Church Voices

Perhaps sermons wouldn’t have such a bad reputation if more preachers read and took to heart this.

the more I think the way the Bible talks about submission can’t be understood without understanding how the Bible talks about authority.  Perhaps if "Christian marriage" looks like the type of authority we see in the world it isn’t really Christian marriage.

Michael Spencer gives us a little peek behind the curtain. 

Our employees sacrifice to serve here, making less than six thousand dollars in salary and taking on a community life surrounded by other staff and our students 24/7/365. We spend less than $20,000 a year on promotion of any kind. Many of our staff are full time volunteers. We eat food that is primarily donated or raised on our farm. Volunteers come to our campus by the hundreds in order to do construction, donate medical care, renovate buildings and just encourage us in ministry.

We do not turn away any student for financial need. Half of our students are on significant scholarships. We are the third least expensive school of our type in America. Many of our students pay nothing. Churches all over Kentucky and even some elsewhere support us with gifts large and small. Our endowment was almost non-existent for many years. We have never had a fund raiser. Never made a cold call. Never asked a corporation for a donation., Once a year we send a Christmas letter to our friends. Four times a year, we send out a newsletter telling the stories of our successful students.

There’s something of heaven in that.  Sometimes (or most the time) I wonder if we have a severe disconnect from the experience of the church described in the scriptures because our wealth (and yes, chances are if you’re reading this you have an embarrassment of riches) has made us tiny Castros of our own personal Cubas.  There’s no dependence on our brothers and sisters to get by, there’s no shared hardship to bring us together, and there’s too many opportunities for even more independence via wealth as time goes on. 

But here’s the kicker.  Even if you have the desire to live the kind of life Spencer has taken up, chances are you can’t.  The vast majority of us (and I include myself in this), in order to be qualified to fill the position of educator/administrator/preacher/counselor you end up owing thousands of dollars in student loans. And that’s only if you managed to live a frugal lifestyle and not end up owing on credit cards, and cars. 

Lets not pretend that this difficult road Spencer has chosen (paved only recently, so I’ve heard) is all rainbows and roses:

I don’t always like working for a ministry where I don’t have a secretary, where there’s a building full of other people’s donated clothes as part of my compensation and where I’m making less money than I did in 1979. I’m 51, and I still have to move the pulpit by myself every time I come into the chapel to preach. I’m assistant to the President, and I still get asked to substitute teach in middle school.

We can’t find a church, and the church I go to offers almost nothing that I can appreciate or enthusiastically endorse. Good people, but I can never really be myself there. That is difficult and painful, but it’s part of being here where this ministry is most needed.

But at the same time we need to recognize that the existence and success of Spencer’s school is the result of lifestyle (avoiding debt, both personally and institutionally) and focusing on the mission.

A few years ago, our school lost its President to a sudden illness. A search process began to replace him, and a somewhat well-known minister had his eye on the job, so he asked to meet with the staff. After a brief presentation assuring us that the search process was going well, he made his play for our support by telling us we were long overdue to get raises, more benefits, perks and compensation.

Now he was quite right. There were people in that room who made so little money it was embarrassing. I’m grateful that kind of omission was made right by our next President. But what happened next has always stayed with me.

One of our houseparents, a man who, along with his wife, has spent almost three decades here as a night shift houseparent and locksmith, living in a house trailer and dealing with our students at their worst, that man stood up and said something like this:

“Sir, we appreciate what you’ve said today. But you obviously don’t understand us. None of us came here to make money. No one here feels like they have sacrificed at all. They are privileged to be part of this ministry.”

Uncomfortable silence took over that meeting as two sets of values collided. As much as everyone of us in that room would have loved to see a few more dollars in our paychecks, the truth was that we knew it’s a gift to live anywhere near the way, the values and the Kingdom of Jesus. You can’t put a price tag on the treasure Jesus gives.

That, friends, is as intense as it comes.

Taylor Mali does this sort of slam poetry/stand up comedy schtick that mostly revolves around the deification of teachers.  You can see the text of it here (although, to be fair, without seeing him perform you can’t really get a feel for the power of his communication).  In this particular poem he is asked what he makes.  Here’s part of his response:

You want to know what I make?

I make kids work harder than they ever thought they could.
I can make a C+ feel like a Congressional medal of honor
and an A- feel like a slap in the face.
How dare you waste my time with anything less than your very best.

