Praying for Sermon Impact On an Individual Level

This morning on the way to the office I heard a great podcast about preaching and praying.  Every week I pray over the sermon and I pray about my preaching and I pray for the people at church.  But what this podcast was talking about is the power of praying specifically by name for the sermon to impact each individual at church.  This might seem obvious, but it never occurred to me!

In other words, if the sermon is about money, I can pray for Hank that God would provide employment, for Susan that she would be generous with her huge new raise, for George that he would get his debt under control, for Rachel that she would trust God enough to tithe, etc….

What an awesome idea!

Published in: on May 5, 2009 at 11:58 am Leave a Comment

What’s A Sermon?

Just now I went to the kitchen here at work to get the goods to make some coffee.  As I passed one of the classroom doors, a boy came over and asked what I was doing.  “Writing a sermon,” I said.

He asked, “What’s a sermon?”

If you ever want to force yourself to bring clarity into your life, get a preschooler to follow you around for a day and ask questions.

When he asked this question, I realized I had about two seconds to clearly and succinctly explain my life’s calling.  Preaching is the central task not only of my job, but my vocation (the distinction between the two will have to wait for another post).  Suddenly I was faced with explaining in simple terms what exactly it is that I do.

So I told him, “A sermon is where you study the Bible and then share with people what you learn.”

I’m grateful for that encounter and that penetrating question because it forced me to return to my task with renewed purpose, intentionality, and clarity.  A sermon is where you study the Bible and then share with people what you learn.  That means a sermon is not:

  • a chance to tell that story I’ve been itching to tell (which, of course, could somehow be squeezed into the sermon disguised as an “illustration”).
  • a platform for airing my opinions, frustrations, and personal biases.
  • an opportunity to relive my childhood dreams of being a performer.
  • an avenue for telling my favorite jokes.
  • a channel for voicing the latest trends in church ministry.
  • a way for me to tell people what I think… supported, of course, with Scripture.  (If anything is supported with Scripture rather than based on Scripture, that should be a red flag.)
  • the time to try to impress people and get them to like me.
  • for the purpose of showing everyone how spiritual or knowledgeable I am.

Now obviously it’s okay–and often even helpful–to tell stories, crack jokes, share personal illustrations, implement effective speaking practices, and so on.  But all of these things are secondary to the biblical text.  The point of a sermon is to share what God says, not what I say; it’s about God’s Word, not mine.  If I begin with my ideas and simply wrap it in Scripture like a Bible fajita, where the meat is my ideas instead of God’s, I’m not preaching a sermon.  An authentic sermon begins with God’s thoughts and expresses them through the preacher.  It will look different with every preacher, just as the sunlight looks different shining through different stained glass windows.

By the way, after giving my definition of a sermon, the boy merely said, “Oh,” and ran off to play.  Sometimes that’s the same response I get after preaching a sermon, but again, that’s for another post….

Published in: on March 18, 2009 at 10:55 am Leave a Comment

And Now It’s Snowing Again

Yesterday I drove up to Pennsylvania for a couple meetings and a two-day class.  This morning I woke up in Oxford, Pennsylvania and saw this out the window:

“A nice little dusting of snow in rural PA,” I thought.  “How quaint.”

It stopped being quaint about a half hour into my drive northeast, when the dusting became a full-fledged snowstorm.  This picture doesn’t really show it, but here it is anyway:

A better picture would’ve been the one with the cows standing in a field with the snow drifts going halfway up their legs, but it wasn’t exactly stop-say-cheese-and-snap-a-memory kind of weather.

Anyway, to make a long story (and a long drive) short, I couldn’t get anywhere near Frazer where the class is.  After slipping and sliding and skidding in traffic that averaged about 0.352 miles per hour, I stopped at a gas station to ask about an alternate route to Frazer.  Their response was pretty much along the lines of: “You’re not getting even close to Frazer.  Anywhere else you want to go?”  As I returned to Oxford I passed miles and miles of traffic just sitting there, with several cars parked at weird angles off the side of the road.

Well, at least I got to hang out with some people.

November weather in Lancaster County sure is different from Ocean City!

