Preacher’s Personal Life

Pondering Plunder as a Preacher

/ Peter Mead / 2 Comments

In 1Peter 5 Peter warns elders not to be greedy for money, but eager to do ministry. I wonder how this relates to us as preachers? Obviously each of our situations are different. Many who read this have other income and on preaching receive a gift that may or may not cover the expenses of the fuel used to get to the church (especially when churches are giving the same gift they gave five or ten years ago!) Others mainly preach in one church and receive a salary for their ministry, which is then not connected to a specific message.

For the salaried I suppose the temptation to be greedy for money might show itself when it is time to review the salary or the employment contract, or when the temptation to move to a better paying church or job arises in the mind. For the preacher of one-off messages, I suppose the temptation to be greedy shows more frequently over smaller amounts.

I’ll share two principles I have in my ministry, then perhaps you’ll share how you face this issue in yours:

I want to always choose ministry on merit. My schedule is open enough to allow me to minister in numerous venues (churches, Bible schools, conferences, missions teams, etc.) However my schedule is not so open that I can accept every invitation. I have made it a personal goal to always evaluate ministry based on its strategic value, rather than what I might receive (or what it will cost me). So I generally prioritze teaching in a foreign Bible school (at my expense) over visiting a local church that gives a handsome gift to visiting preachers. Thankfully the Lord has honored this practice and I have been able to make ministry decisions without cost or revenue being a factor.

I do not charge for ministry. I get asked what I would charge for such and such. I have appreciated something Dr Jeff Arthurs at Gordon-Conwell shared once. If I were asked to speak as a professional (i.e. as a consultant for a business or in a university, perhaps on public speaking), then I would charge a professional fee in line with my qualifications, training, etc. But if I agree to do ministry, then I trust the Lord to provide through gifts (and if there is no gift, I chose to do the ministry without possible income being a factor, right?) I know speakers much more famous than me have appearance fees for ministry. I’m still trying to decide what I think about that.

Money may not be a motivator in ministry for us right now, but the temptation is always there. How do you make sure you are eager to do ministry, rather than eager to line your pockets?

Remember the Feeling of Privilege

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Just a thought to follow on from yesterday’s post.  Take a moment to remember how you felt when you first started.  Perhaps as a young man when you were asked to preach a one-off message.  Or when you stepped out of Bible school and headed toward doing what you had been trained to do.  Or when you were first commissioned in full-time ministry.  Or when you first received the call to the church you are now in.  Or when someone first asked you a question because you had preached and they trusted you.  Whether you are “full-time” or not as a preacher, remember that early feeling of privilege and amazement that God and people would trust you with such a role.

Over time feelings change.  Perhaps preaching has become a regular experience for you.  You don’t have the same feeling of privilege, or the same intensity of fear!  Perhaps your ministry role has become your job.  You are occupied with your occupation, but perhaps not thrilled by the privilege?  It is easy, over time, for a sense of calling, commissioning and life mission to fade into simply what we do to pay the bills (if you’re paid), or what we do as our ministry in the church.

Whether you preach periodically, or are full-time in ministry, it is a privilege.  It is more than a hobby.  More than a job.  Feelings change and that cannot be avoided.  But be careful that time, pressure, comfort levels, etc. don’t steal the wonder and delight at the privilege of participating in God’s work in peoples’ lives.

Attitude Check from the Apostle Peter

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Peter wrote to a church facing difficult times.  In the last chapter of his first epistle, he gives some important advice for leaders in the church (1Peter 5:1-4).  His warnings and advice are critical for preachers:

Not under compulsion, but willingly – Remember that preaching, as well as all other elements of leadership, is a privilege.  It is easy when tired or over-busy to start feeling pressured rather than privileged.  Perhaps it’s time to pray this through?

Not for shameful gain, but eagerly – Just because you are a preacher, it does not make you exempt from the common temptations of humanity.  This includes materialism and greed.  Be careful.  This temptation can creep in insidiously and become a motivation in ministry choices.  At all costs, seek to have an eager attitude to ministry, rather than a grabby attitude to money.

Not domineering, but as an example – Perhaps you are not struggling with pressure or plunder, but be careful of the power (where did that alliteration come from?  Feel free to use it if you like that sort of thing!)  It is easy to wield excessive influence in the lives of your listeners.  Rather, seek to maintain a Christlike exemplary influence.

And after the willing, eager, exemplary service comes the thing that is designed to motivate – the crown of glory!  (Or prize, I suppose, if you’re following through on the P’s!)

Helpful warnings for leaders, including us preachers.  Feel free to ignore the alliteration, I usually do, but let’s take the passage to heart!

Check Your Dashboard

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I remember a few years ago hearing a message by Bill Hybels.  He spoke about the gauges on his personal dashboard.  If my memory serves me well, he said that his spiritual gauge was looking good, but something was wrong.  He was heading for burnout, but not because of spiritual issues.  He said that he learned there were more gauges than just spiritual.  If you remember the message, feel free to comment and correct my ten year memory.  But the point is a good one.

