In response to my previous post, Rick Mang offers wise advice.

Will,

May I offer an unsolicited FYI / consideration for your thought . . .

The next time you meet with your BOM, each member will no doubt have copies of the comments you have “publicly” posted/shared on your blog for any and everybody to read.

Some will have read into your “public comments” many different things, most which you probably never intended to communicate.

Some may even take your “public comments” as an attack on their characters.

When you meet next with your BOM, keeps these things in mind.

There’s a lot of truth in what he says.  The prof in my preaching class reminded us of the old cliche “Every Sunday three sermons are preached: the one you meant to preach, the one you actually preached, and the one the hearer heard.”  In fact, if there are 100 congregants present, 100 different sermons may have been heard.  That’s good advice for me to keep in mind during the course of this conversation, and I thank you for it, Rick.  It is especially important for me to remember as I can have a darkly sarcastic sense of humor at times.  (Of course, I have also been told by excellent pastors that “if you aren’t ticking someone off, you aren’t saying anything.”)

I am clearly not the only person who believes that the board made the wrong decision.  Other members of my ordination class have communicated that they have no problem being required to take CPE but that making me take it is superfluous.  They haven’t just communicated it to me, some have stated it publicly as well, and some have communicated it to the Bishop.

My intent is not to engage in board-bashing.  If that’s how I have come across, I honestly repent.

I do, however, believe that human brokenness as well as systemic brokenness inevitably cause us all to lose focus on what’s really important – you, me, bishops, boards, churches, preachers, all of us.  We all fall shy of the mark.  What I do intend is for the United Methodist world to engage in critical reflection upon the process itself.  At every available turn we must ask ourselves tough and important questions:

• Is the process achieving the desired result and bearing good fruit? I think we all agree that the process has become unnecessarily long, convoluted, demanding and difficult.  Have these complications produced lower rates of clergy malfeasance and higher rates of clergy effectiveness?  Has all of this testing, conversation and process helped our boards to ordain the good ones and rule out the bad ones?
• Are our churches better served by the process? One reality of the situation is that lots of Provisional Elders will be appointed to churches for 2-3 years, then moved upon ordination.  Are there certain churches in our denomination who can understand part of their mission as preparing pastors for ordination and then letting them go?  Or do we run the risk of hurting those churches by moving their pastors about the time the relationship grows strong?  Are churches who receive Elders who have survived the process receiving pastors who have been better prepared, energized and empowered for effective ministry and mission in their communities?  Do we run the risk of sending them Elders who have been made tired, burned out and cynical by the process?
• Are we serving Jesus Christ, the local church, the Annual Conference, and our pastors faithfully by engaging in this process? Do the steps along the way help the United Methodist Church to fulfill our mission of making disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world?  Or have we placed too much faith in the process itself and each of its steps?
• Are we carrying out the process in a righteous and just manner? Are we engaging our candidates in each step of the process in order to further develop their gifts and graces?  Are we imposing certain rules simply because “those are the rules and that’s just the way it is?”  Have we ever enforced rules because we have an axe to grind?
• Is the process theologically sound? At least in the time that I’ve been paying attention there has been a growing emphasis on psychology in the church.  Effective pastoral care is essential in our local churches, and it is sound to take steps to make sure our pastors are adequately prepared to provide it.  This last point is the one I want to expound upon.

Yesterday I imagined myself answering the question, “why are you not a counselor anymore?”

My first response was that while I was a good clinician, counseling just wasn’t where my heart is.  Working as a counselor was not where my joy met the world’s needs.  My heart is in the church.  I witnessed my home church, under very effective leadership, transformed from a dying church in a dying town to a living, loving, thriving community of worship and fellowship against all odds.  I was a first-hand witness to what I will name a resurrection.  I found myself called into deeper and deeper expressions of ministry, piety and leadership.  In that setting I was instilled with a deep sense of hope for my own life, hope for the future of the UMC, and hope for the world.  I found my heart.  Sounds cheesy, but it’s true.

