Depth 1.16.2025

     Last week we discussed the stratification of snow-ice-snow in the recent winter storm in Southeastern Illinois. The point I made last week is that details matter. The different layers of the precipitation that fell created a complex and dangerous mix that was due more to the details of the storm than anything else. The natural next step is to consider depth. The details of the storm created circumstances of difficulty that were worse than mere depth. How it fell was more significant that merely measuring amount. And after a week those details still play havoc with digging out. 

    We had more snow on Friday and Saturday. Perhaps 6-7 inches. That additional depth didn’t make the problem worse. That snowfall was light and relatively easy to move. That depth, added to what had already accumulated was easier to move and by itself, did not constitute much of a difficulty. It was the earlier storm, with its greater variety which was the real problem. The details accumulated with greater depth, but not all depth is as deep, and not all details are created equal. 

    And so, it goes with this admixture of detail and depth when we use that model in analyzing our preaching. How detailed should we be and how deep should we go? In our age of easily accessible turn-key preaching systems which require the preacher to do no more than assimilate and regurgitate the work of others this question is out of order. Yet for those pastor-scholars who still make their own soup it is essential and multifaceted.  There are at least two applications to consider. The depth of our own study, and the depth of our preaching. 

Depth of Study

    There are easy and difficult approaches to most endeavors. This is true of what goes on in your study. You may approach the task in such a fashion that you create more chaos and move more slowly than you should. Do not confuse making easy things difficult with actually doing difficult things. They are not the same and making a clear distinction will give sound initial guidance when deciding how deep to go in study. 

    I advocate doing hard things. If you are preaching from 1 Peter, you should become an expert on 1 Peter. This will take hard work and some of it is difficult. You will need to consider backgrounds, language, social setting, chronology, and theological issues. You will need to spend long uninterrupted time digesting the relevant secondary materials and week by week you must do the detailed work of exegesis. By the time you get 3/4 of your way through the book the burden will ease as you draw from your own recently stocked well of information. It won’t be easy, but it will be worth it. 

    Far too many preachers approach their work like last week’s winter storm. Three days of prediction followed by three days of affliction. They become frustrated and burned out. The very work they were called to do has become exhausting because they allowed themselves to become buried in details and overwhelmed by the rising depth. How can this be avoided? The answer requires me to mount some favorite hobby horses. Plan ahead. Break the work down into manageable portions. Determine early which details matter. Have a system. Start early. If the water is over your head, it is too late to learn how to swim. 

    If you are consistent, methodical, and disciplined you will learn to manage the details and assess how deep you can go in a given study for preaching from a particular book, section of scripture, or topic. If you reinvent the methodical wheel for every series or message, there is little that can be done other than trying to resuscitate you after you go under. 

Depth of Preaching.

    So, having done a thorough job, accumulating a new depth of knowledge on 1 Peter, how much do you take into the pulpit? As much as it takes to communicate the message. You must now learn to become the judge of how deep your own people can go. Good preaching distills for the pulpit what goes on in the study. It requires a pastoral touch and a willingness to engage in basic audience analysis. Are there many who are unregenerate? What is the maturity level of the congregation? Do you have people who consider themselves experts who are actually out of their depth? Preaching is pastoral work written large. It is from the pulpit that disciples are discipled. The modern notion that discipleship is individualized, personalized, and nontransferable is silly nonsense. 

    Every book in the New Testament was intended to be heard and absorbed by the group. Flock-formation is what gives other pastoral tasks context. There will be exceptions of course, but the modern Church has made attending to personal (selfish) needs of the individual the benchmark of discipleship and the negative impacts are clear. The purpose of the Church is to make disciples not mollify the marginally involved. 

