In 2003, I graduated seminary and was called to pastor my first church. In seminary, I learned the process of Biblical interpretation called hermeneutics. I learned the ancient Greek and Hebrew languages. I learned about the history of the world that our Scriptures were birthed in. And in all that, there is one class I remember more than any other.
It was simply titled Expository Preaching. There were 2 parts to this class: the lecture and the lab. To be honest, I don't remember much about the lecture portion, but I will never forget the lab. I would work to preach according to our instructions. There was a 59-category worksheet that both the professor and classmates would fill out as you preached. After you preached a sermon and they critiqued according to that worksheet, you were required to watch yourself on video and critique yourself. That worksheet covered everything. Half of the points were in content and the other half were in delivery. I won't bore you with the details, but just know that preparation to preach in the lab included trying to max out every one of those 59 categories.
There was one category that I struggled with in every attempt. The professor called it pathos or heart. It was a subjective category that basically asked if you thought the preacher truly believed his message. Was his heart in it. In all fairness, it is hard to keep all of the points you needed to cover in mind and still be passionate about the delivery. But the best sermon I preached in that lab still only garnered mediocre ratings in the heart category. And I think I still struggle with that today.
You see, one of my greatest fears is saying something contrary to God's Word when I am preaching. I'm not just talking about messing up on a name, or mispronouncing a word. I'm talking about flat-out heresy. And I am so nervous about saying the wrong thing, I stay very closely tied to my manuscript. I have evaluated every word and every phrase in that manuscript. I know that it is theologically and doctrinally sound. Thus, I feel safe as long as I stay on script. But God has a way of pushing out our self-defined safe zones. He has a way of taking away our security blankets and watching as we try to live out our faith in a "dangerous" place.
And that happened to me this past Sunday. As I explained Acts 8:1 (and tied it back to Acts 1:8) I was overcome by the need to talk about being a faithful witness for Jesus. And I stepped away (both figuratively and literally) from my notes and just spoke from my heart. When I came back to my notes, I realized that there was no bridge from what I had just said back into my "plan", so I wrapped up the sermon and prayed. You can listen to the whole thing here.
I tell you all of that to tell you this. There are times when we want to make serving our God a scripted thing. As long as we can stay on our script, we'll be okay. But if we wander off script, we are nervous and even timid. I think we must spend time studying and preparing, but there comes a time when we trust that God will use our studies to speak to people through us. Not just preachers, but every believer needs to think this way. We need to do our best to be prepared. We need to speak the Gospel at every opportunity. And we need to trust God with the results. Maybe if I trusted God a little more back in seminary, my heart would have been more convinced of the truth I was trying to share....And maybe we can all see more people saved when we are more convinced of the Gospel.
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