In Review 12.29.2022

     To really get a handle on what you have done you need to review. To set the course for where you need to go you need to plan. Without a plan the review doesn’t have any benchmarks, making it difficult to grade your performance. This year’s review helps to streamline and focus on next year’s plan. The plan should already be written but planning never really ends. Each week we have a hard deadline (10.00 a.m. Sunday, when worship begins…at least for me). Each Sunday afternoon or Monday morning we can recalibrate our preaching as we prepare for the coming Sunday. If we are to continually improve our preaching, we must always be planning and reviewing our work. The week between Christmas Day and New Year’s Day is a great time to work through last year’s preaching. Every Sermon for 2022 is in the books. I haven’t reviewed them all but a representative sample from each series. 

    This kind of review shouldn’t be done in a vacuum. Over the years I find myself repeatedly asking a few, basic questions about how my sermons tracked with the plan. As I looked at my own work, I found that some sermons were better than I remembered and some worse. My intent is not to go over exegesis and I don’t want to get caught up in the details. I just want to ask a few simple questions about how well I stuck to the plan. Here are some basic questions I like to consider.

Did I do what I said I would do (intent)?

    Actually, this goes beyond intent and speaks to my intelligence as well. In the past, when I have been unable to follow through with my preaching plan there have been two issues 1. External issues…say like a global pandemic. 2. I did not plan intelligently (which is to say, stupidly) There are several forms of this error. The most common is hubris. There are a lot of times over the course of my ministry that I tried to do something which seemed great when looking at the whole year panoramically in October which was trite, silly, or undoable when it came time to execute. Under ideal circumstances, my plan should deviate by no more than 1 or 2 messages. Any more than that and there was either a disaster or a disaster occurred between my ears. 

Was my underlying theme for last year robust enough for a year’s preaching?

    There are some themes that are great for part of a year but can’t really be sustained through the variety of Biblical preaching a full year requires. I need to look at the texts, titles, and themes and determine whether I was forcing things. Did I really think the theme through thoroughly or did I quit before the hard work was done? 

    In 2022 my stated theme was believing. The glue that bonded everything together was the Johannine corpus. The thematic trajectory of “belief” or “faith” in John’s writings guided me as I chose texts and how they would be interrelated. In execution, it seemed to work well. Other than a series on the 10 commandments, everyone already had a strait forward understanding of how John, 1 John, 2 John, 3 John, and the Apocalypse are related to one another. So, the theme as planned was executable. 

Another yearly theme I used recently was in 2020: When ______ Comes to Town. The root idea came from the song used in the Christmas fantasy The Polar Express, When Christmas Comes to Town. My Gospel for 2020 was Luke and the year fell out as illustrated in the following list.

• When Christmas comes to town. (Luke 1-2)

• When Jesus comes to town. (Luke)

• When the Spirit Comes to town. (Acts)

• When a Hero Comes to town. (1, 2 Samuel)

• When Grace Comes to town. (Romans)

It hung together well and all I really needed to do was keep my eye on the ball when it came to relating exegesis to application to theme. 

Were the deliverables delivered in a “professional” fashion? 

    This is harder than it used to be! When I started preaching and for the first 20 years or so, the only deliverables were my sermon outline/manuscript and a title and text for the bulletin. That’s it.  Rarely did I include inserts, outlines, questions, or hand-outs. I preached and expected people to engage through listening. Today virtually every sermon requires at least three specific deliverables. A sermon manuscript, a fill-in-the-blank handout, and a Slide Deck. Each of these is distributed online via Facebook and of course, the slides roll during the Sermon. 