    Your preaching should reflect deep, detailed study adequately and correctly prepared for teaching, exhorting, correcting, and guiding your congregation. Not only does that make for good sermons it provides a basis for long-term sustainable ministry. People will know what to expect and even when you are preaching from familiar texts you will be able to engage people to a depth that challenges them to grow. Much contemporary preaching is nothing but cheerleading. For those who are already growing and have some capacity to feed themselves it stokes the fires for another week of service. For those who cannot feed themselves it is a missed opportunity. They go away encouraged but they have not been given proper tools for continuing growth. Every person who comes to Church deserves preaching which takes them as deep as they are ready to go. That requires a preacher to go into the deep end to gather materials and then to synthesize his learning into clear, understandable messaging. It is time for the Lord’s Church to get out of the kiddie end of the pool 

1.9.2025 Detail

     Like many, I am behind in my work this week. We cancelled Church Sunday, and most people in my part of Illinois are only now, really able to move about freely today—Wednesday January 8. I talked about snow last month in leading up to Christmas. If I were to write about snow today, the tenor and content would be substantially different. Yesterday I walked down from the Parsonage on the Hill. I worked steadily through the day and got quite a bit done. Then slogged my way uphill from the Church House. In the afternoon the parking lots at the Church were cleared and my driveway as well. Today allowed me to pretty much get back to work. 

    Actually, I am both behind (this piece should have been drafted yesterday) and ahead (I will preach the sermon intended for last Sunday on the coming Sunday). Good ministry (as I never tire of saying) requires large uninterrupted blocks of time for study—reading, writing, and thinking. Even today, when there are few people about, I’ve had many other ministry opportunities. I had someone come by for conversation, followed by two ministry colleagues calling or texting for differing kinds of consultations. 

    Ministry has a variety of opportunities. My visitor today has been going above and beyond in caring for a sick neighbor. I routinely thank him for his acts of kindness and grace. One of the reasons I never get tired of my work is this continuing variety it brings and the wonderful flexibility in the grace of God. He uses us to bring comfort, peace, hope, and kindness to those in need. When a Pastor is able to commend others for being pastoral it is one of the true pleasures of the calling. 

    So now I turn my attention to matters of Study. I will be lecturing on NT Survey this winter. I made great progress yesterday but there is much remaining. I am working my way through Matthew until June. Lots of exegesis, examination, and thinking through the teaching of Jesus. Church organization and administrative issues need attention at the beginning of a new year, as well as time spent tweaking personal productivity systems. 

    One wants to be on top of the details without shifting into patterns of undue worry. Jesus warns us about worry in the Sermon on the Mount. It can be challenging to be faithfully attentive to our necessary tasks without being motivated by misplaced worrying. The details matter but the result, the outcome is the point. 

Yesterday when I was walking to the Church I noticed and photographed an interesting phenomenon resulting from the storm. A drain culvert allowed me to see—in almost sedimentary fashion the actual composition of the various layers of precipitation laid down over the weekend. For many of us this storm contained several differing kinds of wintery mixed precipitation. In some combination and varying order most of us had snow, sleet, ice, even freezing rain.

     The result was quite interesting. Here in Grayville the final tally looked like this. We had about 4-5 inches of snow which was compacted by about 2 inches of ice—heavy ice. On top of the layer of ice was another (very icy) layer of about 2-3 inches of snow. Grayville is very hilly, so it is difficult to calculate exact depths at any one place. But where I stood, looked, and photographed the layers laid by the storm these were the details I was able to observe. 

    The life of ministry consists of similar details laid throughout the course of living and serving. At various times of our lives the first layer of snow will be light and airy, easy to move and no trouble. At other times life offers a dreaded “wintery mix” that causes us to slip and slide. Things will feel out of control and the wise will move with increased care. And there are times that feel kind of like this storm, Snow, ice, snow. 

    The details of life change. You will not always face the same challenges throughout life and ministry. There are times when we simply must put on our muck boots, open the door and see what things feel like. So, tie on your scarf grab a walking stick, open the door and see how the winds blow.