Its really power, heady stuff.  But when I hear it I just laugh cynically.  Mostly because after 12 years of dealing with lots of teachers I know its a bunch of crap.  I know that 70% of teachers are at best average, and stand up there and follow the syllabus, 25% are terrible and/or lazy, and 5% are excellent. 

I had one teacher that kept a running total of how many days he had left until retirement.  Once a week he’d hand out a worksheet, take the class down to the weight room and lift weights while we either joined in or sat on the floor and waited for "class" to be over.  Even when we had class, he spent most of it either talking sports with the jocks in class, or

I had a world geography teacher that, unbelievably, was even worse.  On Monday he’d hand out a list of countries, their capitals, and a map then go sit at his desk at the back of the class room and read a variety of newspapers, magazines, and books.  The rest of the week he’d tell us to study the list and go back and read.  Then on Friday he’d pass out the test and go and read. 

Don’t get me wrong I’m not knocking what Taylor Mali does.  He’s probably in the top 1% of communicators in the entire world.  The problem is what he says, and what I’ve experienced are completely at odds, and so when he deifies teachers it has no persuasive effect on me because no matter how good, entertaining or fantastic a communicator he is he cannot overcome what I’ve actually experienced. 

So here’s the lesson.  If you want people to believe that the church should be a place where God’s people love each other, forgive each other, and actually live the gospel then you better make sure that when people experience Christians they experience people who love, forgive, and live the gospel.  Because otherwise there’s no one who can discuss, teach or preach persuasively enough to convince them otherwise. 

Bruce Lee’s name is still synonymous with kung fu awesomeness even 30 years after his death.  I was reading through the wikipedia article on his life and it struck me how talented Bruce Lee was.  Not just with fighting, but in general.  He acted from a young age (his first appearance on stage coming as an infant) and continued through his entire life.  He attended the University of Washington as a drama major and took philosophy classes, in addition to studying traditional Chinese martial arts, he also studied western style boxing (becoming the 1958 Champion of a 12 school competition) as well as fencing.  Even when it came to traditional martial arts he didn’t study a single style but eventually incorporated several different styles into his own personal style. As he matured as a fighter he concluded that traditional martial arts had too much formality, extra movements and requirements that didn’t add any benefits, so he removed them.

After coming to the United States he developed an interest in nutrition and physical fitness.  He said, "Training is one of the most neglected phases of athletics. Too much time is given to the development of skill and too little to the development of the individual for participation. JKD [Lee’s personal martial art], ultimately is not a matter of petty techniques but of highly developed spirituality and physique".  As a result his work out regimen was intense.

All of these swirling interests (along with a mysterious death) propelled Lee to a popularity no other martial artist had achieved and cemented a legacy that anyone ever achieves.  The thing is, if you take away any of these interests and Bruce Lee becomes a foot note.  Drama and philosophy don’t seem to have much to do with martial arts, even nutrtion and fitness, at the time, seemed to be tangiential at best.  Yet, without all these things Bruce Lee dies a mysterious death in obscurity.  Instead he impacted culture greatly.  Setting off an interest in martial arts that wasn’t there before.  i don’t think its a stretch to say that Bruce Lee is at least a major factor in the reason why there’s a martial arts academy in the small town I live in.  Chances are there wouldn’t have been movies like The Matrix if not for him.  And I can guarantee you that the numerous nunchuck injuries that occur in junior high boys across America wouldn’t be nearly so high without him.  And none of that would have happened without his diversity of interests.

This is my way of saying that the church needs to cultivate diverse interests in order to be as successful as possible in obeying the commands of Jesus.  While the study of scripture, and theology will always be necessary (and can’t be replaced by anything else), the church can (and does) benefit from other disciplines.  Whether its art, music, rhetoric, plumbing, carpentry, history, hard sciences, writing or just good old fashioned elbow grease it is difficult for a church to live and communicate the gospel to its community without passions for seemingly unrelated subjects and disciplines.  So in this vein lets end this little entry with some quotes from Mr. Lee, hopefully you can see how his wisdom concerning martial arts could apply to a church.

"Use only that which works, and take it from any place you can find it."

"I’m not a master. I’m a student-master, meaning that I have the knowledge of a master and the expertise of a master, but I’m still learning. So I’m a student-master. I don’t believe in the word ‘master.’ I consider the master as such when they close the casket."