Published in: on November 21, 2008 at 11:39 am Leave a Comment

My Summer Preaching Cave

This summer I’m trying a big experiment that I’m really praying will work.  Here’s the deal: I have set a summertime goal of writing preaching outlines for all my sermons up through the spring, and writing sermon manuscripts through the end of 2008.  It’s a big goal, to be sure.  Here are some reasons I’m tackling it:

  • Sermons in a series are more cohesive and have more depth when you study for and write them all at once, in advance.
  • Written weeks and even months in advance, there is more time to add creative elements to sermons, such as props, graphics, themes, videos, music, giveaways, etc.
  • I’ll have more time to collect quality illustrations, and my mind will be alert to catching stories and quotes that apply to upcoming messages.  It’s always better to have a collection of illustrations to draw from, rather than try to come up with some the week before a sermon is to be presented.
  • The sermons will have a chance to work their way through me.
  • It will take off a lot of the week to week pressure.
  • During the rest of the year, I’ll be freed up to tend to the countless other things crying out for attention.
  • Personally, I just work better when I can crawl into a cave for awhile and study and pray and write, rather than try to do a little here and a little there scattered throughout the year.
  • With the Training Station Preschool not in session for the summer, it’s the perfect time for a study break.  My schedule is more flexible during the summer because I don’t have to be in the office most days.  That works even better because my time working at home is by far my most productive time.
  • Preaching is my primary ministry, and this ensures it gets the time and attention it deserves.

This is my second week of the experiment.  So far I’d have to rate it a moderate success.  On the positive side, I’m surprised how much more I can accomplish in less time using this approach.  On the negative side, I’m discovering how much daily and weekly stuff there still is to deal with.  It’s also a little frustrating to discover how long it takes to do enough studying for a whole series before I can jump into the writing part.  Hopefully that positive will balance out the negatives.

Last week I was able to do most of the preaching outlines for the “Play Ball!” series, and this week and next I’m aiming to do the outlines for the next series called “Freedom.”  We’ll see how it goes….

Published in: on June 11, 2008 at 5:05 am Comments (2)

CrossWay Church Sermon Podcast Scores Mennonite Mention

Last night I was reading the latest issue of The Mennonite, which is the national publication for our denomination. The table of contents mentioned an article called “Sermons Heard ‘Round the World.” When I turned to the article, I saw that it was about Mennonite churches that are podcasting. I was surprised to see us mentioned in the article! That was pretty cool.

You can read the article here or listen to it at this site.  But just so ya know, CrossWay only shows up in a sidebar in the actual magazine, and is not mentioned in the online article.  Oh well.  It’s still an interesting piece about podcasting Mennonites, especially since so many people don’t think we even use phones.

Oh yeah, that reminds me–I need to update the podcast.

Published in: on June 6, 2008 at 5:32 am Comments (2)

Summer 2008

This summer is shaping up to be a very exciting one!  Our plans for the summer include exactly three things:

(1) Work hard.

(2) Play hard.

(3) Rest hard.

Work hard:

Okay, so Carolyn’s not planning to work too hard, although she probably will anyway because she doesn’t like doing nothing.  She’s helping out with Vacation Bible School at CrossWay, and she always helps out a lot with church stuff during the summer.  So even though she won’t be working at her job, she’ll probably work hard.

My work goals for the summer are pretty ambitious: I’m aiming to complete all my sermon outlines up to summer 2009, and complete sermon manuscripts through the end of 2008.  This will require lots of study and lots of writing, but it’s the target I’m aiming for.

The beginning of the summer will be an intense four-week series called “Play Ball!” that we’re doing with several other churches in June, culminating in a Shorebirds game.  The very next day we kick off Vacation Bible School.

Play hard:

We’ve got some pretty exciting plans for the summer!  They include:

  • A Nationals game at their new stadium.
  • A Yankees game in the Bronx.
  • Something special for our fourth wedding anniversary, perhaps a short getaway to Lancaster, PA.
  • A cookout with all the Hyde clan at my parents’ house.
  • A performance of In the Beginning at Sight & Sound in Strasburg, PA.
  • A couple weeks in Costa Rica.

Rest hard:

Whenever I’m not doing any of that stuff above, you can find me either lying on the beach at Assateague or on the couch with a good novel.

When September rolls around, we’ll get back to normal life.

