WHEN RANCHERS IN CATRON COUNTY, New Mexico, lost livestock due to predators, they made a phone call, and old Bill Blue, government trapper, was dispatched to take care of the felonious varmints. Bill was a twentieth-century mountain man who had never seen the movie Bambi, so he lost no sleep over his controversial role in maintaining the balance of predator and prey.
Bill had a couple of nasty dogs who helped him bring murdering coyotes and mountain lions to justice. Butch was from of some indeterminate hound stock, one ear nearly gone from a long-ago brawl. It was fitting that this dog had a government job; he was surly and had a general disdain for all living creatures.
Bill called his other mutt Princess. Crusty old trappers don’t usually give dogs, even girl dogs, such prissy names. True, she had a better personality than Butch, but she was evidently the kind of princess from days of yore when royalty bathed on a biannual basis.
One day I saw Bill parking his old Chevy Apache pickup at the grocery store. Butch was riding in the back, standing on the spare tire, hackles raised, growling at some little kid, who started to cry. The mother’s eyes were watering, not from fear, but from the odor of scent bait wafting from Bill’s trapping truck.
In spite of his olfactory repugnance, I liked the old man, so I walked over to say hello. Princess was sitting proudly in the pickup cab. She really didn’t even look like a dog at first glance. She most closely resembled a sheep whose wool had been partially melted in a horrible chemical spill.
After shaking hands, I commented, “You sure think a lot of that old dog, don’t you, Bill?”
“Well now, I guess I do. But that’s my business, ain’t it?”
“Where’d she get that name, Bill?” I pressed. “She doesn’t look like any princess I’ve seen.”
“Don’t give me none of yer bull, young feller,” he warned. “What I name my dogs is also my own business.”
“I’m not makin’ fun. Bill,” I told him, backing off. “I’m real curious.”
Bill worked his chew of tobacco around, then spit while squinting at me, trying to ascertain the purity of my motive.
“Wull, if you really wanna know, I found her ’bout six years ago, when I was workin’ the old Cleveland ranch near Datil. Caught her in a trap. Funniest lookin’ mutt I ever seen. Her fur was clipped short, ‘cept for her ears and a ball on the end of her tail.
Some idiot had tied pink ribbons in her hair and even painted her toenails.
“I knew she was some old lady’s lap dog, but we was twenty-five miles from the nearest house. Where she come from I never found out. I put up a notice at the Eagles Guest Ranch bar, but nobody ever claimed her. So I kept her.”
Bill was a reader, so on his next trip to the bookmobile that serviced our remote part of the world, he picked up a dog book in addition to his usual load of Zane Grey and Louis L’Amour paperbacks.
“Found out she was a standard poodle, bred to hunt back in the old country. But fer the last hundred years, people been showin’ these dogs fer their looks. He paused and gave her a warm look. You can’t tell it now, but she was ugly as sin when I found ‘er. I let her fur grow out normal, and you can see now how she might win one of them shows.”
Actually, I couldn’t, but he went on with his story.
“Anyway, I decided to see if she’d still hunt. Took to it like a coon takes to roastin’ ears. She runs on instinct, you can’t train a dog to think the way she does. Well, wasn’t long till she was makin’ ol’ Butch look bad. I reckon that’s why he’s so dang cranky. Anyway, I decided she needed a special handle, so I thunk up the snobbiest durn name I could think of. Yessir, when she goes to work on a track, you know she was born and bred to it. It’s her royal bloodline. That’s my Princess.”
Embarrassed by his openness, Bill reached in the open window of the truck and rubbed her head. Princess sighed, resting contentedly under his hand. I still thought she was seriously lacking in personal hygiene, but I had to admit I was looking at a rare creature—one who had found the purpose for which she was created. Freed to follow her instincts, she enjoyed the love and respect of the one who had rescued her from a life where appearance mattered more than purpose.
Pride buster
For those so called, preaching fulfills the purpose for which they were created. Paul wrote, “When I preach the gospel, I cannot boast, for I am compelled to preach. Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel!” (1 Cor. 9:16, niv). Preaching is compulsive behavior for those bred for it. After a couple of weeks away from the pulpit, preachers become anxious. I know preachers who plan their vacations around the chance to preach in someone else’s pulpit.
It’s almost impossible for me to read any passage of the Bible without thinking of homiletical possibilities. I can’t read a newspaper, book, or magazine without a pen or scissors in hand to mark or cut out illustrations and quotes. While editor of Preaching Today, I got paid to listen to some of the best sermons in North America. I found my work, in one sense, frustrating. Listening to great sermons made me want to preach great sermons. Gratefully, most Sundays I was able to pinch-hit in local pulpits.
Trying to trace my compulsion back to its source has been a revelation to me. I began by exploring all the carnal sources. I have no illusion about the purity of my motives to preach. Most likely, I reasoned, my compulsion to preach originated out of pride. Indeed, some Sundays I felt, briefly, something like pride following the delivery of a message. But those moments are always followed by a painful memory that pinches back its growth—my rookie year of preaching.
