MOST DAYS AROUND 11:45 a.m., I turn on my screen saver, grab my gym bag, and walk two blocks to SportsMed, a gym owned and operated by a local medical practice. Sue or Brenda greets me by name and hands me a locker key and a couple of towels. A few old men, their workout finished, sit at tables and argue over coffee about why Chicago winters aren’t as tough as they used to be.
I change, then join the dozens already working out.
The faint strains of techno-pop come from the aerobics room, full of bouncing dancers, mostly women. The free weights are mostly unoccupied, while over at the Cybex machines, a guy who looks like the Skipper from Gilligan’s Island is getting pumped up. The Schwarzenegger types don’t seem to like the atmosphere here; they work out at some gym over on North Avenue called “Heavy Metal.” For the most part, we in this congregation are ordinary people with lumps and limps and laproscopic scars.
Some of the people sweating around me are staff from the clinic next door: orthopedic surgeons, physical therapists, and other support personnel using their lunch hour to work out. Sans lab coats, I can’t really tell the healers from the wounded.
We don’t talk much, I and the lunch-time crowd, but we know each other by sight and nod, affirming one another’s faithful presence. I imagine each person’s story, his or her motive for being here, the dreams.
Over by the mirrors is the woman I call “the Dancer,” thick through the middle, hair faded to white, gently moving her arthritic joints to a graceful heart song. A therapist with a clipboard is watching “Duck Boy” as he waddles around the track in a University of Michigan sweatshirt, dipping and pausing at each step. Fresh scars on both knees indicate his ungainly gait must be some form of therapy.
Several of the treadmills and bikes are loaded with recovering heart patients, moving slowly, but still moving. I climb on the only empty Stairmaster to warm up before I hit the weights. Next to me, “Black Widow” speaks: “Lookin’ good, Doll.”
Embarrassed, I stare straight ahead at the basketball court. Heavy makeup can’t hide the effects of more than half a century of loneliness. She’s ostensibly here on a manhunt. Every warm body with a trace of testosterone has felt her sights on his back.
Around us, on the hamster-wheel track, a guy in a full-body brace passes a creeping octogenarian jogger who looks like Walter Matthau. Nobody here but us rehab patients. Just working to reverse, or at least stave off, the inevitable effects of illness and inactivity.
I came to this place over a year ago with one goal—to make sweeping changes in the way I look. In my mind, I’m still as lean and athletic as I was at eighteen. But one look in the mirror betrays that sentimental image—the occupational hazards of adulthood have inflated and softened me.
I had other needs: A few flights of stairs would put me into a heart-pounding sweat. Too many hours in a chair had tightened my hamstrings and lower back to the point of chronic pain. Enough of this nonsense, I thought. A few weeks of work in the gym and I’ll be back in shape.
My goals? Simple: To regain the appearance of my youth.
I’ve been working out faithfully for over a year now. I lift weights three times a week. I run or get some other form of aerobic exercise at least three other days. There’s no question I’m enjoying myself. But am I making progress?
When I look at my fellow gym rats, I have to say I don’t notice much, if any, change in the way any of us look, though we’re here most every day. At least for me, the scale offers scant encouragement. My weight is still on the wrong side of 200. The mirror? At home, I never look in a mirror until after my shower when I wipe away just enough condensation to shave and comb my hair. But at the gym, wall-to-wall mirrors function like the Word of God held before me, my sins revealed in panoramic view.
If no one is watching, I flex my pecs or biceps, looking hopefully for evidence of growth. Some days I even start to believe I’m making progress, but most days I head for the showers, trying to reestablish faith in the power of exercise by muttering my mantra, “No deposit, no return.”
Is it worth the sacrifice when there is so little visible payoff? The cost of my membership strains our family budget. Taking this midday break means I must come to work early or stay late.
But still I come, and the question is why?
Inevitable slump
The apostle Paul told Timothy, “For physical training is of some value, but godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come” (1 Tim. 4:8, niv). If godliness is of value for all things, then surely preaching is included. Shouldn’t training in godliness be just the thing to improve my preaching?