But I am also a pastor not a counselor for a much deeper reason than that.  Counseling and therapy are self-improvement programs.  They can work wonders in that arena.  I’ve seen that from both sides of the couch, so to speak.  But the church is not a self-improvement program, no matter how deeply we may have convinced ourselves it is.  The church is a world-transformation program.  Our personal redemption comes primarily in the service of God’s vision of this world made other.  Certainly we are redeemed because we are loved deeply and passionately by God.  Certainly God believes that our individual lives matter.  But God’s ultimate concern is for all of creation.  We are saved, redeemed and made whole not so that we can feel better about ourselves or overcome our personal weaknesses, but so that we can get on board with God’s mission in our communities and God’s world.  We are given grace that we may embody grace to the world.  We are given mercy that we may embody mercy to the world.  We are given redemption that we may proclaim God’s offer of redemption to all.  Sanctifying grace benefits us personally, but it does so in order that we may share the grace we have been given for the transformation of the world.

Teaching self-esteem and unconditional self-acceptance?  Teaching coping strategies and problem-solving?  Helping people overcome fears, depression, anxiety, personal weaknesses and grief?  I’ve got lots of training and experience in that.  Retraining me in those things is, in my view, a step backward.  I’m interested in taking that next step, helping to usher in the reign of God where justice and mercy and grace abound.

Are we helping pastors do that?

Back when I heard Zan Holmes speak, he responded to questions about Rev. Jeremiah Wright (because that controversy was in the news at the time) and Holmes stated, “I would really like to hear the rest of the sermon, not just those 30 seconds.  In the African-American preaching tradition, the sermon revolves around naming sin then proclaiming grace.”

Well I, for one, hope that’s not only in the African-American church tradition, but I can say that I’ve heard too many sermons that do one really well but forget the other.

In my last post, I named sin as I saw it.  I was harsh and angry.  And I won’t back down from it.  I believe that if the experiences of candidates in the ordination process is one of hazing, being bullied, or abused then somebody has missed the mark somewhere.

I feel sick to my stomach when I read Matthew Kelly’s comment to my previous post.  He writes,

“In my own conference, there was a slide during the day long orientation to the BOMEC application process that literally said “we are trying to remove notions of ‘grace’ and ‘hope’ from this process”

Okay kiddies.  Get out your hymnals and open to Amazing Grace.  Tear that page out, wad it up and throw it in the trash. Grace Greater Than Our Sin?  Same Deal.  My Hope is Built?  Burn it.  No hope.  No grace.

No gospel.

I can understand a degree of stringency about deadlines and faithfulness to the process – but to intentionally remove all notions of grace and hope? That’s about as un-Christian as you can get.  And worse, there was no indication in Matthew’s comment that anyone stood up to say that was wrong.

I understand that the Board’s primary responsibility is to the Annual Conference and to the churches served by the Conference.  But far too often it seems we forget about that last part.  I’ve heard lots of pastors complain that all entities within the Conference exist to serve the Conference.

I’m not asking anyone to hold my hand and baby me through the process.  I’ve told the board on more than one occasion that my personal growing edge weakness (let’s call a spade a spade) is in administration.  If the board’s primary purpose (actually, sole purpose according to someone very well known within the denomination) is to make pastors for our churches, then they would look at our individual strengths and weaknesses and require us to fill in those gaps.  For many young pastors, CPE is a great option and perhaps a necessity.  For others (like me), some administrative apprenticeships would better serve to make us effective pastors for the Annual Conference and the churches it serves.

I do not believe that the board is out to get me.  I do not believe that the people who serve on the board are evil or bad.  I do not believe that they conspire to make us fail.  But I do believe that they may have forgotten that young, energetic, effective leadership is exactly what the UMC needs right now.  The way the process is being handled now, it is serving to take young, effective, energetic pastors and turn us into bitter, jaded, cynical, angry pastors.  Something in the system is sick with sin.

But God’s grace is good.  God’s grace is redemptive.  Don’t remove grace from the process.  We are people, not checklists.

With sin, we’re in a heap of trouble.  Without Grace, we’re screwed.  If we shut grace out of the process, our proclamations of grace from the pulpit will ring hollow and serve only as clanging gongs or noisy cymbals.  Redemption is only possible through God’s grace.

Taking a page from Tripp Fuller, a Baptist blogger with whom I agree more often than not, I’m going to make some New Year’s resolutions.  Tripp’s ideas are good ones so I’m going to modify them for myself in order to be conversant with his blog and intentional about my own.

First, the personal resolution: exercise.  I’ve lost a ton of weight but I really need to get into shape.  Not because I want to look good, but because I have low HDL cholesterol – which is a risk factor for heart problems.  I really need to build some muscle mass and bring that HDL up – and exercise is really the only reliable way.