"Unfortunately, now in boxing people are only allowed to punch. In Judo, people are only allowed to throw. I do not despise these kinds of martial arts. What I mean is, we now find rigid forms which create differences among clans, and the world of martial art is shattered as a result."

"The other weakness is, when clans are formed, the people of a clan will hold their kind of martial art as the only truth and do not dare to reform or improve it. Thus they are confined in their own tiny little world. Their students become machines which imitate martial art forms."

The Brazen Carreerist, Penelope Trunk brings us five tips for public speaking that I think applies to preaching.

1. Tell stories
2. Look deeply at individuals in the audience
3. Be honest about how you’re doing
4. Smile, even if it’s fake
5. Relax

She has some interesting observations.  This one was particularly interesting.

We do this because it’s so hard to talk in an unengaging way and look someone in the eye. And most public speakers are not particularly engaging. You can test yourself - to see if you’re really connected - by forcing yourself to look at one single person while you make a point. Get out the whole idea before you let your eyes move to the next person.

This is a way to know for sure if you are connecting with your audience when you talk. Sticking with one person for each point is painful and nearly impossible if you are not truly connecting your material to that person.

Time is a funny thing  when you’re preaching.  When you first start preaching regularly everything feels like its coming at you at light speed.  You don’t have time to take in how the audience is reacting.  Its everything you can do to spit out your sermon without doing something stupid. But, after you get some experience the experience slows down a bit.  You’re able to see how your audience is reacting, you get a sense for whether you’re communicating or not.  And if you’re not, ending a sermon early is a mercy.

Then there’s this:

Your nonverbal body language influences people’s reactions to you more than what you say. For example, Allan and Barbara Pease spend a whole chapter of their book, The Definitive Book of Body Language, dissecting the power of a smile. If you smile at your audience, they are likely to smile back. And a smile engenders good feelings and a true connection — even if the smile is forced

If you serve at a church as the preaching minister, you can do more than just control your body language (though this is important).  You control the entire environment.  From decorations, to room configuration, to lighting. All of these things communicate something, just make sure they’re communicating what you want them to.

A few months ago I did something stupid. I washed my cell phone. I liked that cell phone too. I had just gotten it how I liked it with all my totally sweet ringtones, and wall papers. It was all Detroit Pistons inside and out. Needless to say it was a total loss. So I hit up ebay and bought a used phone that did the job, and in a lot of ways was better. Recently the battery had been really not working well. Eventually it got down to less than a ½ hour of charge at a time. So I went out and bought a $20 pre-pay phone, swapped out the SIM cards so it was on my normal account and have been running with that.

Think about the kind of phone you get for $20. It’s basic. There’s no customizing the ring tones, or the wall paper (in fact all the built in ringers sound like some sort of hand held football game from the 70s). There’s no browsing of the internet, or instant messaging. It makes calls and text messages, and nothing else. And I love it. It does exactly what I need it to do, and it does it well. In fact, it holds a charge forever. Longer than any other phone I’ve had. It can go for over 7 days before needing to be recharged. In other words, it sticks to the main thing cell phones are supposed to do. All of its shortcomings are made up for the fact that it keeps the main thing the main thing and it does it well.

About a year ago a friend of mine suggested to me that every sermon needs to explicitly include the gospel. Of course, there is much of scripture that doesn’t explicitly contain the gospel. Proverbs jumps immediately to mind, and if a sermon is expositional in nature it can become so fixated on such a small portion of scripture even New Testament passages can get so caught up in the trees that the forest isn’t seen.

But the question still is, should every sermon preached explicitly contain the gospel? After all, if we’re going to be faithful to a historic reading of scripture there are times when some scriptures won’t contain the gospel, at least not obviously, and not on its face. That means if we answer “yes”, the preacher has to direct in some way every subject, every verse, and every story found in scripture to Christ. But here’s the thing. If the church is going to be useful, she has to keep the main thing the main thing. And the main thing is the gospel. This became even more obvious to me recently when I re-read the forward Rich Mullins wrote for The Ragamuffin Gospel. In it Mullins recounts hearing a tape in which the gospel was presented, and he had to pull over the truck he was driving because of the tears in his eyes. He then writes that he had regularly attended church since he was two weeks old and most of the sermons he had heard were of the moralizing variety, completely missing the gospel.

Should every sermon explicitly contain the gospel? Absolutely. The church, at her best, is a $20 cell phone. She keeps the main thing the main thing, and the main thing is the gospel.