Several years ago, I heard of a seminary classmate who prefaced his sermon with a public apology. He acknowledged that the previous week’s sermon had been especially atrocious, then offered this by way of explanation: “Usually, just before I come into the sanctuary to begin the service, I pray in my study. Last week I didn’t take the time to pray. Please forgive me.” He went on to deliver a message that he assured his congregation was undergirded by much prayer, but I heard it was still pretty bad. The person who told me this story suspected his lack of the preaching gift was a more plausible explanation than his lack of prayer. I have never revealed my superstitions about prayer and sermon preparation with my congregation, but I’m quite familiar with the expectation of my acquaintance.
Too often preachers may feel the necessity of spiritual disciplines, not as a means of drawing closer to God, but as sermon insurance. A long week, too little sleep, and too much tension cramp my study time, so I compensate by praying fervently, asking that God bless my message anyway. I can think, If I pray well, journal well, memorize Scripture well, the sermon will go well. If the sermon flops, I must not have done enough of the spiritual stuff.
Is that true?
In examining almost ten years of journaling, I can’t find consistent evidence proving that periods of spiritual vitality are directly correlated with sermonic excellence. If anything, they seem inversely related. I’ve preached some of the most fruitful messages of my life during spiritual droughts—periods of virtual prayerlessness. What am I supposed to do with that horrifying discovery? I hate the overriding sense of hypocrisy I feel when I deliver bold messages with a withering spirit.
I’ve discovered two types of sermon slumps, one visible to all, the other identifiable only by me.
About five years ago, I went through a six-month streak where every message seemed on target. But I was struggling with a lack of consistency in the spiritual disciplines, complicated by discouragement with some church conflict that refused to die. During that time, a friend and I were shingling his house. He kept talking about how he was shifting some major priorities in his life as a result of my last several sermons. Normally taciturn, on the roof that day he couldn’t keep quiet. The spiritual growth and confidence in God he was experiencing—that he claimed was a direct result of my preaching— was exactly what I was lacking. How could this be? I prayed. Lord, how can you give him something through me without me being affected by it as well?
This slump was internal, the result of spiritual entropy. I was the primary casualty.
On the other hand, I’ve also gone through a couple of sermon slumps, some short, some long, while in rich relationship with my Father. In early 1994 I was laboring through a series of messages, each focused on the hamartia, the fatal flaw of various Old Testament leaders, even as I was experiencing depth in my prayer time. In the midst of that slump, I attended a week-long retreat for pastors that continues to be a significant signpost in my spiritual journey. I returned home with an even deeper spiritual passion, yet for weeks I struggled to find my balance in the pulpit. Relief came only when I abandoned the series that I had lost interest in and started preaching from the Gospel passages that were engaging me every morning in my quiet time.
That second slump began internally but ended up external—my lack of interest resulted in lazy study habits—and the congregation suffered the consequences.
Experiences like these have led me to explore further the relationship between spiritual vitality and passionate preaching. I never think of abandoning preaching when vitality is high. But when vitality is low, I ask myself, Is it hypocrisy to continue to preach with conviction during times of soul drought? By managing appearances am I being deceptive?
If faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen, then preaching provides me the perfect opportunity to grow in faith. When preaching well while feeling spiritually anemic, I can now see this as God at work in me. When preaching poorly, I place faith in the hope that God is at work making a difference in other people’s lives, even when I’ve failed to communicate well. Preaching, then, is an act of faith either way.
Scripture gives ample evidence that Paul was a strong preacher, and no one can doubt his calling to preach. One affirmation of his calling came right after arriving in Corinth, when God told Paul in a vision, “Do not be afraid; keep on speaking, do not be silent. For I am with you” (Acts 18:9-10, niv).
But the Corinthians were less than impressed. Paul acknowledged their stinging appraisal in 2 Corinthians 10:10: “For some say, ‘His letters are weighty and forceful, but in person he is unimpressive and his speaking amounts to nothing’ ” (niv).
In one form or another, what preacher hasn’t heard that criticism?
Perhaps he simply paled in comparison to Apollos, who had wowed the crowd with his rhetoric. Maybe Paul was in a major-league preaching slump during at least part of his stay in Corinth. First Corinthians 2:4-5 reads, “My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not rest on men’s wisdom, but on God’s power.”