Published in: on May 2, 2008 at 5:47 am Comments (4)

Weekend Stuff

Stuff from the weekend:

  • On Friday and Saturday I took a class in the Lancaster, PA area.  The course is called Anabaptist Leadership, Polity, and Effectiveness.  I’m still not sure exactly what polity is, but it sounds pretty complicated.  Our instructor is very good–knowledgeable, funny, personable, and good at both imparting information and facilitating discussion.
  • While in PA I stayed with Michael & Kristen.  Michael recently acquired some cool coffee-making toys.  He makes a mean latte!  His homemade lattes are much better than any I’ve had even at Starbucks–in spite of the fact that he uses what he calls “raw milk” (unpasteurized or something like that).  Michael had told me that he was “having a few people over to play some games” on Friday night.  I felt kind of bad about crashing the party until I found myself in the middle of the biggest party I’ve been to since high school.  It was a lot of fun!  Michael & Kristen have a very interesting, diverse, fun, and nice–and vast–collection of amigos.
  • On the way to class on Saturday morning I was frustrated because I got stuck behind a slow-moving eighteen-wheeler on those winding, hilly Lancaster roads.  At least I thought it was slow-moving, but I was wrong.  I discovered that slow is not being stuck behind a huge truck on Lancaster roads.  Slow is getting stuck behind a huge truck that’s stuck behind a horse and buggy on Lancaster roads.  However, this discovery did nothing to relieve my sense of urgency.
  • At CrossWay yesterday our worship pastor, Josh, preached an excellent message addressing the question: Is the Bible for Real?  He did a great job but also kicked it up a notch with some excellent visuals.  Challenging as it is, I’d like to keep meeting that new standard each week.  It really enhanced the worship service.  It was pretty impressive to see a guy work all night with the fire department, then come to church and set up the video projection, lead the worship music, and preach the sermon.
  • Also in the worship service yesterday we had a “human video” by a youth group from Greenwood, Delaware.  It was to the Aaron Jeoffrey song “He Is.”  It was excellent!
  • After church we held our monthly leadership meeting.  I didn’t get a head count, but it was easily the best turnout we’ve had.  The food was really good too (we always eat lunch together before the meeting).  Someone made some serious cupcakes… mmm….
  • Yesterday marked week three with me behind the drums at church.  Josh made a recording of each song and sent it to me a week in advance, so I was able to practice a little bit.  That was a huge help!  Even so, I butchered one song.  I started it off wrong, and then I couldn’t figure out how to change it!  After the service I was greatly relieved to observe that one of our youth, Levi, is making enormous strides in his drum playing.  Hopefully it won’t be long before he’s riding the stool on Sunday mornings!  I really enjoy playing the drums, but I also enjoy singing.  Unfortunately, enjoyment and ability are not always linked.
Published in: on April 7, 2008 at 9:54 am Comments (2)

Easter Weekend Review

(Warning to reader: I haven’t blogged much these past few days, but I’m more than making up for it today!)

Work hard.  Play hard.  That’s the way to live, and that’s how it’s been this past week.

A review of events since last week’s Maundy Thursday service:

On Friday morning I got a call from Terri, the director of the Training Station Preschool, informing me that the fierce winds that’d hit the area had knocked over our sign.  So Carolyn and I went to check it out.  The two beams holding the sign had snapped right in half and the whole shebang had fallen right on top of the wooden shell that some CrossWay guys had built for pouring the concrete for the new sign.  Fortunately it didn’t seem to damage anything.

From there we went to the zoo in Salisbury.  Every time we go there we see something weird and funny.  This time it was a peacock that kept following a goose in the bison habitat.  The goose kept calmly walking in various patterns, and the peacock hung with him, staying a couple feet behind.  No matter where the goose went, the peacock followed.  When the goose stopped, the peacock stopped.  When the goose got going again, so did the peacock.  It was pretty funny to watch.  People were coming up with various theories to try to explain the peacock’s behavior.  The most plausible explanation I heard was that the goose was the peacock’s personal trainer.