What is the reading on your spiritual gauge?  Are you walking in step with the Spirit, living close to Jesus and spending time in His presence through His Word?  What about your emotional gauge?  Are you taking time to rest, to laugh, to play, to wrestle with your children or enjoy a walk in creation?  What about your physical gauge?  Are you getting the sleep you need, ingesting healthy fuel and burning energy (and stress) through running, gym-time, judo or traditional native dance?  And let’s ask about the mental gauge too.  Are you being stimulated in your thinking through a variety of reading, some stretching, some relaxing, some outside your primary areas of focus, etc.  And what about stimulating conversation?  That may be hard to come by, but in the context of healthy relationships, it can work wonders on all four gauges!

Whatever gauges you have on your dashboard, take a reading from all of them.  It could be devastating to be looking at only one of them and find yourself burning out unawares.

They Make It Look Easy

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This year I was in the States when the Wimbledon tennis championships were taking place.  So I missed the annual spectacle.  I’ve watched it many times.  Not just the tennis on TV, but the resulting tennis in the local courts.  People watch their heroes on TV, the best tennis players in the world.  Then they are inspired to go to the local courts and have a go themselves.  Courts that sit empty for most of the year are always busy the first week of July!  Why?  Because the best make it look easy.  It’s true in tennis, in football, in every sport.

In some ways that is our challenge as preachers.  We have to be the best that we can be.  We have to study exegetical stuff that would never be a bestseller.  We have to wrestle with the complexities of current trends and the complex motivations that move people to think in certain ways.  We have to somehow interact with all levels of social, religious, spiritual and fashionable trends, sometimes at very high levels.  Yet in it all, we have to be careful not to come across as high academics.  It’s tempting to do that.  After all, it’s easier to not translate from erudite verbosity to normal speech.  It’s better for the ego to dazzle and impress our listeners.  But remember the great tennis players.  They make something immensely complex look so easy.

Let’s strive to do the same.  Replace the twelve letter word with a five letter word or a couple of them.  Speak like a compelling communicator rather than a dull lecturing “expert.”  Let’s do the extra work and put aside our egos in order to communicate effectively.  Perhaps then the gospel will be free to access lives with all practicality.  Perhaps then people will rush out to the tennis courts of their lives and apply God’s word for themselves!

Why Reject a Shortcut?

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If there were some technology that would help our preaching, surely we should consider it, right?  Sure.  I’d consider anything.  But some shortcuts are not worth the time they save.  I was contacted by a company that sells a technology for public speakers.  The technology is supposed to cut preparation by 90%, both the work and the stress.  I look past the hype and see a technology that I might support for business presenters and sales people, but not for preachers.  Why?

Because preparation is important.  Our process is as important, maybe more important, than our end “product.”  The technology in question allows a pre-recorded message to play into the ear of the speaker who then repeats what is heard.  Supposedly it creates a more natural presentation than a teleprompter.  I’m sure it would.  But more natural than genuinely natural?  I don’t think so.

Genuine Preparation Matters – The time we spend wrestling with the text, exegeting to the best of our ability, prayerfully developing, growing and crafting a sermon is good time.  It’s time with God.  It’s time for Him to work on us and in us so that when we preach it is not information transfer, but genuine preaching.  I’m glad I don’t have to spend hours turning pages in concordances, lexicons and commentaries.  Technology has allowed more time for genuine preparation, prayerful thought and wrestling with the text and sermon.  But I don’t want to cut preparation by 90% because when it comes to preaching God’s Word, genuine preparation matters.

Genuine Delivery Matters – Speaking with your head in your notes is not the most effective way to preach.  It is disconnected and can seem like a canned presentation lacking in the authenticity people crave.  But the solution is not to fake a natural delivery.  Pretending to speak naturally by some trick of memorization, the skill of an actor learning a monologue, painting eyes on your glasses that allow you to “look up” while really looking down at notes, or hidden technology . . . it’s all somehow a pretense.  If integrity matters anywhere, it matters in preaching.  Natural is good, but genuine is critical.  Get as natural as you can, but don’t compromise your integrity.  When it comes to preaching, genuine delivery matters.

So, my apologies to the company involved.  I wish them well in their business.  But for preaching, sometimes I feel the need to reject a shortcut.

Personal Presentation

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When I teach preaching I make only a passing reference to personal presentation. What you wear, how you look, it matters, but it’s kind of a simple issue for me. For one, I don’t think it is an issue worth fighting over or dying for. If a church expects me to wear a tie, I’ll do it. If they prefer casual presentation, I’ll do it. Some may choose to fight for change (usually in the casual direction), I’d rather fight for other issues in pulpit ministry!