Sounds to me like the words of a man who found God faithful even in the midst of a preaching slump. How encouraging to know that even when my sermons are not as wise and persuasive as I’d hoped, God’s power will still be manifested through his Holy Spirit!
Frequently someone has thanked me for saying something in a sermon that “made a real difference in my life.” I appreciate such compliments. But sometimes I didn’t say what she said I said. I didn’t say anything close to what she said I said. But somehow, the Spirit spoke to her in spite of what I was saying. If such conversations happened frequently, I’d be tempted to forget preparation and just show up on Sunday, ready to wing it for the Lord. But I’ve been unable to control these experiences, or make the Spirit appear on cue. The Spirit works at God’s discretion.
It appears the Spirit is at work in me and through me whether or not I’m having my quiet time.
I have a friend who has been given powerful gifts of communication. He delivers messages in a way people inevitably describe as anointed. In just about any context, his preaching dramatically touches people’s lives. His church is often recognized by his denomination for evangelistic growth. He is invited to speak at large gatherings.
Yet he admitted to me once, during a time of uncharacteristic vulnerability, that the only time he prays is in the course of performing his pastoral duties. He said he has struggled to break out of that deficit for over twenty years.
I worry about how his spiritual void makes him vulnerable to temptation. He has come dangerously close on two occasions to compromising his integrity.
I also know a pastor who probably spends more than two hours a day, every day, in prayer. He regularly finds time for solitude and silence. He has committed large portions of the Bible to memory. His heart breaks for the hurting and needy. Yet those left in his dying church are ready to fire him, in part because he does not appear to possess the gifts of teaching and preaching. Both of my friends appear headed for tragic circumstances; both sophist and saint could meet with dismissal from ministry.
Many preachers, unfortunately, could side with my friends. Those gifted at communicating always live with the nagging suspicion they can get along pretty good without spiritual depth; the spiritually sensitive may believe they can be effective without good communication skills. Neither are true, and both inevitably hurt both preacher and congregation. Those of us somewhere in the middle are in even worse shape, for we wrestle daily with both temptations.
So let me ask a question that borders on sacrilege: If effective preaching is primarily the result of spiritual giftedness and the anointing of the Holy Spirit, if fervent prayer and daily adherence has little visible effect on my preaching, and if no one else will notice, why pursue spiritual fitness?
Why work out?
My faith heritage has trained me to avoid questioning such inconsistencies and merely apply the theology of Nike: Just Do It. We’re commanded by the Scriptures: “Flee the evil desires of youth, and pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace, along with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart” (2 Tim. 2:22, niv).
So Just Do It. “Set an example for the believers in speech, in life, in love, in faith and in purity (1 Tim. 4:12b, niv).
That’s not the worst way to respond to the authority of Scripture. In fact, it’s the starting point. Obedience leads to righteousness, claims Paul. But how much more motivated is the one who understands the reasoning behind the order?
I spent four years in the U.S. Air Force. The it’s-not-just-a-job-it’s-an-adventure began in San Antonio, Texas, with basic training. Part of the genius of building a cohesive military unit is to dress everyone in fatigues and cut off all their hair. No longer were we black or white, we were all green. After the barber got hold of us, the rednecks, the hippies, and the pretty boys all looked alike.
We learned to obey the drill instructor without question. The reason for this is obvious: When someone screams, “Down!” those who stand around to argue or offer alternative suggestions are riddled with bullets.
But we didn’t start learning obedience on the combat course with bullets; we started with underwear.
Specifically, on day two we learned to fold our underwear and T-shirts into perfect six-inch squares. We did this because our drill instructor said so. No other reason needed. Come inspection time, woe to the man whose underwear measured six by six and one-eighth. It would be better for him if a millstone were tied around his neck and he were forced to listen to the all-night Barry Manilow radio-fest. But I digress.
If you disobeyed, you reaped the consequences. The old military saw goes, “Ours is not to question ‘Why?’ Ours is but to do or die.” Blind obedience. It must be learned before it can be improved upon. Once a person has completed basic training, though, he is thrust into a modern military environment that is quite different from basic training.