At the time, I was still in seminary, involved in a church plant in an affluent suburb of a midwestern city and quite puffed up by this opportunity of a lifetime. My undergraduate work had been in communications. I knew the theories of dialectic. I understood the principles of rhetoric. Several years in a sales position had given me confidence and real-world experience. My professors and denominational leaders made a big fuss, and I was convinced that I would be the next big name on the homiletical hot-air circuit.
I wanted to begin that ministry on the best possible foot, so I determined to preach a sermon that had received rave reviews (in its written form) from my preaching professor. Its numerous quotes and illustrations from great literature and dead philosophers seemed ideally suited for what I perceived to be a highly literate, educated congregation. Nervous, yet thrilled, I delivered. Surely there had never been a sermon on that text, that topic so brilliantly inspired, diligently prepared, and skillfully executed.
Back at school, I gave a glowing report to my classmates. “I wowed them,” I said. “Anyone who couldn’t hit a home run to a congregation like that shouldn’t be preaching.”
But at staff meeting the next Wednesday, the pastor of the sponsoring church gently informed me that he had received a number of calls, begging that I not be asked back. The reason? My preaching. They didn’t like it: No one could hear me, and what they did hear was dry and boring.
The pastor told me, “Look. It’s not fair to judge anyone on only one sermon. These folks have extremely high expectations, but I think you can get a lot better in a hurry. We’ll give you another month and see how it works out.”
I couldn’t have been more surprised if I’d learned that Billy Graham had just gotten saved. Surely my initial reaction couldn’t have been that far off. I tried to remember why I’d felt so good after the sermon. Was it simply my relief to be done? What had gone wrong?
I had only the vaguest sense that I’d not quite connected with the congregation, but blamed it on the room conditions. We were meeting in an elementary school multipurpose room, and the sound and space were not well-suited for preaching.
But the evidence said I was the problem. No use arguing about it. I could step up to the challenge—or choke. That next Sunday, seen through the lens of fear, every congregant seemed to me to have pursed lips and crossed arms. They didn’t want me there; I didn’t want to be there. I didn’t think God wanted to be there that morning.
I stepped to the pulpit. I felt pretty passionate about the text and tried to let it be known. I projected my tenor voice as best I could. I cut back on the literary illustrations and even managed to get a modest laugh out of one story. Following the closing prayer, I felt like a bull rider again—just glad to be alive. After shaking hands with a number of people, who seemed somewhat warmer, I was starting to relax when a big guy in an expensive sweater walked up and stuck a bulletin covered with scribbles into my hands.
“Do you plan on doing this for the rest of your life?” he demanded.
“Uh, what do you mean? Preach?”
“If that’s what you want to call it. Listen, I make a good living as a motivational speaker, and if you want to make it as a communicator, you’ve got to learn some things.”
“Like what?”
“Like what I wrote here. I counted at least nine cardinal rules of effective speaking that you violated today.”
I looked at the paper, trembling in my hands. No one had ever told me about nine cardinal rules. I wondered if they came down from Sinai with Moses or from Dallas by way of Zig Ziglar.
“Look,” he said, softening only a bit. “You’ve obviously studied your Bible, but that won’t cut it unless you connect with people.” He briefly walked me through the list, explaining each point. The final one was this:
“What was that reference to Moby Dick about? No one here has read Melville since college. We read stuff like Sports Illustrated and watch stupid TV sitcoms like Roseanne. When was the last time you read Moby Dick?“
(Well, counting the time I lifted the story from some ancient tome of Modern Sermon Illustrations in the seminary library, never.)
He continued, “You need to relate to where we are. But we need to relate to you as well. You haven’t told us one thing about yourself; not one illustration came from your life. Have you got it all figured out? It sounded that way. We need to know who you are and why you’re here.”
I must have read his scribbled critique a hundred times the next week. No way could I incorporate all of his advice into my next message. I felt he was holding me to an impossibly high standard. His approach was harsh and condemning, and I couldn’t figure out his motive. But he was right on every point.
I went back the next week with a couple of improvements, and he met me at the door afterward with a qualified, “That was a little better. Now work on … “
For the next eighteen months, his less-than-tender critiques became not only the means by which my preaching improved but a means of grace—an inoculation against pride. After such an inauguration, I could not dare trust my sense of whether a sermon hit or missed. I preach knowing that, while few congregants listen with the sophisticated ear of my trainer, most are making judgments. I cannot preach only for the critics. I somehow must please an audience of One, while also being aware of the needs of many.
False motivators
While I’ve discovered I can’t generate enough pride from preaching to keep me going, what else motivates me? The need to manipulate people? Maybe. Once I quit trying to be Mr. Intellectual and started telling smelly dog stories, I found that most people actually listened to me pretty well. Getting people to laugh can feel pretty good, and, in fact, can be intoxicating.