Here’s my simple summary of what matters:

Don’t let how you look distract your listeners. Your clothes should match. They should be appropriate for the setting (a tuxedo can be as distracting as shorts in the wrong context!) Be appropriately well-groomed. Don’t wear a dark shirt if you raise your arms while preaching and are likely to sweat. If you happen to be attractive to the opposite gender, don’t dress in a way that might be considered provocative!

Don’t let how you look undermine your credibility. Sloppy clothes or grooming don’t convey a sense of credibility. As much as it depends on you, demonstrate some discipline in regards to what is inside your clothing too.

(Oh, and since we’re getting a bit personal, I try to have breath mints in my pocket too, for the sake of those I chat with afterwards!)

Any tips to add?

Mythbusting – Experience Is Key?

/ Peter Mead / 2 Comments

Howard Hendricks has a habit of getting at the heart of an issue. I was just reading a book he co-authored on teaching and he nails a key issue for us as preachers. How are we to know that we are being as effective as possible in our ministry?

Experience is not the key! People automatically assume that the longer they are doing something, the better they get at it. So the longer a person teaches, the better the teacher they become. The longer the person preaches, the better the preacher they become. Wrong. Hendricks calls this idea nonsense. He points out that ripping through wood dulls the teeth of a carpenter’s saw, and so also experience tends to wear away any edge in a person’s skill.

Evaluated experience is key! Over time poor methods and poor practice become ingrained poor habits. Complacency easily sets in. It is possible to lose touch with the listeners. And time will generally exaggerate personal idiosyncrasies. In short, over time we easily get sloppy.

So what does Hendricks advise? He advises pastors as well as teachers to follow his example. To evaluate every session you teach. To invite others to critique in various ways. Be like a carpenter who painstakingly files each tooth on his crosscut saw.

Experience alone does not make you better, only evaluated experience does that. In the same way as experience alone does not make you mature, but only experience evaluated and handled with the right attitude. Let us all have the attitude of the master carpenter, painstakingly sharpening each tooth on the saw of our ministry. Perhaps it would be good to carefully evaluate your last sermon, and make specific plans to get feedback on your next.

Preach First and Last Sermons

/ Peter Mead / 2 Comments

I don’t know if you count.  My temperament tends to count.  I keep track of what I’ve preached, when, to whom, etc.  I keep records partially out of necessity and partially out of interest.  Whether or not you count sermons, take a guess, which one is today’s?  Is it number 15, or 100, or 1250, or 3500?

Let me encourage you today to preach as if it is your first. Preach with all the naivety of a new preacher.  Remember?  Back when you expected lives to be changed immediately by the sermon you preached.  Back when the spring in your step conveyed an excitement about what God is doing in your life and what He wants to do in their lives.  Forget the nerves, the mistakes, the unrefined skill, and so on.  But remember the enthusiastic expectation of that first sermon.  Preach like that today.

And preach as if it is your last. Imagine that today’s sermon had to count because there would be no more.  Imagine that all the weight of God’s work in your life had to be transferred with urgency today to those sitting before you.  Forget the slowness of mind that may come, or the feeble frame that you may have to carry up those steps.  But imagine how powerful the weight of matured passion and perspective will be in your last ever sermon.  Preach like that today.

The Tone of the Shepherd

/ Peter Mead / 1 Comment

One of the central roles of a church leader is to protect the flock from false teaching.  It is a responsibility to take seriously.  However, without very deliberate thought it is easy to fall into one of two extremes.

Extreme 1 – Just Really Nice Shepherd. Your desire to be liked drives you to avoid any controversy and confrontation, leaving your preaching as a parade of niceness.  I’ve heard plenty of this in my time.  It is the kind of preaching that seems to skirt any issue that might offend.  The desire is unity at all costs.  I sense that where this kind of preaching prevails, it reflects a situation where Evangelical Christians are perceived to be irrelevant, unaware and standing for nothing.  Let us not set that tone from the pulpit.

Extreme 2 – Angry Bashing Shepherd. Your desire to be right drives you to bash freely at every person, idea or stream of Christianity you disagree with.  I remember sitting through a very painful retreat where the famous speaker seemed to take every opportunity to have a go at top Christian evangelists and ministry leaders.  It was unhelpful for the immature believers confused by it all and would have been offensive to any unbelievers present.  We must be aware of how we are perceived.  Non-christians see us as very angry people who just can’t get along with each other.  Let us not reinforce that from the pulpit.

Why do we fall into one extreme or the other?  I think our personality will influence it.  I think our culture will influence it (in my experience I see the English church often falling into the former extreme, whereas the North American church often tends toward the latter extreme – obviously there are exceptions in both cultures).  I think fear drives both extremes – fear of any confrontation or discord on the one hand, and fear of not having all the answers in our personal theology and philosophy of ministry on the other.  I think a lack of thought leaves us at one extreme or the other.

As preachers we must think carefully about our role as shepherds.  Sheep want neither a nice shepherd too polite to offend the prowling mountain lion, nor an angry shepherd lashing out at every bush, shepherd or other sheep that crosses their path.