It was nice to see that the zoo is making significant progress with the red wolves exhibit.  They’ve built a nice walkway with a kind of observatory building.  Hopefully the wolves will be here soon!  They’re keeping them right next to the deer, which seems a little bit odd.  It’s like the cheetahs at the National Zoo in D.C., which are right next to the zebras.  Carolyn took a great picture one time of a cheetah standing a few feet away from a zebra, hungrily staring at it.  I’ll try to find it to post on here.
On the way back from the zoo we stopped at Station 7.  Bring on the nachos!  Oh yeah!

Saturday was our Easter outreach at church.  We had an egg hunt for kids, along with games and a creative telling of the Easter story.  There was a pretty decent turnout, especially considering that our sign which was promoting the event had been blown over the day before.  I found it impossible to try to count the people, but I’m pretty sure it was somewhere between 50 and 100.  Probably somewhere in the middle, about 75.  There were nearly as many adults as children!  It was a short event, but a lot of fun.  I was very proud of the CrossWay team that pulled it off!

After the Easter egg hunt our praise band practiced.  Oh yeah, I don’t think I’ve mentioned on here that the Timmons family very generously bought a new drum set for the church last week.  When the worship team practiced on Saturday, they wanted me to try playing along on the drums.  That was fine with me, even though I was reluctant at first, because I was sure I’d be horrible and they’d excuse me from further participation until I’d practiced for a looooooooong time.  But it didn’t quite go that way.

On Easter morning I got up at 4:35 a.m., got ready, and headed to North Division Street (where Rt. 50 ends at the boardwalk) for the Ocean City Easter Sunrise Service.  The wind was blowing and it was about 25 degrees–without the wind.  It was really surprising to me that several hundred people still turned out at that time and in that kind of weather!  Only the miraculous grace of God can explain how the instrumentalists played their guitars and keyboard and sax, and how Diana from CrossWay signed the whole service.  I was afraid her bare hands would get frostbite!  She and her daughter Anna were such troopers to come out for that!

Right before I got up to preach, I was shivering badly.  I had no idea how I could preach when I was trembling–more like shaking–so much.  But it worked.  It also ensured a brief sermon!  It’s kind of funny how sometimes when I’m preaching, I can prepare a message well ahead of time but feel like God’s leading me to make changes right before I preach or even while I’m preaching.  I’d written this sermon two or three weeks ahead of time, but at 5:59 (the service started at 6:00), new ideas popped into my head for the opening and the closing.  I’ll podcast the message this week.

After the sunrise service, which to my surprise I really enjoyed, I went home to take a short nap.  When I woke up an hour later, I hadn’t yet thawed out!  But I had unfrozen by the time we got to CrossWay.

Josh, our worship leader, had talked me into playing drums during the service.  I still couldn’t believe that was happening.  I was as nervous, if not more nervous, about playing the drums at CrossWay as I was about preaching to hundreds of strangers at the sunrise service!  I just can’t believe that he and the others in the band thought my drumming was unbad enough to actually be a part of the service on Easter, of all days.  But Josh takes his ministry seriously so I decided to trust his judgment.  However, I still can’t believe I made my drumming debut on Easter Sunday, and with one day’s notice.  But hey–God can use anybody to do anything.

Actually, the music overall was great yesterday!  Josh’s wife Christi helped with the vocals and played that little shaky egg thing.  Terri’s sister played the keys and Diana was on the bass.  Terri’s daughter, Kelsy, played the flute in one of the songs and that was a great touch.  At Saturday’s practice we’d had John playing guitar, but he wasn’t there yesterday.  If he had been, we’d have had a seven-member band!  For all I know there might have even been more people doing stuff.  Not only was I off to the side where I couldn’t see, but I was also scared!

The attendance at church yesterday was by far the largest we’ve had the past year.  It was twice our average attendance!  Carolyn taught Children’s Church and planned for three times as many as she usually had–and she had as many kids as she planned for!

Something in the service that was planned last minute and really blew me away was Josh signing the Ray Boltz song “Watch the Lamb.”  It was an interpretive signing–not just sign language, but also drama.  It was excellent!  When I got up to preach after he finished, I saw tears in people’s eyes.  Very moving.

