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5 Strategies to Get More Out of the Sermon

May 28, 2013 in Bible, church, consumerism, homiletics, missional, preaching with 4 Comments

You have a role to play in helping your preacher preach better. At the top of the list are time and prayer.

A sermon, like any form of communication, can go in one ear and out the other. Worse, a sermon can find hospitality in the head and hostility in the heart. Many of us struggle with the weekly homily. We struggle applying it, remembering it, living it out, and making sense of it in a world wherein we hear so many messages all the time.

Try theses 5 Strategies to “Getting” the Sermon.

1. Dwell In The Word. If Sunday morning is the first or only time you’ve spent in the scriptures this week, you’re bound to miss a great deal. Understanding God means encountering him in the scriptures. Knowing the scriptures will give  the sermons a depth and richness that only accompany knowing the Bible.

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How To Speak The Truth in Love

May 7, 2013 in Bible, leadership, speech acts with 8 Comments

The Christian way of being mean is telling those we’ve offended that we’re “speaking the truth in love”.

Misappropriating this little gem from Ephesians 4 is popular because it allows us to be rude, condescending, and hurtful to non-Christians while simultaneously allowing us to hold on to our own privilege and self-righteousness.

There’s been a lot of talk in the last week about “speaking the truth in love.”

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The Most Important Question You’ll Ever Ask

April 30, 2013 in Bible, character with 0 Comments

“How will I feel after I do this?” is the most important question you’ll ever ask. And most of us aren’t asking it nearly enough.

In the last 3 to 4 years, Rochelle and I have discovered a disturbing number of friends, acquaintances, leaders, and mentors who have made awful decisions. Many have had affairs and/or left their spouse. Even at our distance from the center of these relationships, we were disappointed and hurt.

We were mostly scared! Scared because many of these people we held in the highest regard. If it could happen to them it could happen to us. In each instance, without hesitation, we confessed that our friends were folks who pursued God wholeheartedly but has made terrible and devastating mistakes.

What Were They Thinking?

Rochelle I couldn’t help but ask, “What were they thinking?” As far as we could figure, they weren’t. At the very least they weren’t thinking about the relational and emotional debris of their actions. Asking, “How will I feel after I do this?” changes our calculations about our behaviors and words.

Everyone is susceptible to momentary lapses and basic human frailty can position any of us for errors whenever our guard is down. That’s why we need constructs to help guide is when we aren’t thinking straight.

Our failures aren’t about thinking, though. They’re about asking.

We need better questions than, “Do I like this?” or “Am I happy?” guiding our lives. These kinds if questions set us up for momentary desires that will lead us to destruction. This way of thinking makes gods of our stomachs, as the Apostle Paul says (Phil. 3:19).

“How will I feel after I do this?” is a question good for any instance:

  • When you don’t want to workout …how will I feel after I do this?
  • When you want to post that nasty comment on Facebook or a blog …how will I feel after I do this?
  • When your children have annoyed you to the point of insanity and you want to light into them …how will I feel after I do this?
  • When you come up with that snarky comeback to your spouse accusation…how will I feel after I do this?
  • When you want to buy that new and shinny item even though the budget is tight…how will I feel after I do this?

If you want to live a better life, start asking the most important question.

How You Lost Your Story…And How To Get It Back

April 25, 2013 in Bible, creativity with 0 Comments

As I launch a BeachBody Challenge Group and look ahead to all the summer has in store, I’m reminded of the importance of remembering your story, your why? I’m constantly amazed by people who want to change their circumstances without changing themselves. Equally interesting is the thought that our own decisions landed us in a place we didn’t want to be, only to be offered assistance and then choose to opt for the same decision making strategies that landed us in an undesirable circumstance to begin with.

Essentially we lose our “why,” our reason, if we ever spent time discovering what it was in the first place. Today, I’m brought back to this post about James Bond and losing our ambition.

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Did you see the newest James Bond movie, Skyfall.

Acting like a 25-year-old, I took in a late showing of the film a few months ago. And even though it’s been out a few weeks, the movie is still charting at the top of the box office. There’s a reason, too. It’s good, classic James Bond. With all due respect to my namesake and the original 007, I think Daniel Craig is the best James Bond ever. (And, yes, my mother did name me after Sean Connery…seriously.)

As good as it is, there is one crucial problem with the film. It’s the same problem many of us have; the story loses itself.

Apologies to those who haven’t seen it, but the tale begins in a quest to recover a hard drive containing a list of names of covert NATO agents. Yet by the end of the movie, the plot centers on a personal vendetta against M. Admittedly, the combination of my getting older, drinking a large Diet Coke, and the length of the movie resulted in multiple trips to the restroom, so I may have missed it, but I left the theater wondering, “What happened to the list?”

Leaving aside the mind-boggling idea that a list of covert NATO agents resides on an outdated PC laptop somewhere in Istanbul, the story ignites one way but once the action gets going forgets about its own raison d’etre.

People are like that, too. We lose our reason for existence.

On January 1, many Americans will commit to a resolution, maybe multiple ones – losing weight, reading more, etc… – just like last year. Remember those promises we made to ourselves last year? To get off the couch because we know it’d be better for us. But so many of us lost the story.

We free fell into skyfall. We lost our reasons.

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Arresting Jesus – A Maundy Thursday Reflection

March 28, 2013 in Bible with 0 Comments

A Maundy Thursday reflection I wrote several years ago.

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The night itself was pregnant with the pangs of irony and opposites.  As the mob marched with torches and lanterns—in search of The Light.  Gathered in anger, anxiety and anticipation soldiers, Priest, police and Pharisees brandish their weapons to make war against the Prince of Peace.  Judas, backed by an army, but lacking integrity, leads the crowd in search of The Way.  Men connected by their own desire to snuff out The Life.

And of course, in a manner completely opposite of what anyone would suspect, instead of running away, Jesus steps forward.  After a night of praying that this moment would not have to come, Jesus does not hesitate to walk the road He and His Father have chosen.

The scene is so much different than you’d expect it to be.  In the recesses of my mind it has always been like a movie. They’ve got the building surrounded.  The roadblock is in place; the city is under siege.  Drop the bunker-buster. That’s how you arrest someone that’s dangerous.  It’s John Dillinger outside the movie theatre.  It’s Elliot Ness racing horseback across the countryside, while the Canadian Mounties rush down from the hills above.

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