as two to four hours—to deal with the eternal. To keep a clear focus on the differences requires constant care and evaluation.
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