That’s because supervisors aren’t sent to the same schools as drill instructors. Supervisors don’t rely on the same box of tools as drill instructors. As a young sergeant, I received training in how to build unified teams in order to carry out the necessary tasks to reach our desired objective. That’s a far more effective strategy for empowering a fighting force than the constant threat of court-martial for insubordination.
The reason for the different emphasis?
Obedience and discipline are enhanced when they stem from want-to, not have-to. That insight into human nature did not come courtesy of Uncle Sam; it comes from a God who created us that we might partner with him willingly to accomplish kingdom purposes.
The want-to
The Nike philosophy works for rookies. But we old-timers need Paul’s philosophy:
I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. (Phil. 3:10-14, niv)
I want to know Christ.
No matter how effective my preaching might be for others, without knowing the love and warmth of Christ, the ice crystallized around my heart will bring hypothermia to my soul. Unless I know the power of his resurrection, cynicism overwhelms compassion. I start to believe that, given a choice, people will make the wrong one every time. Even if I communicate well, I preach as one without hope.
Weddings become merely the prelude to divorce court. Holy Week becomes a crushing season of duty. I tend to view the twice-a-year crowd as shallow consumers unworthy of my best presentation of our hope in Christ.
I want to know Christ.
Without sharing in the fellowship of his suffering, I can’t hope to survive the inevitable conflicts of pastoral ministry. Most of us would stand with courage and conviction before a firing squad before renouncing our faith. Yet the unrelenting shallowness of most congregational conflict and criticism rubs blisters on our souls until we either limp away in pain, or, over time, develop callouses to protect our vulnerable spots. Callouses ease the pain, but they rob us of the sensitivity needed to feel and respond to the hurt and insecurity behind most congregational conflict. Preaching takes on a harshness. Proclaiming truth, yes—but truth without sensitivity, not knowing or caring why our people bicker so.
I want to know Christ.
Without forging ahead, eyes focused on the heavenly prize, my ever-present temptation to compromise my message becomes too much. I begin grinding away the rough edges of the gospel to make it comfortably fit contemporary life, instead of grinding away the excesses of contemporary life until it fits the gospel. I avoid speaking to topics that offend, especially those that might offend our most generous givers. The desire to please my church overrides the desire to please Christ.
These are the sins of the prayerless preacher: cynicism, callousness, and compromise. They render our sermons impotent even when well-communicated.
I want to know Christ.
Without sitting at the feet of Christ daily, I can try to look like him without becoming like him. A certain tone of voice in the pastoral prayer, a concerned look, a knowing nod when others mention matters of depth—these are enough to make most people believe I’ve got the real thing. The ecclesiastical equivalent to a double-head-fake allows me to admit to spiritual struggles, knowing that most people will believe I’m just being modest. Nothing is easier to caricature than a preacher, and nothing is harder to build than the character of a preacher. No wonder some preachers go for style over substance.
The unpleasant reality is most listeners will never know if I’ve got the real thing. But I know. I’ve never been able to fool myself. That knowledge keeps me going even when I don’t have the want-to. I hate faking it.
Internal rewards
After a long, hard year of faithful exercise, not one person has commented, “Wow, where’d you get those muscles?” Yet I still work out faithfully. In spite of little visual confirmation, I know something is going on within me that scales and mirrors cannot validate.
Am I making progress? Without question.
My stamina is up, no doubt about that. I’ve shoveled enough snow this winter to bring on a dozen heart attacks, with not even a sore back. I can take the several flights of stairs from my office to the fax machines two at a time. My latest fitness evaluation showed my body-fat percentage was down and my flexibility, strength, and endurance much improved. And it has been a long time since I’ve had insomnia. I’ve come through another gray, dreary Chicago winter with only nips and growls from the dark dog of depression that haunts transplants like me who grew up accustomed to sunshine.
Those are all great benefits; they simply are not the results I most expected and wanted.
I want to know Christ, not because it makes me preach better, but because it allows me to preach with integrity. It allows me to preach with hope. With a sensitive heart and with conviction. And that’s better than preaching better.
Copyright © 1998 Ed Rowell
