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Thanksgiving Sermon: Keep Peddling | Rick Kavanaugh

navets —  November 7, 2011 — Leave a comment

SERMON: Thanksgiving Sermon: Keep Peddling

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DOWNLOAD: Sermon Audio (.mp3) | Sermon Outline (.pdf)

BIO: Rick Kavanaugh has been in pastoral ministry for nearly 30 years. For 3 of those years Rick has served as the senior pastor at High Point First Wesleyan Church, a large congregation in the suburbs of High Point, NC. Rick urges, “it is more vital today than ever that we preach the word of God and to that end we must make it a life-long habit to meditate on the Scriptures.”

Lenny: Rick, you did several things early in the sermon that I think contributed to its impact. You used peddling a bike uphill as a metaphor for giving thanks to God always, especially when it’s difficult. You also framed your sermon with a mantra when you proclaimed “Peddling keeps us from coasting” in our journey with Christ. Your use of M&M, the metaphor and the mantra, gave your sermon the power of clarity and memorability. Do you try to use these devices often in your sermon?

Rick: I don’t always use an object lesson, but if there is one that fits well I think it helps to make an idea more tangible. I like to summarize the main focus of the sermon into a simple phrase. Andy Stanley calls it “a sticky statement.” I find that helps to keep the message on target and leaves the congregation with at least one idea they can remember.

Lenny: I noticed in the video of this sermon that you preached without notes. How do you prepare to preach with limited or no reliance upon your sermon notes?

Rick: I write a manuscript and then reduce that to a bulleted outline format. I transfer that to 3×5 cards and then memorize the cards. The main ideas and points are memorized but the specific wording is extemporaneous. At first I was nervous about preaching without notes because I was afraid of having a brain freeze, so I pray a lot! I like to preach that way because it gives me complete eye contact. It also guards me from blind spots. When I preached with notes, I would notice things after I spoke. I would think, “Now I see that problem. I wish I had seen that before I preached it.” Though there are always many things I wish I could change, the process of memorizing helps me see more before I preach. Because it is by memory I run through the sermon 5 or 6 times before preaching it.

Lenny: So often in sermons we put the completion, or application, of the sermon entirely on the shoulders of listeners. While you did challenge us to do our part, you also explored and emphasized the role of God in giving us the grace-filled capacity to “give thanks in all circumstances.” I have come to the conclusion that to truly preach the Gospel, we must point out not only what we must do but what God did and does for us. Why did you feel it was important to highlight this for your congregation?

Rick: I agree with you Lenny. The gospel is about what Christ has done and is doing in us. We can get stuck in our journey when we think the Christian life is about living our lives for Jesus. What God is really after is for us to reckon ourselves as dead and allow Him to live His life through us.

Lenny: You exposed the “rose-colored glasses” through which the Church has too often interpreted Romans 8:28. Things don’t always go our way even if we love God with all our heart. Do you feel the people in your community and/or church context have this shallow, simplistic view? How can preachers help offset this popular view of God as the cosmic lucky rabbit’s foot?

Rick: I think the popular trends in the North American church are drifting toward what Bonhoeffer called, “easy believism.” Christ calls us to take up our cross and follow Him. We are to march to our death so that He can live through us. Those who wish to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. I don’t think the church would deny that, because it is stated plainly in Scripture. It’s just that we are perhaps out of balance in that we shy away from that message. It is important to keep a balanced perspective.

Lenny: About two-thirds of the way through your sermon you described with passion what God through Christ has done for us. Your listeners clapped at the climax of Christ. There is some debate among homileticians about whether or not Christ should, in fact, be the climax in every sermon. What do you think? Should every sermon, even those preached on texts that don’t focus on Christ, climax with Christ?

Rick: I wouldn’t say that every sermon should climax with Christ, because that would be disingenuous, because some of my sermons do not. However, Paul gave us the example when he said he preached Christ and him crucified. The Reformers believed that Christ is at the center of every passage, even the Old Testament Scriptures. He is the theme of the entire Bible. I don’t think we could go wrong if we kept Him at the center of every message.

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It Is Well | Amanda Drury

navets —  April 18, 2011 — 3 Comments

SERMON: It Is Well

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DOWNLOAD: Sermon Audio (.mp3) | Sermon Outline (.pdf)

BIO: Amanda Drury is a PhD candidate in Practical Theology with an emphasis on Youth Ministry at Princeton Theological Seminary and an ordained minister in The Wesleyan Church. Amanda has served in various ministry contexts. She is called to the ministry of teaching college students who are preparing to serve as ministers in the local church and para-church contexts.