Second, the Church resolution: EPIC preaching.   When I preached on Mary and Joseph presenting baby Jesus in the temple, I focused on Simeon’s words, “for my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples…”  I was struck with the image of a Japanese hibachi restaurant where the food is prepared in the presence of all who sit around it, and that a true worship experience is to sense God’s salvation cooked up in the presence of the people.  I want our worship to be more Experiential, Participatory, Image-rich, and Connective (to borrow Len Sweet’s formula, which is a good one).

And finally, the Blog resolutions.  Tripp lists these four ideas, which I think are good ones:

1. Question of the Year: What is Religion?
2. Gospel of the Year: Matthew
3. Theologian of the Year: Paul Tillich
4. Doctrine of the Year: Ecclesiology

So here’s my list:

1. Question of the Year: What is Worship?
2. Gospel of the Year: Matthew (hey, it’s Year B!)
3. Theologian of the Year: John Cobb (I’ve got some Cobb I haven’t read, and this should be good motivation).
4. Doctrine of the Year: the Trinity

So if I post, like Tripp, on each of those four questions twenty times in 2009 I should have eighty worthwhile blog posts.

Hopefully I can get around to adapting 12 songs  (or even collections of verses) by the Wesleys with new original music.  One per month should be doable.

And maybe I will succeed with RPM ‘09 (I failed in “08, but I got a couple of good songs out of it!) Oh crap, that’s in like a month!

I’ll continue playing Friday Five games and blogging about good CDs and musical discoveries.

worries himself sick?  Is that the way it’s gonna be?

So here I am, ten minutes before midnight on the day before we leave for a brief vacation to visit friends.  A Sunday off.  I should be celebrating.

But I ain’t.  The pianist, our lone musician in one congregation, is away at the School of Christian Mission this week, and I fully support her in that.  Our backup pianist has not returned my phone calls.  I know he’s a busy guy and it ain’t his fault, but I still worry.  They’ll either sing a cappella or along with a P&W CD, or a combination. Church two’s keyboardist is away at an out-of-state baseball tournament with her son & family.  They’re doing great, BTW.  So that leaves a guitarist and a harmonica player who are mostly used to giving musical support rather than leadership.  They’ll do fine.

They’ll do fine.

They’ll do fine.

If I say it enough times maybe I’ll start believing it.  I know in my head that all will be well.  Our lay speaker is great.  The music will take care of itself.  It’s not like they haven’t done this before.

It’s just that I’m a worry wart.

I’ll be glad when I get back from vacation so I can stop worrying and relax.  How sick is that?

I’ll do just fine.  They’ll do just fine.  I’ll do what I can, they’ll do what they can and God will take care of the rest.

I have always contended that church growth is an inside-out venture.  You begin to invite outsiders into the inner sanctuary by making changes to that sanctuary first.  To state it in negative terms, you can invite all the new people to church you want but if the worship is boring and there’s no spirit there, it ain’t gonna do no good.  They won’t want to come back.  To state it in more positive terms, the worship service must be vital and alive, passionate, spirit-filled and warm if you expect visitors to want to return.

My concept of my job description in worship is as follows: to facilitate an encounter with the living God who invites the congregation to live in an alternate reality we call the Kingdom of God.  There’s a lot to unpack there theologically, but I think you probably get the gist of what I’m saying.

A couple of posts from the Methodist Blogosphere have me thinking this week.  Andy Bryan writes about the futility of growing for growths’ sake, and how focusing primarily on the numbers is a big ol’ waste of time.  I couldn’t agree more.  (I recommend reading the whole post.  It’s great.)

Yes, the numbers are a problem.  But let me explain a little about my approach to that problem.

Problems and solutions are not necessarily related. This saying comes from Scott Miller, a psychotherapist of the Solution-Focused Brief Therapy stripe.  And I agree.  The traditional problem-solving method involves identifying and naming the specific problem and formulating a plan of attack in order to directly address the problem.  A frequent obstacle in the traditional problem-solving method is one of nomenclature.  Therapists waste an awful lot of time in fine-tuning the diagnosis (which is unfortunately necessary for billing purposes).  And we as pastors fall into the same trap.  We obsess about naming the current reality and formulate strategies based upon that named reality (or more precisely, upon that reality’s name).

So we start by asking the question, “how can we get more butts in pews?”  And we answer with things like film clips during the sermon, powerpoint and mediashout presentations, contemporary music, and being “culturally relevant” (whatever that means).  We start thinking in terms of target demographics and results-oriented approaches.