    These deliverables need to be consistent, clear, and complimentary. They should supplement rather than replace the traditional oral presentation of the message. The purpose of these deliverables is to help people actively engage in the preaching moment and to accurately recall the message of the text.  It is possible for a sermon to be very consistent and to still be unclear, vapid, or inaccurate. This comes from trying to rush the work process, taking shortcuts, or overreliance on topical or felt needs preaching. When preaching is anchored firmly to the text there is less risk of wandering because of the structured Biblical focus. That means that the parallel deliverables can illustrate the message and help in its retention but don’t function as the core of the message. Exegesis and explanation lead to an engagement with God through His word. PowerPoint and handouts are tools. When we allow the tools to eclipse rather than enhance the message, we have missed the point and need to recalibrate and refocus. 

    Friends, each of us is the theologian and poet in residence for our congregation. We labor in our study to fulfill our ministry of the Word.  Every week we lead God’s people in public worship through the preaching of the Word. We do many other things to enhance worship (music and an inviting environment), but Biblical worship is founded upon Biblical preaching and that needs to be done to the best of our ability every week of every year. And Preacher, Biblical is just the start of the work. It needs to be done well. It needs to be done with passion and polish. It needs to be designed and executed to facilitate an intersection of God’s voice in the text and human needs in the pew. In the 21c we have good, professional tools (Bless you Logos and Accordance), but someone’s got to do the work. Here in Grayville that is my responsibility.  You are called to be where you are, proclaiming the Word, and leading God’s people. Let’s make 2023 a year for writing beautiful, Biblical, well-designed, engaging, life-changing sermons. It starts with closing the door to the study, sequestering with God and Scripture, and listening for His voice in the sacred text. 

Holy 12.22.2022

    In the 21st century, amid the delirium and debris of our consumer culture, It can be difficult to feel holy at Christmas. It does not matter how often you hear or sing Oh Holy Night, there is something incongruous about the whole nation stopping, pausing for a few hours of peace on earth, then getting back to the narcissism at the heart of contemporary, Postmodern Culture. Holy is one of those good, solid Biblical words that can carry a lot of weight. The initial idea of holiness is separation. God is holy, first and foremost because He is not proximate to our sinfulness. Holiness is first a proximity function that then serves a moral and spiritual function. Throughout the Bible, the unholy (profane) were those whose personal sin kept them perpetually separate from God in worship and other humans in fellowship. 

    One of the perpetual goals for the highly motivated Christian should be personal holiness. There are many reasons to pursue holiness, though only one should be central. Let’s get the obvious out of the way first. The central reason Christians should desire holiness is that God is, Himself, holy. He is set apart and distinct from His creation. This was so prior to the fall, and more so after. This distinction between creator and creation is central to sound theology. We, humans, are made in His image, but that does not mean we are little versions of God. To be like Him in will, intellect, and emotion means that we are moral creatures—persistently tested. For the most part, we as a race, have universally failed this test. In retaining the image, we still long for proximity and relationship—which is to say, God’s own holiness. 

    On our own, we concoct a wide-ranging variety of attempts at conceptualizing and attaining holiness. Human-created “religion” is the Imago Dei seeking God blindly, without information. Paul says something to this effect in Acts 17

“So Paul, standing in the midst of the Areopagus, said: “Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription: ‘To the unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you.” (Acts 17:22–23 ESV)

    One of the primary purposes of Jesus’ coming was to begin the final stage of God’s disclosure of the truth of His own holiness and how we might attain it, despite our fallenness. One of my favorite texts is from the prologue to John. I provide the quotation from the NASB 2020 because, in this case, I think it does a better job of translating the passage the way I would.  “No one has seen God at any time; God the only Son, who is in the arms of the Father, He has explained Him.” (John 1:18 NAS20) The word translated “explain” is ἐξηγήσατο. This word is the basis of our English term “exegesis”. Jesus exegetes or explains God to us. By becoming incarnate, Jesus provided Himself as God's ultimate disclosure. To know God’s holiness is to know Jesus. 