CONVERSATION:

Lenny: Many preachers wrestle with what to preach on Mother’s Day. We think, “Do I preach a sermon focused on moms and risk irrelevance or, worse, offense toward those who are not moms?” Right of the bat of your sermon, you connect with those for whom Mother’s Day is not a “walk in the park.” You also connect with a wide range of people beyond merely those who are moms. How did you intentionally develop a sermon that would connect with all people, without ignoring the importance of mothers and Mother’s Day?

Amanda: I, too, wrestled with the idea of what to preach on this day. I kept wondering how my dear friend who suffered a miscarriage and has since struggled with infertility would feel on this day. In the end I decided to write the sermon for her. After every point of the sermon I’d ask myself, “Is this something I could comfortably say out loud to Alison?” If it wasn’t then I cut it.

Lenny: You could have preached this “It is Well” sermon in a simplistic, pie in the sky, “everything will work out in the end” kind of way. Instead you dealt with the honest angst elicited by this difficult biblical passage. Why did you think it was necessary for you to wrestle with instead of run from the discomfort in the text?

Amanda: This sermon flowed out of my deepest anxieties about being a Christian: how can I rectify a loving God with the deep suffering I see? I had been struggling with the promise from Romans, “and hope does not disappoint,” for a long time. “But it seems like hope does disappoint over and over again,” was my reaction. It seemed like a fitting time to tackle my questions here.

Lenny: Frederick Buechner, in his book Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairy Tale, suggests that unless the preacher is honest about the bad news, people will not hear the good news from the preacher’s lips. Do you think people were more receptive to the good news because you spoke to the bad news with honesty and integrity?

Amanda: This was a tough one for me. I wrestled off and on about whether or not to include my story. I was afraid I would shift the focus too much to myself. I wanted people to be able to insert their own story rather than feeling like they had to support me in mine. In the end I decided to share my story, though I’m still not sure that was the right move.

Lenny: How did you structure, or form, this sermon? You didn’t use the traditional form, which is the linear point by point form. It seemed to me you used a narrative logic form that is structured on setting, problem, plot, climax, and resolution. Tell us about how you formed the sermon for flow and affect?

Amanda: Oh dear, this is a tough question to answer. This sermon came to me in bits and pieces over the period of a week or two. When it came time to actually pull the sermon together I took all of my bits of paper, napkins I had written on, and pages from my journal and tried to put them all together like a giant jigsaw puzzle. I just kept moving them around until they felt right. I then ran through the flow with a good friend who is an excellent preacher and asked for his feedback. I was so grateful for having him as a sounding board!

Lenny: You obviously let the biblical text take the lead in the homiletic dance. Yet, you didn’t just download exegetical facts you interpreted the text in the light of our 21st century realities. Tell us how you dug into the text (i.e., what tools did you use and what steps did you take into the exegesis) without losing sight of the contemporary context?

Amanda: I spent about 80% of my time forming and asking my own questions. I’ve found that when my first task is to crack a commentary my own creativity dwindles. I try to exhaust my own questions and observations about the text before I reach for the commentaries. This allows me to mine for what I find interesting and practical before jumping to the more factual-data components. I then use commentaries to help inform my questions. It may sound egotistical, but I often go into a sermon assuming the congregation is more interested in the questions a regular reader brings to the text rather than hearing a reading from a commentary. I don’t mean to downplay the importance of drawing from commentaries—I am so grateful for what I’ve gleaned from commentaries—I just want to keep them in the proper place. Commentaries help inform your sermon. They don’t write it.

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That Just Happened – Trust Him | AJ Thomas

navets —  January 20, 2011 — 5 Comments

SERMON: “That Just Happened – Trust Him”

Download:

DOWNLOAD: Sermon Audio (.mp3) | Sermon Outline (.pdf)

BIO: Pastor AJ Thomas leads a 3 year old church that he planted in the heart of downtown Halifax, the largest city in Atlantic Canada. The mid-sized congregation consists primarily of well-educated professionals in health care, education, and business. The primary age range of his congregation is 18-35 years old. On a typical Sunday, Deep Water Wesleyan Church will have in attendance some very strong believers, some uncommitted but open seekers, and lots of new believers. Halifax is immersed in a very post-Christian culture that is often hostile to the church. AJ, who has been serving in pastoral ministry for 9 years, says that our job as preachers “is to make things clear not simple.”

Follow AJ on Twitter.

