Around the web this week

Here are articles I've found interesting around the web this past week.

One of my professors, Roger Olson, asks the question, "Whatever happened to the cross?"  His thoughts apply to worship in general, but certainly are good reading for the preacher.  Olson writes, "The cross, properly, biblically understood and not reduced to a martyrdom, is scandalous. But it is a scandal central to the gospel and therefore to Christianity. I am not sure one can find Christianity where the cross is absent or diminished in importance." After reading his article, the preacher is left reflecting upon the question, "How often am I preaching the scandalous good news of the cross?

Christian singer/songwriter, Shaun Groves, writes about the difficulty of finding just the right word for a song about God.  He sounds like a preacher when he confesses, "I write about God because I love Him deeply. And yet because I love Him, I’m afraid to write about Him."

In England, a six year old girl wrote a letter to God and the Bishop of Canterbury answered on God's behalf. Read his well-crafted answer here.

Illustration-a-day: Worship or art?

The other day I was listening online to a concert by one of my favorite singers.  I don't know this woman's faith story.  Most of her music is not faith oriented, but her latest album is an album of gospel covers.  It's a tremendous collection of songs and a the concert was terrific.  At the end of the show, as the credits rolled, the producers showed some backstage footage of the singer discussing her making of the album.  These were her words:

There’s so many performers that I got to listen to and find out about that I had never heard of that were just astonishingly good and that most people . . . that were definitely not household names.  So they're people who came to this earth and did this amazing music that a couple a hundred people heard in a church and then now they're gone.  But this music is out there some of it’s recorded.  It’s so exciting to me that there are people who just made this impossibly beautiful music because they loved it and that was it.

Like I said, I don't know this singer personally.  I just like her music - both the sacred and the secular.  I also know that it's not good to judge a person based on a soundbite.  So I don't want to speak to her whole concept of art and worship, but at least in that short little paragraph, this artist confuses the motivation of art and worship as being identical to one another.  Now, all good art probably walks up to the front porch of worship in some way.  That is, the best art touches upon the transcendent.  But true worshipers make it past the porch, they march right on into the house.  The difference?  Artists sing for the love of the song.  Worshipers sing because they love the one to whom the song is directed.  Gospel music may very well be a kind of art - but those who've been touched by Christ's gospel make art that is first and foremost, true worship.

Preaching Question of the Week: Where do you find reminders of God's love?

Dallas Willard writes that we preachers can tell if we are running dry spiritually by the kinds of questions we ask ourselves right after the worship service is over. When our first questions are, "How did it go?" or "What could I have done differently?" there is a good chance that we are running on empty. It's not because spiritually full preachers never preach bad sermons. They can and do. Rather, it's because those who have found their deepest satisfaction in Christ know that how the service or sermon goes depends upon God far more than it depends upon us. We should do our best, yes, but without God our best is never good enough.

Empty preachers are constantly attempting to fill themselves up with the assurance that the service went well - the preacher's equivalent of the schoolboy's good grade. Preachers filled to the brim with God's presence know that "successful" services are a poor substitute for the presence of God, who can be present in the poorest of services.

I admit, this word strikes at one of my most glaring weakness as a preacher. So often I look for satisfaction not in the love of God about which I preach, but rather, in preaching well about the love of God. How silly. How excruciatingly frustrating. My performance never satisfies, nor was it meant to satisfy that part of my soul that was meant for God alone. I remember a line from an old Switchfoot song, a prayer really, "God, let me know that you love me, and let that be enough." I don't pray that prayer nearly enough.

So the question of the week is this - Is this a struggle for you? If so, how do resist the urge to find your worth in preaching instead of in the God of whom you preach? Where in life and ministry do you find the best reminders of God's love?

Preaching Quote of the Week

"A large part of what the pastor does in preaching and life is to listen and help people feel their real needs, not just superficial needs. The satisfied preacher speaks from a listening heart. Since people often do not know what they really need, such preaching can help them find out. This requires a spaciousness that only comes if your cup is running over because you are well-cared for by God." - Dallas Willard

See What a Morning

Learning to live from a dying man.

I've posted a short devotional on Jesus' prayer in John 17 over on my other blog Between Sundays. I've had that blog for a few years now. It's mainly aimed at my own church members and whoever else happens to wander along.

Easter is coming.

A well done video on the difference Easter makes from Workingpreacher.org.

Illustration-a-day: Living the resurrection

"Christian holiness consists not of trying as hard as we can to be good but of learning to live in the new world created by Easter, the new world we publicly entered in our baptism. There are many parts of the world we can't do anything about except pray. But there is one part of the world, one part of physical reality, that we can do something about, and that is the creature each of us calls 'myself.'"

N. T Wright, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church (New York: HarperOne, 2008), 253.

Preaching Quote of the Week

"We do not make sermons out of air: our creations, poor or brilliant as they may be, are always variations on someone else's theme.  The main melody is always a given, and even when we launch into our own bold improvisations we are limited to a scale of eight notes.  Our words are not ends in themselves; they exist to serve other words, which means that we never work alone.  Sitting all by ourselves in our rooms with bitten pencils in our hands, we compose our sermons in partnership with all those who have done so before us.  Together we explore the parameters of our common faith, testing the truth of one another's discoveries and holding each other accountable so that what we offer those who listen to us will not aim to dazzle but to nourish them."