And it has nothing to do with Jesus or the Holy Spirit.  It’s about “butts in pews.”  And I don’t know much about your concept of the Kingdom of God, but mine isn’t focused on butts in pews.

The solution-focused approach does not begin with the problem.  It begins with a clear vision of a preferred future and dreams of moves from here to there.

When I attended a Solution-Focused Brief Therapy workshop I learned a great technique called “the miracle question.”  The miracle question is a way of envisioning a preferred future.  Here’s the question (paraphrased – I’m not sure I ever asked it exactly the same way twice): Let’s say a miracle happens tonight while you’re asleep that solves all your problems.  You wake up tomorrow morning with no idea the miracle happened because it happened while you were asleep.  What might be the first small signs to you that something has changed?

Small signs.

I was reminded of the miracle question for the church by Jeremy Smith at Hacking Christianity when he posted the following:

For our last section on this series, let’s apply this directly to the problem of leadership in churches. Jeremy Pryor, at From Eden to Zion, offers this scenario:

Perhaps pastors should imagine that they are going to have three more years in their parish as pastor—and that there will be no replacement for them when they leave.*blink* whoa. Powerful scenario.”

Catch the parallel?  It begins with a vision of a preferred reality – that of a lay-driven church – and asks for specifics of what that preferred reality looks like in light of each pastor’s (and church’s) current reality.  Answering that question involves creatively formulating small steps toward that goal.

So folks in my congregations can expect to hear that question reformulated for the church’s point of view rather than the pastor.  “Imagine the District Superintendent told you that I have only three years left as your pastor and that there will be no replacement for me.  However, he expects that this will continue as a thriving and growing congregation for many years to come.  What preparations would we need to start making now in order for that to happen?”

I really like reading Will Willimon’s blog.  (Is it okay to call him Will, or should I refer to him as Bishop?  I get the sense from his writings that he might prefer to be called by name). I tend to like his books as well.  In my biblical theology class we were required to read Resident Aliens and to engage its peculiar take on eschatology: that the end has already happened and the world as we once knew it is gone for good.  I found that to be a refreshing if challenging break from the Left Behind / dispensational theology of contemporary Christian culture (with which I disagree) and Johannine realized eschatology.  But I digress.

This morning Bishop Will really hit a home run.  As he reflected on the revitalization of older churches (a personal passion of mine), he dropped this bomb:

Warning: Dick Freeman, Thomas Muhumba, and Dale Cohen would have me add: No existing, older churches can be revitalized without risk, commitment, and a determination to be faithful to the mission of Christ no matter what.

If your church is in decline and not growing, it is because your congregation has decided to die rather than to live (alas, there is no in between when it comes to churches).

That last sentence just slays me.  It is prophetic and true.  It stirs up strongly mixed feelings.  I wanted to jump up and shout AMEN! and I wanted to squirm.

As a pastor my first instinct is to point out how that statement is easier to make from the Bishop’s position, or from academia.  It’s easier for a bishop or a professor to say that to a bunch of pastors than it is for a pastor to say to her dying congregation.

And yet, a pastor began the process of saving my home church by saying pretty much the same thing.  At a church council meeting Red Andricks said, “I wasn’t sent here to hold this church’s hand while you die.  If that’s all this church wants from me I will call the bishop and move on.”

Harsh, angry, prophetic words.  It reminds me of a sign that a counselor friend used to keep above her desk.  It read, “The truth will set you free.  But first it will PISS YOU OFF!”

(Truer words have never been spoken.  If you want to make someone angry tell lies about them, but if you want to make them REALLY angry tell the truth about them!)

And the church was not happy with Red’s words, primarily because they were true.  But Red’s leadership prompted serious growth in that church.  In a dying southern Illinois town that church grew from around 50 every Sunday to nearly 200 in a matter of a few years.  Maybe not the most stunning numbers to all of you, but when 200 is ten percent of the town’s population and too many jobs have moved away (and too many high school graduates follow), it’s absolutely astounding.  The church is not only a grown entity in terms of numbers but also in their religious commitment, community service and mission, spiritual growth, and priesthood of all believers.  They grew because they decided to do it right.

And because they decided not to die.

