Whiteboards and Pulpits

Step One: Know Your Weirdo Congregation. Speech Class 101: You must know your audience. Jesus talks about how his sheep know his voice, and how he knows them. John 10:27. I like this 1990's move quote,.. “Find out what the people you are playing against are interested in, and pretend you're interested in it, too. They start running off at the mouth and don't pay no attention to their cards. Medivac crew love to talk about their choppers.” ~Monfriez, Courage Under Fire (1996). If you truly want to connect the actually studying and laboring of your textual criticism/exposition to the congregation, you better stink’n know them. I am talking about really knowing them. You know their name. Quit using, “Buddy”. You know their children’s name. You know what makes them tick. You know what they laugh, (Not the weekly jab at the opposing football team), you know what ticks them off (see previous parenthetical). You know what is currently going on in the world around them...

Yesterday, as I began to write the daily blog I thought about how it parallels the same early discovery I had in ministry, that just about made me quit. Let me explain. June 10, 2001, I was ordained to be a minister. I was excited to take on the challenge, the church that I served gave me the opportunity to be a college minister. I taught Sunday School, and prepared to start a ministry called, Campus. Basically, a weekly Bible Study that would gather the local college students from various churches to have a study. As it began to grow, I saw some of the early struggles of ministers. I was teaching on a weekly basis. Sounds pretty easy. It is if you have some direction or guide, but if you are winging it, it can be quite challenging for any superstar creative pastor. The parallel is rather simple. Random blogging thus far has been quite easy, but now that I am starting into the daily ritual, I can see this to be quite the challenge for a 'novice' writer. I remember the joy of un...