Coming out of seminary, I mistakenly thought that the purpose of preaching was to convey information. That was before my trip to India. About a year after I planted Jacob's Well, a friend invited me to India to do some preaching, but it wasn't until I arrived that I learned I would be preaching 14 times in 11 days.
At first, I was angry. How could I possibly prepare 14 sermons in such a short time without all the resources I had back home? Though I am not proud to admit it, this situation exposed the way in which preaching had become, for me, about performing, about impressing people with what I knew. Now, there was no way I could prepare enough to do that.
Then, in the midst of my anger, I sensed God inviting me to something more than preaching. This was an opportunity to be discipled by him for the benefit of the people I was among and for my benefit. So I grudgingly agreed to not prepare. Even though the group was never the same, I also had a sense that I wasn't to preach the same message twice.
For me, preaching has become an integrated, intimate behavior, far more than transferring information to other peoples' heads.
Instead I would show up and let God provide the words I needed to say, based on the people, their context, and what was happening inside me. So that's what I did for almost two weeks. Every single time for 11 days I wrestled with God on this issue, and every single time I was obedient, and he provided what I needed to say.
I have never felt so alive!
Every time I stood up, God was present. It wasn't as if creation ex nihilo was occurring, however. Snippets from previous messages would come to mind, passages of Scripture I had been meditating on (or had passed over too quickly) would come to life, aspects of my own journey became very relevant. Somehow among these elements and the chaos of the environment, creation occurred.
I simply stood up, read a passage of Scripture, and talked about what God was saying through that passage and how I was trying to live it out. It was totally humbling, and the feeling was unlike anything I had ever experienced in ministry before.
In that part of India, the pull of western culture is strong, and young people are enamored with what America is exporting. So I spoke of Ecclesiastes and the dissatisfaction its author experienced as all his desires were gratified. To a community of widows, I spoke of Abraham and the way that God, after making promises to his servant, often introduced problems that exposed Abraham's lack of trust and that caused him again to rely on God before provision was made.
On my way back from India to Kansas City, I sensed God was issuing me an invitation: "What you just did there in India, I want you to begin to do at home."
That began a journey for me, a process of relocating my preaching from merely out of my head, and into my heart and into my body and into my church community. For me, preaching has become an integrated, intimate behavior, far more than just an exercise of transferring information to other peoples' heads.
I first began to communicate on a weekly basis as a 22-year-old youth worker. Every week, I stood before high school kids and talked about the gospel. After doing that for three years, I went to seminary, where I learned about exegesis, and right after exegesis class, I went to homiletics class.
I was immersed in the biblical texts. One professor told us that we should spend 20 hours a week in preparation for any sermon, and made us manuscript our sermons word-for-word and then preach without notes.
Seminary was helpful for me. I was an art student in college, and academics made me nervous. In seminary I fell in love with academics. But seminary also pushed me out of my heart and into my head, and it became very tempting to live there.
My head was full of information, and I couldn't wait to dump it on people. I believed that if I was doing what I was supposed to be doing as a preacher, by the end of a sermon my listeners would know what I knew.
But since my trip to India, I no longer believe that is the case. I believe that what people are longing to see is Christ in me, the telling of a story.
Few places today can remain in the tension between the artistic and the academic, between the humanities and the sciences, between grace and truth, between the heart and the head, and this is to our detriment. I believe churches should be such places of liminality.
Preaching is an act of intimacy because it is the unfolding publicly of Christ in me. When I get up, I am on display. My ability to be present to my church community, present to the text, and present to God is a life-bearing act.
I am trying to describe the kingdom, life, and God honestly so exchange can happen. To do that, I've got to be willing to be vulnerable, to get naked at some level.
The notion in Genesis that we were created naked and without shame implies some depth. We've allowed God to go into the broken places of our own life, and bring his light to those places and find healing and restoration so they become places where we actually offer hope to people. Our lives are the tableau on which the story of creation, of incarnation, of re-creation, is happening.
Sportswriter Red Smith once said, "It's really very easy to be a writer; all you have to do is sit down at the typewriter and open a vein." Likewise it's easy to be a preacher; all you have to do is stand in front of your people and open your vein. But that requires discernment and vulnerability.
There are, of course, appropriate levels of disclosure. For unhealthy people, a pulpit can be a dangerous place to work out your issues. A congregation is not a place to do public therapy. You never share anything that you yourself have not significantly reckoned with, especially regarding sexuality.
When in doubt about how much to disclose, ask someone you can trust. I will often bounce things off my wife: "I'm thinking about talking about this, do you think that's wise?" Don't "unzip your viscera" inappropriately.
But preaching is an inherently foolish act. Paul talks about being a fool on display (1 Cor. 4:9-10). To experience intimacy, there must be vulnerability. Our churches are filled with people who are over-churched but under-connected to God. Others are not followers of Christ and come into our spaces to see if those who proclaim good news are real people. People are missing Jesus in our churches. They are desperately hungry for him.
My trip to India began a journey from information to intimacy in my preaching.
From preparation to meditation
In seminary, I was taught to research and to find material that supports your research. That's preparation.
Meditation is a deep and intimate conversation with God. It's letting my soul be shaped. I'm not saying I no longer prepare and only meditate; it's that after preparation, meditation is now the essential part of the process.