    This must have been quite a shock to Jesus’ contemporaries and helps to explain the reaction to Him in all versions of formative Judaism. Whatever their differences, each of the 1st-century Jewish sects sought ways to either maintain or increase the distance between themselves and gentiles or other "sinners". At the same time, they sought to decrease the distance between themselves and God. They, however, viewed this process as a sort of zero-sum game in which drawing closer to God, and participating more fully in His holiness necessarily increased the distance between all others, whether by degree, with other Jews, or completely with other ethnic/religious groups. The genius of the Gospel (I can’t really summarize here. To really understand the doctrinal basis for what I’m describing read in the New Testament from Matthew 1—Revelation 22. That should cover it.) of Jesus Christ is that He proposed closing the distance, both between God and me and between me and others—at the same time as a part of the same process. Jesus calls us not only into a renewed relationship with God but also into a renewed covenant relationship with others--His Church. Jesus’ final explanation of God is in essence “Look at Me! Do it like this!” We are nearly 21 centuries into this process and, as far as I can tell, we are just scratching the surface.

    So, the Holy Word of God took on human flesh. He closed the distance between His fallen creation and Himself, finally obliterating that distance once and for all upon His cross. Sleep now, Holy infant, so tender and mild. Soon enough ministry will beckon, the cross will call, and the Holy work of redemption will unfold. Holy, Holy, Holy—is the Lord God Almighty, who is and was and is to come.

Stop Motion 12.15.2022

    Whew! Rudolph was on Saturday night. I was afraid I would miss it. This is, of course, an odd proposition for two reasons.

1. I’m 60 years old. I’ve obviously seen it before and missing it one year shouldn’t be that big a deal. 

2. It’s 2022. There are literally a million other ways to catch Rudolph’s red nose other than the traditional CBS broadcast.

    One also must mention that in this age of green-screen digitally remastered, computer-generated special effects watching Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer is a bit of an antiquarian exercise. The technical term for the kind of animation seen in Rudolph, Santa Clause is Coming to Town, and The Little Drummer Boy is Stop-action animation. Rather than analog or digital pictures, this technique uses real models of clay or some other material as moveable, malleable characters which (who?) are physically manipulated and filmed as if they were real people. 

    No one Is really fooled into thinking that these talking reindeer and anthropomorphic snowmen are real. They do, however, seem to provide a three-dimensional almost corporeal presence not experienced through either computer or traditional animation. This was leveraged in the more recent Christmas movie Elf, when during some of the opening North pole scenes, Buddy interacts with Sam the snowman, an arctic puffin, a walrus, a polar bear cub, and of course, Mr. Narwal. These images may actually have been digitally created but they were conceived as a shout-out to classical stop-motion animation. 

    Why do I find this approach to storytelling still compelling after more than 50 years? The story itself is a little stilted and old-fashioned and the animation itself is not really all that good. I have already included a section in this month’s preaching regarding the danger of nostalgia during the holidays. And here I am singing the praises of a “cartoon” that exemplifies a form of animation which seems destined for the ash heap of history. 

    It is Personal. It is a matter of personal connection. Rudolph is the Grinch is Charlie Brown is the Little Drummer Boy. Regardless of all the shiny new specials and fresh, cutting-edge Christmas animation that is produced, the old characters still resonate. To be blunt, these stop-action figures seem more real and more friendly than the purportedly “life-like” characters produced by digital wizardry. Part of it may be that we have invited these old friends into our homes for more than fifty Christmases. Part of it may be resistance to novelty for the sake of novelty. Some of it is just a need to restrict the number of characters that help us define the less spiritually driven aspects of Christmas. Maybe we just like to feel a momentary rush of child-like innocence. 

    Rudolph reminds us that not all misfits are misanthropes and that the monsters which pursue us can be tamed. Once we begin to peel back the drama, the tropes, the jokes, the innuendo, and the cute, maybe then we are ready to remember that the comfort of the cradle paled in comparison to the grandeur of heaven and that at the shadow of the cross lingers over the entire season. The birth of Jesus is an act of supreme humility and selfless giving. In a moment, history captured the presence of its originator and turned the tide of our mutual destiny. Paul wrote about this to his friends in Philippi:

“Who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” (Philippians 2:6–8 ESV)

That juxtaposition of service and sacrifice is at the heart of Christmas. Another year is passing. The good the bad and the ugly have occurred. Evil has spoken, as have greed and lust. Now, as the year passes by, we pause to be reminded of the universal consequences of that remarkable birth. 