CONVERSATION:

Lenny: You preached on a very important, often overlooked, and extremely challenging topic when you tackled this sermon on prayer and miracles. The relationship between prayer and miracles is, in my estimation, one of the hardest topics upon which to preach in a day when this topic has either been abused or diminished. Yet, the Gospel focuses quite often on this topic. Why would you dare to tackle the relationship between prayer and miracles? Where did the need for this sermon come from? What was going on in you, in the church, and in the community that raised the issue of praying for miracles?

AJ: I wish I had a great story to tell here but I don’t. Truth is, I decided to preach through the miracles in John and this was on the list. I’m tempted to say there was nothing going on in our community that raised this issue but I don’t know that. I tend to just preach on what the Holy Spirit or the text (if I’m preaching through a book or section) lay out for me and trust God to make it relevant. That said, anyone who has been walking with Jesus very long would know what it is to pray for something and not see the answer come right away.

Lenny: This sermon contained both obvious relevance and profound theology. The mistaken assumption of too many preachers is that the sermon cannot be both theologically rich and extremely relevant. Your sermon maintained both. How did you do it?

AJ: I think that is ultimately a theological/philosophical issue. If you don’t believe theology is relevant then you need to find a new line of work. If you go into the study of a passage with the assumption that what is being said here theologically has significant implications for our daily lives then it can’t help but come out in your preaching. Practically speaking, I try to constantly question myself when I’m preparing. Prepare like you are in a conversation with a huge skeptic or a cynic. I’m both, so that part comes fairly easy. When you make a theological statement, answer the “so what” question. Why does this truth matter? If you can’t answer it quickly and easily, they won’t be able to answer it at all. On the other hand, when you make some sort of practical assertion you have to answer the “why” question. Why should I do that? What is the truth that makes that the right thing to do? Don’t just prepare something to say, prepare something you can defend against rigorous questioning because whether you hear them or not the questions are being asked.

Lenny: You kept stressing the importance of persisting in prayer. To be honest, I wondered if maybe people were being set-up for disappointment. Would listeners conclude, “as long as I persist in prayer there will be a pot of gold at the end of my prayer rainbow”? However, toward the end of your sermon you talked about how persistent prayer actually begins to align our prayers with the will of God. In other words, I think you were suggesting that as we persist in prayer God often modifies what we are praying for? Why did you feel the pastoral need to include this caveat in your sermon?

AJ: First and foremost I just wanted them to hear the truth. That’s what the passage points to and that’s what reality bears out. Secondly, I want people to see a bigger view of their spiritual life than the current crisis. When we pray we are usually asking God to do something specific and immediate; He is listening but He is also playing the long game and forming us into the image of His Son. And, thirdly, I absolutely abhor the prosperity heresy with it’s notion that faith is about how we manipulate God and I wanted to make it clear that if change needs to happen it’s in us not in God.

Lenny: There were several things I really appreciated about your sermon, but the element I most appreciated was your use of a mantra that, it seems, really captured the thrust of your sermon. You repeated the mantra, “hold tightly to the request, but loosely to the process.” That sentence made your sermon clear and memorable. When did that mantra surface in the development of your sermon? Do you typically insert a profound and memorable mantra like this one in your sermons?

AJ: My sermon prep is a pretty messy process so I can’t really say for sure where that statement came together, but I’m guessing somewhere towards the middle. I love to give people a central statement like that and spend 45 minutes packing all the meaning I can into it because I think they can take it with them. I try to do it as often as I can, but I don’t always get there and some messages just don’t lend themselves as well to that sort of thing. However, I think it’s a great strategy when you can pull it off.

Lenny: You used three stories about couples who struggled to conceive children. Your aim was to highlight how God used a different process in response to the prayers of each couple. Why did you decide to focus your illustration space on the issue of couples wanting children?

AJ: The same reason you pick any illustration – it was the best one I had. It is very relevant to our congregation since we have many young couples who are at the “baby-having” stage. One of the couples I mentioned had shared their story on Sunday morning a few months earlier, so that created some continuity. The biggest thing was that it gave me a way to show three different processes for the same request. I thought this highlighted the idea better than three different requests with three different processes.

Lenny: How did you invite people to respond to the sermon? Although the audio didn’t capture the response, I’m wondering if you had a prayer time at the end. Did you actually invite people, right there on the spot, to persist in praying for the thing they were tempted to quit praying for?

AJ: If memory serves me correctly, we had people stand and I prayed for them. Then, I encouraged them to take some time during the worship (we do more music after the sermon than before) to pray about whatever that thing is.

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