The pulpit gives one enormous leverage. Not only do I get to talk without being interrupted, but anything a pastor says from the pulpit takes on added significance. Even the announcements have added gravitas when promoted from the pulpit. Every leader of a floundering program tries to corner you before the service, vying for a public-service announcement of their ministry: “Don’t forget to mention the men’s prayer breakfast, pastor. Attendance has been poor lately.”
What pastor on the planet hasn’t, at least once, used every bit of leverage at his disposal to staff the volunteer nursery? It’s heady to feel people respond when you want them to, the way you want them to. But for me, the satisfaction of filling a slot is quickly pierced by my conscience reminding me that the pulpit is holy ground and using it to manipulate is unholy. I promise to stop (right after the nursery gets staffed). The wrong motive of manipulation, while always a temptation, can’t sustain my passion to preach.
While searching for the source of my compulsion to preach, I thought about my need to be liked. We moved a lot in my early childhood, and as the skinny, new kid with big ears, I learned early that making people like me and making people laugh were effective ways to keep from getting beat up. It was easy to apply those principles to the sermon—What these folks need is a message of encouragement. Encouragement is one of my dominant spiritual gifts, so, when it comes to messages that cheer people up, I can deliver the mail.
But, after a while, the Jesus I preach begins to sound like the keynote speaker at a multilevel marketing convention. Preaching the whole counsel of God means occasionally putting on the mantle of the prophets and saying unequivocally, “Thus saith the Lord.” It means overturning a few tables and, at times, taking up a whip in the temple.
That’s not easy for me. People don’t like prophets or people who meddle with profits. My hesitation is reinforced by my denomination, which sometimes defines “good preaching” as a spectacular delivery of verbal napalm. I don’t want to perpetuate that. My goal in confrontive preaching is not simply to scorch a few eyebrows but to be a faithful proclaimer. On numerous occasions the biblical text and the Holy Spirit have forced me to say, loud and clear, “This is wrong. The Lord is not pleased.”
But no matter how a preacher tries to couch tough truth in love, calling people to confession and repentance is a lonely job. When even your best friends shake your hand after worship without making eye contact, you realize that needing to be liked is a significant occupational hazard that must be overcome by anyone who desires to preach in a way that leads to the revival and renewal of the bride of Christ.
I realized that while needing to be liked was another temptation of mine, that couldn’t fully explain my inner drive to preach the gospel.
My search for the wellspring of my compulsion took me back to the seventh grade. A college-age revivalist temporarily convinced our youth group that a life apart from full-time Christian service was a life wasted. He called for a public commitment of every youth present to go into the ministry. I was one of the last holdouts, but eventually even I followed the others like a lemming. I took his hand at the altar and mumbled something about “giving my life to God to use any way he wants to.”
I figured out the next day that I’d been manipulated. No way would God hold me accountable for such a decision, but I wasn’t sure if others would. Our church had no protocol for revoking a public decision, so I decided not to tell anyone about my second thoughts. Fortunately, no one seemed to take such decisions seriously, and I never heard another word about it.
Yet for years, even as a wayward young adult, in the night I would sometimes think of that decision and pray, “You know I didn’t mean it then, but I’ll still keep that promise if you can really use me.”
Sixteen years after that junior high altar call, I quit my sales job to enroll in seminary. “Why are you doing this?” was the question asked by a concerned few. I couldn’t adequately explain why then, or now. Certainly my reason was not out of a sense of obligation; it was a joyful response. In the movie Chariots of Fire, Eric Liddell tried to explain to his sister why he chose to prepare for the Olympic games rather than immediately return to China as a missionary: “When I run, I feel his pleasure.”
That’s the explanation of one who is called. God’s call was a gracious invitation, not an order to be carried out. But I had the hardest time telling anyone that I was called.
That sounds, on the one hand, so presumptuous. It implies that out of all the people in this congregation, “God has set me apart to stand in this pulpit to speak for him, so listen up.” And it feels so arcane. Vocare, the root word for “vocation,” once meant a calling. Today it simply means “job.” To be called to practice medicine, law, teaching, or preaching seems, at best, a noble notion from another century. Most people choose careers based on giftedness, interest, circumstance, and the likelihood that their choice will bring a significant financial return.
In a recent sermon featured on Preaching Today, William Willimon pointed out that all believers are called—called to be disciples. He’s right, of course. My calling is, in one sense, no different from any other believer. I’ve discovered my spiritual gifts and seek to use them where they produce the greatest fruit. For me, for now, that means preaching and writing.
But I sense there is something more. My pulse quickens when I read Paul’s instructions for Timothy: “Preach the Word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage—with great patience and careful instruction” (2 Tim. 4:2, niv). That’s the headwaters of a wide stream feeding my passion for preaching. I’m as compelled to preach as that smelly old dog was compelled to track. Neither can be judged by appearance. I know my Master’s pleasure when I preach. My motives are not always pure, but they are, somehow, pure enough for God to use to bring fruit. And that’s all the motive I need to keep preaching with passion.
Copyright © 1998 Ed Rowell