It’s been almost a year since I came to CrossWay.  In all that time we’ve never had the fire alarm go off.  Naturally that would happen on Easter Sunday during the sermon with a packed house and a bunch of first-time guests.  You’ll be able to hear it on the podcast.  As I was transitioning out of the sermon intro, the alarm started screaming.  Fortunately no one panicked or anything.  In fact, they were all kind of staring at me, almost as if they were wondering: Is that part of the message or something?  Terri got it turned off pretty quickly, and the building burned down.  Sike.  Something I learned this Easter Sunday: our fire alarm goes off by itself sometimes.  Nice.  At least Carolyn had the kids all lined up and ready to evacuate!

After church we went to Carolyn’s parents’ house.  Her whole family was there.  On the way I called my parents’ house, where all my family was gathered.  I got to talk with my little niece, Jazlyn, which was awesome!  She’s the best kid ever.  Everybody should have the privilege and joy of knowing Jazlyn.

At the Dohertys’ house we ate some delicious lasagna and the most unbelievable strawberry shortcake.  Linda makes the best cake, but she added a special touch to this one: it was a two-layer cake with frosting in the middle (normal for regular cake, but not strawberry shortcake).  And the strawberries were fresh ones that she’d grown.  If the second-best strawberry shortcake in the history of humanity registered a 5 on a scale of 1 to 10, this cake would register about 28.  It awakened senses in taste buds that I didn’t even know I had.  An amazing experience.

The cake was in honor of Michael turning 30.  Michael and Kristen (Carolyn’s sister and her husband) are turning 30 soon–Michael in April and Kristen in May.  It’s very exciting for me because they always make old man jokes about me because I’m in my thirties.  Ordinarily, over-the-hill parties are reserved for 40th birthdays.  But when Kristen’s 30th rolls around in a few weeks, I think we’ll need to throw a major over-the-hill bash and target both Michael and Kristen!

Steve and Linda are a lot of fun to hang out with, so we hung around and talked with them for awhile after Michael and Kristen left.  (Her brother Christopher, of course, was camped out at the computer, only leaving long enough to prepare various dishes buried in whipped cream.)  He leaves for college today and we didn’t even get to have lunch at La Tolteca!  Oh well, we’ll have to make up for it in the summer.

On the drive back from their house we saw an albino deer.  That was so cool!  We really wished we had Carolyn’s camera in the car.

After a busy and tiring week, and an especially exhausting weekend, I slept 9 hours and 20 minutes last night.  It was great!!!!

If you’ve read this far, thanks… but don’t you have stuff to do?

Published in: on March 24, 2008 at 11:38 am Comments (2)

Preaching: Greatness or Effectiveness?

One of the best preaching blogs on the Internet is “Biblical Preaching.”  I don’t know how they come up with such rich and helpful material every day!  Today Peter Mead writes on there about the difference between being a great preacher and being an effective preacher, and he explains why we should aim for effectiveness rather than greatness.

You can read the full post by clicking here.

Published in: on January 30, 2008 at 12:38 pm Leave a Comment

Update on the “Creed” Series

Last fall at CrossWay we began a major series called “Creed.”  The goal of this series is to explore up close each of the 24 topics in the Mennonite Confession of Faith.  To avoid having a massive, half-year series, we divided it up into miniseries and scheduled some breaks in between.

At the end of 2007, we were just over the halfway mark.  Toward the end of the year, as I was looking ahead to 2008, I had several discussions with some of the leaders at CrossWay and some pastor friends about the direction of “Creed” and our preaching schedule.  We decided together to share the second half of the “Creed” series in a different way.  What we’ll do is plug some of the remaining miniseries into our regular preaching schedule.  Some of the other miniseries will be made available as recordings on CD and on the podcast.  Whenever the recordings are completed, I’ll blog about it.

The reason for the change is simple: While we still believe in the critical importance of the “Creed” series, we’re aware that much of what remains is in-house kind of stuff.  Since we’re focusing on outreach and evangelism, we want to make sure that our Sunday morning messages are something that new Christians and non-Christians can understand and relate to as well as long-time Christians.  While this is completely possible to do by presenting the material in the right way, we decided that it would be much more constructive to schedule some different sermon series and finish out “Creed” as I’ve just described.

Just thought I’d offer that explanation so it doesn’t seem like “Creed” suddenly vanished midway.

Published in: on January 24, 2008 at 10:57 am Leave a Comment
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