I have a structured mind, so I tend to think in outlines. But the more I do outlining, the more I find I'm over-killing my sermon. I can crowd out my ability to respond to God or to the people before me.
Heart meditation can be a scary place. There have been times in the last year where I have found myself so deeply in the text that I become overwhelmed with emotion. When Martha stabs Jesus with her accusation, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died," our community wept together in recognition of our confusion and bitterness, having recently lost two brothers, 25 and 26, to a car accident.
When Naomi says to the women of Bethlehem, "Call me not Naomi, call me Mara; for the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me. I went out full, and Jehovah has brought me home again empty; why do you call me Naomi, seeing Jehovah has testified against me, and the Almighty has afflicted me?" many of us cried in the desolation that the loss of family creates, whether from death or divorce. This kind of openness to the text, to each other, and to God creates an authenticity out of which arise opportunities for transformation.
From comprehension to apprehension
Comprehension is understanding; apprehension is beholding. Cognitive people seek comprehension; contemplative people look for apprehension. In our preaching we often seek to understand God, to use language to describe who or what God is. That kind of description can be deceptive. It can be a form of control.
We know from the Bible that any god we can control is no real god but an idol. Our preaching must reckon with the reality that Yahweh is shrouded, mysterious, and often inaccessible. How can we comprehend that?
Apprehension is simply stepping back and marveling at what it is we behold, even if we have no idea who it is or what is happening. For a scriptural reference, the psalms of lament are a good starting point, as is Job.
If the only kind of speech we use is speech that deals with comprehension, then we will only talk about that which we understand. As a preacher, I am invited to describe a reality that I am just beginning to get the hint of. That means being willing not to know, to stumble over language so I might tell a story. I'm not so interested in merely providing comprehension; I'm interested in describing reality, even if that leaves room for confusion.
From answers to questions
Often you can learn more from a well-formed, sincere question than from a glibly offered answer.
As I pay attention all week long and hear things in my church community, I make a note of them in my head and in my heart. When I sit down on Sunday, I make some touch points, but then I also open it up, ask questions, interact with people, and allow the community to participate in the telling of the story.
For instance, a few months ago I came across the stories in Mark 7 and 8. They are the odd and a little unsettling stories of Jesus' interacting with men who have disabilities. To one man who is deaf and mute, he spits and touches his ears and tongue. To the other who cannot see, he spits, makes mud, and touches his eyes. One man he warns not to return home; the other he warns about saying anything.
As our community read those passages and discussed the oddities, similarities, and differences, many of us saw our own of stories of transformation, some complete, some partial. Others knew well why Jesus warned the man against returning home when some of our homes have been the places of dysfunction and disability.
With excitement we realized that God created humans from the dust and that there was something elemental happening in these stories, something of Jesus reconnecting these incomplete creatures to the genesis of their lives: the hand of God and dust.
The playful way we engaged the text allowed for imagination. Asking questions in the midst of a group like this forced us to look at things we might not see if it were left to me alone. Jesus touched us, too.
If we are too tightly scripted, there is no room for collective construction. At Jacob's Well, people love to talk and participate. I was afraid they wouldn't do it when our church got bigger, but that has not been the case. When my heart is engaged, there is intimacy.
From spoken to living words
Preaching as an act of intimacy is not so much a technique as it is a posture of availability to God.
One of the things I find fascinating in the Old Testament is not just the kind of speech that came out of the mouths of the prophets, but the kind of lives that prophets were forced to live by God, and the kind of work that God first did within the prophet, which allowed him then to speak and see as he did.
The Old Testament prophets put their lives on display as a human embodiment of God's words: Jeremiah, enchained and living in a pit; Hosea, married to a prostitute; Elijah, fleeing from Jezebel; Ezekiel, living in exile. Are we willing to be this available?
In Colossians 1, it is stunning how tied together the gospel, Paul's life, his suffering, and his proclamation are. "Now I rejoice in what was suffered for you, and I fill up in my flesh what is still lacking in regard to Christ's afflictions, for the sake of his body, which is the church. I have become its servant by the commission God gave me to present to you the word of God in its fullness—the mystery that has been kept hidden for ages and generations, but is now disclosed to the saints. To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.
"We proclaim him, admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone perfect in Christ. To this end I labor, struggling with all his energy, which so powerfully works in me." The message is so tied up in the person of the communicator, that you cannot distinguish the word of God from the person of God. There is absolute integration.
For me, preaching has become a public spiritual discipline. I believe God sees us not as a collection of individuals, but as a people. What is going on in my life is actually connected to what is going on in another life, and that is influencing what is going on in a third life.
When we come together in worship, we are creating and interpreting a space where we are available to God that we might connect to him, to each other, and to his world. That compels us to see the sermon in a new way. I began to see that I was just one part of the story.
If I wasn't honest with my part of the story, then others were inhibited in their ability to be honest as well. When we are not honest, these intimate connections to God, each other, and the world are nearly impossible.
It is not merely I who compose a sermon, but the community of God. My job is to listen intelligently, theologically, and pastorally to what God is doing in our community. So preaching becomes an act of intimacy.
Tim Keel is founding pastor of Jacob's Well in Kansas City, Missouri.
Copyright © 2005 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