    Rudolph’s story is not the Christmas story. It does help us, however, to come to a full stop. It is time to slow down. It is time to reflect. It is time to put the frozen moments of this year into an eternal perspective. When the air is chilled, and our antlered hero rolls across the screen we know that the time is coming to put this year to bed. But before we do that, we will come round the manger sing of a silent night, and hold the Christ child dear to our hearts, knowing that in a few weeks we will consider His cross, His empty tomb, and victory over death.

Lessons to be Learned 12.8.2022

    To be in ministry means to be constantly learning more about our environment of service. Very few of us are called to minister in our own communities. Far fewer are blessed to serve the Church where they grew up. Most of us are immigrants to the communities in which we live and the Churches where we preach. Christmas customs and traditions are a little bit like dating customs. There are some basic, universal constants but far more variables. 

    Biblical and theological training tends to mold people like us in the direction of inflexibility and focus. This is good for preaching, teaching, leading, and pastoring. It is not so good when it comes to learning the local lessons of the Advent/Christmas season. 

    Christmas is good and positive. Many of us will have not only Church-wide activities but also class and small group parties, as well as community gatherings. And as we make our way through life, we will find that each community and congregation has its own way of celebrating Christmas. One of the joys of ministry is learning how to be flexible, how to observe, and learn new ways of celebrating and worshipping—ways which may never have occurred to us, for which we must now take responsibility.

Christmas Universal but mostly local

    I served a Church once that had the tradition of every family in the Church bringing every other family in the Church a gift the Sunday before Christmas. I was not told, beforehand, of this quaint local custom. It is the sort of thing that a young minister might want to know, might need to know. 

    This is but one of the poignant experiences I’ve had through the years that remind me of an operating truth: Christmas may be universal, but it is always observed, celebrated, and kept locally. Ministry is a blessing and a joy. We have the blessed opportunity to represent our God before His Church and to proclaim the unsearchable riches of Christ! And we have the chance to meet many different believers from various backgrounds, ethnicities, and traditions. 

Traditions 

    Ministry allows us to engage people who maintain different Christmas traditions. Some of the customs will be broadly shared. Others will be hyper-local. Some of these traditions will be called by what we think of as a familiar name, only to find that it describes a totally different phenomenon! Oh, the joys of service and the endless pleasure of people!

    Meals, programs, parties, decorating, live/static Nativity Scenes, Caroling, and even shopping together. There are countless ways that humans can gather, and our Churches exhibit an extraordinary variety of ways to celebrate the holiday season. They are not scripture. They do not dictate theology. They are not a matter of faith and practice. They “season” the season with a local flavor that makes it home. The key to enjoying and embracing these new traditions, some of which may be alien to you is straightforward. Be at home where you live. 

Worship

    Because of the various commitments of the Christmas season many Churches add or alter their Worship.  Is it called Advent or just Christmas? Do we have formal readings and candle lighting? Who is responsible for these additions to worship? Some do, some don’t, and some have added them to enhance the experience and include more individuals in the worship experience. 

    Do you have a Christmas program? Is it a children’s program or, the now-rare adult Cantata? Who runs it? Is it an informal affair or a multi-sensory production that forms the basis of the entire Christmas experience, displacing even the preaching of the Word? 

    What about Christmas Eve? If it is a Candlelight service, it clearly needs to start in the evening. Is Midnight too late? Most Churches I’ve served had a “traditional” time for the Christmas Eve service and the tradition was dictated by what other Churches and organizations were doing. Everyone in the community had their own time slot and many families intended to attend more than one service. The heart of the local tradition was, “Be a good neighbor.”