The Business at Hand 1.2.2025

     The time we have is easy to quantify. Days. Weeks. Months. A year. Opportunity will manifest itself in many ways. Just consider the nouns. People, places and things. During 2025 we will meet people and say goodbye to people. People will fill us with anxiety, joy, heartache, hope, aspiration, and perspective. Some will go places. Mrs. Beckman and me, we like to stay home. Some of you like to go, go, go. You will vacation, go on mission trips, or just have a satisfying drive. Now, “Things” are a bit of an oddity. The category itself would seem to encompass everything not “people” or “place” which, for me at least, calls into question the definition of noun as a “person, place, or thing.” It may have worked during school days, but it certainly doesn’t do any justice to the wide variation of “stuff” we encounter during our lives.

    Let’s summarize. We meet people, go places, and do things. We did in 2024, and we will in 2025. What we have not done is to in some way quantify or otherwise describe those people, places, or things. To continue the grammatical path (trap) we are on (in which we are imprisoned), we need to add some adjectives, some good-ol’ modifiers that will allow us to make some basic judgments about all this “who, what, and where” we are confronting. 

• New, exciting, challenging people.
• New, exciting, challenging places.
• New, exciting, challenging things.  

OK so we each know, encounter, and experience different “noun categories.” The stuff of life! What of it? How do we process all this information? What is our purpose? What is the business at hand? In some sense, this is, or must be, our purpose. Verbalizing the nouns of our experience, quantifying, comparing, describing, and categorizing them. Acting upon the stuff of life with a coherent approach and appropriate purpose. 

    Now…I understand most people are not so explicit in all this “noun-verb” talk, but we are each involved in the conversation. We might ignore it, argue with it, or try and otherwise elude it but all of us are intimately involved in the making of meaning in our lives. We are always working to match up the verbs and nouns of our experience, to mix in the right modifiers and in some way make sense of our lives. You may not use grammar to conduct the search, but there is some kind of protocol you are following. 

    The business at hand is understanding our place in the world. Either we make it up or someone discloses it to us. We get to choose the source, our own limited horizon or someone else. Ultimately, defining and describing the world according to our own personal desires or standards is an act of enormous hubris. Why should my nouns, verbs, and modifiers articulate reality for others? 

    Throughout history, the wisest among us have discerned that this “search for meaning” this process of engaging in the “business at hand” is bigger than any one person. In fact, it is not a material, physical, or even a linguistic quest—it is inherently spiritual. We are Spiritual beings and our ultimate purpose, the business at hand for the human person is to seek ultimate truth outside of our self, from the ultimate self who defines and delimits reality for us. 

Technically the “enlightenment” ended in 1804. For more than 220 years humans have behaved as if it never ended and that we have been liberated from simplistic spiritual needs. Except, more people now are hollower and more unfulfilled than ever. Perhaps our reason has kept us from seeing what most reasonable people before us always understood. Meaning we “make for ourselves” is narrow, selfish, narcissistic, and solipsistic. Man as a spiritual being exists in community. In isolation we are mere ghosts in the shell of our own humanity. 

    If you want to do the best job humanly possible of pursuing what it means to be human, you need to find a place in and become a part of a Spiritual community. A church. The family of God. I realize that sounds a little off in our self-centered, self-defined age. Perhaps the present has been bent out of shape not by obsolete theologies but by the even older issue of the fall. Sinners first look to self and only look to others when their own weaknesses and vulnerabilities become unbearable. 

    What if we, you and I—did not wait for some collapse to find meaning in relationships. In other people. In the verbs that give life to the nouns. 

    In the New Testament. Jesus describes the Business at Hand as “the Kingdom of God”. In the Kingdom, God rules, but His people reign. In the Kingdom we find God’s love, justice, mercy and kindness. In Kingdom we are more human, not less. In Kingdom we discover that the business at hand is to love and to know God, and to love and to know other people. In Kingdom we learn freedom--not fear. In kingdom we learn wholeness not brokenness. In kingdom we learn service, sacrifice, and salvation. In Kingdom the business of heaven is the business at hand. In whatever way you describe it—whatever nouns you nominate or verbs you articulate—kingdom means God with us in the person of Jesus, loving His world even to His own death. He has done His part. It’s time to go to work.