Barbara Brown Taylor,Preaching Life (Boston: Cowley, 1993), 81.

Illustration-a-day: Like the sun rising over the dark horizon

"At one time the world cringed in terror befor death, engaging in timid dreams of continued life, of wisps and shades of remaining vitality. But the coming of Christ was like the sun rising over the dark horizon: the shadows of fear, dread and terror fled at the blazing brilliance of the One who triumphed over death."

A.J. Conyers, The Eclipse of Heaven (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1992), 42.

Question of the week: What are your thoughts on preaching Easter sermons?

Bigger crowds.  Unfamiliar faces.  The most basic story of our faith.  Easter has it all.  Do you find preaching Easter sermons to be . . . easier than other sermons? More difficult? Do you get more uptight than normal?  Less?  Do you prepare differently for Easter than other sermons?  If so how? 

Remember, I allow anonymous comments so feel free to tell the truth without worrying about whether or not your congregation will find out.

Keeping it Fresh - Preaching Easter Sunday as if it were the very first time.

"Everything is a Quotation" a painting
by my brother Erick Sandlin

Preaching Easter services can be daunting. The crowd's bigger than normal. It's full of unfamiliar faces. People in the congregation seem so worried about how they look and what they're doing for lunch that you can wonder if they're even listening. And then there's the text. It's the same as last year. You've tried to switch it up on occasion. You preached from 1 Cor 15 one year; you've rotated through the gospels; you even tried an Easter sermon out of 1 John, once. But no matter how you craft it, it still feels the same. How do you say it differently than before? And even more basic how do you say it? I mean say it in a way that does the story justice? What words can any of us say that will convey the power, the glory, the outrageousness of the resurrection? Superlatives fail us.

Part of our problem is that we have preached this so many times, we think we need new words to make the story of the resurrection sound fresh (as if it were our words that supplied new life to this story instead of it being the resurrection that brings new life to our words!). We've handled this story so often that we, the preacher, have become deadened to its sacred power. The fault is ours alone. Philip Brooks once wrote, "Familiarity does not breed contempt except of contemptible things or in contemptible people." The resurrection is clearly not a contemptible thing so . . . Ouch.

Willimon channels Brooks when he writes, "Don't you find it curious that High Holy Days get 'old' mostly for us preachers? Most of our people come to church on Christmas or Easter hoping to sing the same old hymns, to hear a familiar story. No lay person ever asked, 'Easter? Again?' Most laity come to church on these high days hoping it will all be 'again.' . . . Perhaps our laity, failing to receive the benefits of a first-rate theological education, are less well defended against Jesus than we clergy, therefore to them, the good news of Jesus Christ stays news."

I think Willimon is on to something. Nobody but the preacher is upset that this year's sermon sounds somewhat like last year's. The power, after all, isn't in the preacher or the preacher's words so much as it's in the Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead and now moves within the gospel's proclamation and among those who hear it. So don't worry so much about how to preach this story anew. Just trust that when we proclaim he is risen once more, it's news that's as new as ever.

With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And God’s grace was so powerfully at work in them all - Acts 4:33.

Illustration-a-day: What God gave us in the resurrection

“In the resurrection, so we believe, God gave us that which we could never have on our own – a beyond.” – William H. Willimon, Undone by Easter: Keeping Preaching Fresh (Abingdon: Nashville, 2009), 9.

Illustration-a-day: Meeting a real celebrity

A few years ago, I heard the delightful story of Troy Aikman taking his daughter to a Miley Cyrus, aka Hannah Montana, concert. This was back when Miley was at her most popular and her Hanna Montana concerts were selling out in matters of minutes, not hours, not days, minutes. Troy Aikman, being a dad with connections, he was able to get his daughter front row tickets and a chance to go back stage and meet Miley. Now, back stage, some of the stage hands came up and asked for Aikman’s autograph, which is understandable to any of us old enough to know that Aikman’s main gig in life wasn’t as a commentator for FOX Sports. Aikman laughed, though, as he told of the incident saying, his daughter was befuddled as to why anyone would be paying attention to her dad when someone as great as Miley Cyrus was in their presence. His daughter would later confess to her dad, her dad the three-time Super Bowl Champion quarterback, “This is so cool, I’ve never met a real celebrity before.”

More tips on improving your sermon from Jim Martin

Over at A Place for the God Hungry, Jim Martin completes his list of ten ways to improve your preaching. The last five tips include:

1. Talk to people as if they are intelligent (they are) but resist the urge to prepare a sermon for a seminary professor.

2. Note the importance of ethos.

3. Present the opposing view as if very intelligent, good people believe this.

4. If you want people to take you seriously, then do nothing that might give them reason not to.

5. Take your preaching seriously and yourself less seriously.

Read his excellent explanations about each tip here.