When and Why

       All of this brings us to the central questions of when and why. This year at Grayville we will only have Morning Worship on Christmas Day, canceling Sunday School. Why? Because we want people to both enjoy their families and join us for worship. We could stubbornly insist on doing things like we do every Sunday. The result would likely be that those who skipped Sunday School and stayed in their Jammies would probably do the same with Worship and we would have simply cut off our noses to spite our faces. 

    From the day that we put up the tree, to the Sunday set aside for Walk to the Manger, to Christmas Eve and Christmas Morning the whole point is to leverage the attributes of the season to encourage greater attendance and participation. Every “what” question needs to have a corresponding “why” so that we keep these expectations in balance. 

Who

    The final questions we need to ask are the “who” questions. Who are we hoping to touch this holiday season? Who is the object of our concern, our worship, our planning, and our preparation? Obviously, the Church I mentioned earlier, where every family brought a gift for every other family did not expect a lot of new people. No unexpected gifts or visitors during the Christmas season. This goes against the grain of current Christmas planning that leverages Christmas as the time to “sell” visitors. Like Macy's, these Churches create a spectacle hoping that they will create a committed, regular customer. Here are some of the central issues for our congregation as we seek to provide a theologically sound spiritual experience during the Christmas season.

Silent Night. Holy Night. Calm. Bright. Focused on Incarnation.

Deck the Halls.  Focused on Celebration. 

Joy to the World. Focused on a clear, enduring word regarding a remarkable Savior. 

These goals are not mutually exclusive. Instead, they reinforce one another and insure that Christ is center and that His Church celebrates Him in worship. Even the music we treasure helps to focus us on the ultimate intent of our worship. 

    I love it all! My wife has been decorating for 4 weeks. Every day there is something new hanging, sitting, twirling, dangling, or blinking at the Parsonage on the Hill. In the past, I’ve led Advent services and not had them. It works both ways. In Grayville, we will have Christmas Eve Candlelight and Communion at 9.00 p.m. December 24. Christmas morning worship will be at 10.00 a.m. At one point or another throughout the month of December, we will have Christmas Joy, deck our halls, and reflect silently in the night. I wouldn’t miss these traditions for the world. We do these things to frame preaching about Incarnation in such a way that is not only appealing but inviting.  

During Christmas, Mary’s time is our time= “And while they were there, the time came for her to give birth.” (Luke 2:6 ESV)

During Christmas, the amazement of the shepherds is our amazement= “And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with great fear.” (Luke 2:9 ESV)

During Christmas, we all have the chance to tell the story= “When the angels went away from them into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let us go over to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has made known to us.”” (Luke 2:15 ESV)

    The best lesson of Christmas might be that we did not invent this faith we treasure, proclaim, and share. Generations have gone before, and the traditions created through their pioneering efforts still resonate today. Listen closely to what the angels sing. It is often sung by the voices of the ancestors of our faith who have left us traditions to treasure and lessons to learn.

12.1.2022 Christmas Challenge: Biblical and Cultural

“Christmas time is here.”  So says the opening line of the classic Vince Guaraldi composition of the same name. This is a song you hear during A Charlie Brown Christmas. It may not have the finger-snapping joyousness of Linus and Lucy, but it captures, in its own way, the essence of Charles Schultze’s presentation of the childhood wonder of Christmas. 

    For me, this song encapsulates one of the perennial tensions in preaching. How do we balance Biblical truth with cultural symbols and sounds during the Advent/Christmas season? For all the concern about keeping “Christ in Christmas” and continuing to say, “Merry Christmas”, the fact is that over-exposure poses a greater threat than underexposure or any supposed repression. 

    As preachers and leaders, we set the tone for our congregations. However, during this season it is difficult to be heard, there is a lot of messaging going on! And many of the messages vying for the attention of our congregants, worshippers, and contributors are positive messages. It is hard to make a case for a particular focus when many of the images are positive, kind, wholesome, and admirable. The challenge is leveraging the cultural and social aspects of Christmas to illustrate, illuminate, and instruct from scripture. 