I wrestle with the Bishop’s words this morning because I need the spine to say them myself.  It is hard as an itinerant preacher who finds himself potentially serving congregations who decided to die 30 or 40 years ago.  But sometimes the doctor has to say, “this is going to hurt, but I have to do it before you can heal.”  Maybe pastors have to claim the prophetic voice that can say, “this truth is going to piss you off, but it’s going to set you free.”

I have for the past few years had a contentious relationship with my gas-powered weed eater.  It doesn’t like to start.  It doesn’t like to run.  It likes to flood when I’m trying to start it.  I constantly have to remove the spool to rethread the string.  It is greasy, dirty and it drips onto my garage floor.

But when it finally starts it’s great.  It has sufficient power to knock down some very heavy weeds.  If you can get the thing started (and that’s an ever-increasing IF, dear readers) the sidewalks, the landscaping and the foundation of the house will look beautiful.  Beautiful enough to keep me from setting the thing on fire and dancing on its ashes.

My utterly quotable brother-in-law Tim (I’m so jealous of his ability in that realm) says, “every two-stroke engine has its own magic formula for getting it to start.  You have to figure out how many times to hit the primer bubble, how high to set the choke, how many times to pull the cord.  The hard part is finding that magic formula and remembering it.”

Some churches are like that too.  If you can get them started awesome things will happen.  The challenge is getting them started.  You gotta prime the carburetor,  hit the choke, pull the cord a dozen times, set it to half-choke, pull a dozen more times, realize it’s flooded and leave it alone for a couple hours or a couple days, clean out the air filter, yank that starter rope until your arm threatens to fall off, hear it sputter to life, mess with the throttle just right until the thing runs well, then get to work and pray it lives to work another day.

Some churches will make you want to drop them in the yard and walk away mumbling and cursing to yourself.  Some churches seem content to hang in the garage, slowly dripping fuel and oil onto the concrete floor.

And some pastors need to have the mindset of a tinker, unafraid to take things apart, clean ‘em up, examine them, put them back together and see what happens.  Is there a possibility that you take it apart and discover that it’s either too broken to go back together or that you at least need professional help to get it started again?  Yep.  (Thank God for connexionalism in the UMC – that’s what District Superintendents and the other pastors in the covenant group are for).

Some churches can be exceedingly frustrating.  And as pastors we have to be unafraid to head down to Lowe’s to get some needle-nose pliers, a decent set of Allen wrenches, some vise-grips, a new air filter, some carb cleaner, a spark plug, and get to work experimenting.

Because as frustrating as some churches are, once you get ‘em running again the results can be beautiful.

Man, if this is typical of Boston Legal I may just have to start watching.  Oh, that our pastors had enough guts to speak such hard truths.

To dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free…” – Bob Dylan, Mr. Tambourine Man

One of the ongoing projects of this blog is to link my understanding of songwriting (and great rock songwriting is one of my true passions) with the art of creating sermons.  And my chief influence for thinking critically about the songwriting process is Bob Dylan.  Dylan is marvelous at writing socially conscious protest songs, moving love songs, poetic songs with nonsensical but deeply evocative lyrics, humorous songs, blues, and everything in between.

Today I want to look at Dylan’s poetic style, and specifically at one of his transitional songs that moved him from straightforward storytelling to swirling, evocative poetic imagery.  An early draft of A Hard Rain’s A Gonna Fall appears on Live at the Gaslight, 1962, so it has been with him essentially from the beginning. Yet it marks a significant step in his career because it transcends folk music as it was traditionally defined and delves into painting powerful, emotional word pictures that evoke a primal, emotional response.

Here are the lyrics, taken from Bobdylan.com:

Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, where have you been, my darling young one?
I’ve stumbled on the side of twelve misty mountains,
I’ve walked and I’ve crawled on six crooked highways,
I’ve stepped in the middle of seven sad forests,
I’ve been out in front of a dozen dead oceans,
I’ve been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard,
And it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, it’s a hard, and it’s a hard,
And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.

Oh, what did you see, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, what did you see, my darling young one?
I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all around it
I saw a highway of diamonds with nobody on it,
I saw a black branch with blood that kept drippin’,
I saw a room full of men with their hammers a-bleedin’,
I saw a white ladder all covered with water,
I saw ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken,
I saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children,
And it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard,
And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.