    One of the first truths that we must acknowledge is that the leavening presence of the Church in society has, historically, influenced Christmas more than secular alternatives. Simply put there is no “Christmas” without Jesus. The Peanuts gang, Frosty, and Rudolph may be culturally significant but their presence is welcomed because there is no significant attempt to usurp the place of Christ in the Christmas celebration. The commercial and social expansion of Christmas seems to be capable of absorbing virtually any new, wholesome subplot to the bigger story of Christmas, yet never seems to threaten to replace the central theme of the birth of Christ. So, despite evidence of general ignorance of Biblical information both inside and outside of the Church, the “Christmas Story” still has pride of place among all the cultural cruft. 

    I cited “Christmas Story”, in quotes above, because all of you who preach or are familiar with Scripture know full well that there is no single “Christmas Story” in the New Testament. Matthew and Luke each tell the story of the birth of Jesus from their unique perspectives, according to their own purposes.  John begins his story of Jesus where Moses began the Bible. “In the Beginning”. Mark’s gospel begins by simply stating “The good news of Jesus begins here”. So, in preaching Christmas sermons we are already connecting these multiple threads with other scripture to proclaim the good news of His unprecedented coming. This means constantly formulating ways and means to insert this epic story of incarnation into the various cultural narratives around which people are already organizing their lives. The most positive impact of the Christmas season is that more people pay more attention to our story now than at any other time of year and its resonance within the broader culture is much more significant. People may come to Christmas thinking of Kris Kringle and Rudolph, but they tend to be more open to the manger-cradled King than at other times of the year. This makes pretty good sense because it is still common knowledge that without Jesus, there is no Santa Claus.

    Another heartening reality is that virtually every story; animated, read, sung, or acted during Christmas is presented with a positive tone. Our society is dominated by loud, angry voices. Christmas is a season for tuning out the negatives we hear throughout the year. Though the angelic chorus had a more theological perspective in mind when they talked about “peace on earth and goodwill upon those whom God favors”, a little peace & quiet never hurt anyone and this is the time of year not only to experience it but to share it.

    The Gospel is “good news”. This should be the heart of our preaching throughout the year. However, a commitment to Biblical preaching finds us preparing and serving a balanced diet from Scripture to our world-weary and often famished congregations. That balanced diet, depending on the Biblical book, can have long stretches of correction, warning, reprimand, and repentance. I am not suggesting that we should alter what we say to be “nicer” (I’m rarely accused of being a “nice guy”) or that we should water down the truth of Scripture in any way, at any time. Yet the texts commonly used at Christmas tend toward, shall we say, the less disciplinarian side of God. Truly the Gospel (as Mark puts it) begins with Jesus, bringing grace, truth, love, and peace to our conflict-wearied world. Yes, Herod slinks into Matthew’s story as a prototype for all Grinches to come but even the carnage he causes is quickly contained within the story by the courage of Joseph and the creativity of the Magi. 

    Another helpful Christmas reality is the vast abundance of illustrative material. The characters, issues, and often the very words are embedded in our collective cultural dictionary. To be able to take a common word or phrase and use it to emphasize Biblical truth not only saves time but almost guarantees that people will understand what you are saying and be able to make the connection you intend. 

    Finally, let me remind you of how fun and joyous the Christmas season can be. As the years pass by each of us is storing up memories that can enrich our relationships and deepen the empathy of our preaching. Christmas is the season when Jesus seems the most human to us. We’ve all seen cows and sheep; we’ve all held a baby. We all are stupefied at the odd idea that anyone, in their right mind, would invite a diminutive percussionist to entertain a sleeping newborn. We not only know these stories, but we’ve also lived them. And that is the secret to the best preaching. The Bible and contemporary culture come together every Sunday, in every Sermon, in every Preacher; if we accept the challenge.