And what did you hear, my blue-eyed son?
And what did you hear, my darling young one?
I heard the sound of a thunder, it roared out a warnin’,
Heard the roar of a wave that could drown the whole world,
Heard one hundred drummers whose hands were a-blazin’,
Heard ten thousand whisperin’ and nobody listenin’,
Heard one person starve, I heard many people laughin’,
Heard the song of a poet who died in the gutter,
Heard the sound of a clown who cried in the alley,
And it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard,
And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.

Oh, who did you meet, my blue-eyed son?
Who did you meet, my darling young one?
I met a young child beside a dead pony,
I met a white man who walked a black dog,
I met a young woman whose body was burning,
I met a young girl, she gave me a rainbow,
I met one man who was wounded in love,
I met another man who was wounded with hatred,
And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard,
It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.

Oh, what’ll you do now, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, what’ll you do now, my darling young one?
I’m a-goin’ back out ‘fore the rain starts a-fallin’,
I’ll walk to the depths of the deepest black forest,
Where the people are many and their hands are all empty,
Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters,
Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison,
Where the executioner’s face is always well hidden,
Where hunger is ugly, where souls are forgotten,
Where black is the color, where none is the number,
And I’ll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it,
And reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it,
Then I’ll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin’,
But I’ll know my song well before I start singin’,
And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard,
It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.

“A dozen dead oceans.”  Okay, literally we have only named five but Dylan sings of a dozen.  Clearly he moves us out of a literal world and into a world of perception.  This, in my reading, is what “John” does in Revelation.  Most of the imagery is undecipherable on its own, but taken together it paints a stark picture of a world in which judgment is coming.  The “darling young son” (in my reading) seeks in the final verse to find redemption in a community that sees the world in a different light, stands firm in its convictions, and proclaims its message to anyone with ears to hear.  But none of this is done in so many words.  It’s not spoon-fed to us.  Bob assumes our intelligence, and in so doing he manages to abduct our imaginations.

When is the last time you heard a preacher use an image as nonsensical but evocative as “a roomful of men with their hammers a-bleeding?”  Have you ever heard a sermon with swirling imagery that makes no sense literally but grabs your attention and doesn’t let go?

Dylan doesn’t just sing a song here, he creates a world and holds it up for us to see.  Sermons should do that.  We, as preachers, are called to do our best to see the world as God sees it – broken and offered redemption – and to draw the congregation into that vision.  And maybe we occasionally need to lure our listeners in with evocative poetic imagery like white ladders all covered with water, young men wounded by love and by hatred, bleeding hammers, clowns crying in the alley, bloody black branches.

Let the images tell the story.  Sometimes stories are told better with poetry and metaphor than with narrative and verbs.

This is turning out to be a cool discussion.  So to further unpack my thoughts I want to try and make sense of my utterly romantic view of art and its relationship with the art/craft/science of preaching.

First I don’t want to set up a false dichotomy.  While it would be fun to post with something like “which would you rather hear – a sermon that is theologically and biblically solid but passionless, or a sermon that is passionate but theologically shallow?” such questions are ultimately unsatisfying, simply because the correct answer is obvious.  The key is balance.  Passion vs. ideology is not a true dichotomy – one can be legitimately passionate about one’s ideology.

• The ratio of inspiration to perspiration is often quite different for sermons than for an art project or a musical work.  I’m not under pressure to finish songs – they get done when they get done.  Sermons have to be ready at 9:00 Sunday Morning or we have a problem.
• Ideology certainly plays a part in my preaching.  There are certain theological centers around which many sermons are formed.  I have a theological worldview and undeniable theological commitments (some might label that ideology) that informs my reading and communication of the gospel in the text.
• Art (for the most part) is an enduring form – something is created that can be re-viewed, re-heard or re-experienced.  It is placed on exhibit.  One can go see a sculpture or painting, or purchase a Rolling Stones album or rent a DVD.  My sermons, on the other hand, have the enduring quality of a piece of performance art – once it’s over it’s over.  It exists only for a moment in time.  There are no manuscripts, notes, or (currently) recordings.  The moment passes and the sermon exists only in the collective memory of the congregation.

As one who crafts and delivers sermons I take seriously the romantic-artistic aspect of preaching as I understand it.  Yet I recognize that often the passion generated from and within the sermon comes from someplace outside myself.  At its best the sermon displays the intersection of God’s passions, the congregations passions, and mine – and points a way forward into a reality that we call the Kingdom of God.

At the same time I pray that sometimes God works through the sermon despite all my efforts.