It's NOT about YOU!

Another great reminder of the role that we as preachers play on the gospel stage. Unfortunately most of us are arrogant and full of our own delusions of grandeur the majority of the time until someone or something knocks us off our high horse. Because of our propensity to think of ourselves more highly than anyone ought to we become more concerned with our own "performance" and the well wishes and applause of our people rather than remembering that it isn't about us...it's about the gospel.

See the excerpt below from Shurden's journal.

PREACHING:  IT’S NOT ABOUT YOU. IT’S ABOUT THE MUSIC:

South Carolina Preacher Robert Guffey tells of instructions that he received from his band directors in junior high and high school. They would say:

          “Ladies and gentlemen, if you cannot hear the playing of the person beside you, you are playing too loud. This is not about you; it is about the music. It’s not about your ego. If there is a solo in the music for you to play, I’ll let you know. It’s not about whether or not your mother is sitting on the front row and you want to stand out. It’s not about you. It’s about the music.”

I was going to preach for my first time in chapel at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. I was nervous, really nervous. The day before the sermon I told ole jubilant, jolly Wayne Ward who had preached in that chapel a hundred times how apprehensive I was. Wayne dismissed it, “Oh, Buddy, you are just worrying about how you are going to do. It is not about you. Rare back and preach to us. Quit worrying about being a hit.”

Almost four decades after Wayne Ward said those words to me, I can truthfully say that I never get up to preach that I do not worry about how I am going to do. I have to keep telling myself, “It is not about me; it is about the music, the gospel that I preach.” My sense is that worrying about how you are going to do is not all bad. It’s just not that important.

Stub

A great reminder about forgiveness from Walter B. Shurden's most recent volume of his preaching journal.

“STUB” AS SPIRITUAL METAPHOR:

          Like Andy Catlett in Wendell Berry’s novel Remembering, each of us has a “stub” of some kind. In a stupid accident for which he could not forgive himself, Andy lost his right hand in a corn harvesting machine. After that, he lived with a sense of not being whole. Who doesn’t?

“He raged, and he raged at his rage, and nothing that he had was what he wanted.” Because he could not accept his “stub,” Andy thought, erroneously, that others could not accept him. At the edge of his anger at everything and everyone else was his anger at himself. And so, Flora, his wife, said to him one day:

                   “Do you know what you need?”

                   “What?”

                   “Forgiveness. And I want to forgive you. All of us do. And you need more than ours. But you must forgive yourself.”

          Each of us has a “stub” of some kind, some physical deformity, some emotional scar, some public moral failure, or some clandestine sin. It weighs us down like concrete. No day passes that we do not think about our “stubs,” those marks that make us unacceptable to ourselves.  And, of course, if we do not find a way to restore joy to our stubby lives, we will live joylessly because of a deep, deep anger toward ourselves. Beyond the forgiveness of God and the forgiveness of others lies the really hard work of forgiving ourselves.

Learning From The Early Church Fathers

Great article in First Things about John Chrysostom. Truly a great preacher to inspire future generations of preachers.

Wrightians and the Neo-Reformed: 'All One in Christ Jesus' | Christianity Today | A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction

This was an article that I read after a recent post, http://tonypags.blogspot.com/2010/04/theological-happenings.html about the theological rumblings within conservative, evangelical groups. I thought it made some interesting points. Let me reiterate to anyone who questions my own theology, I have a great appreciation for both John Piper and N. T. Wright, as well as R. C. Sproul and others for all of them have been influential in helping to shape my own understanding of scripture, God, and my wicked heart. However, I am increasingly burdened that the prayer of Jesus in John 17 for all his disciples to be one, seems to be moving backwards rather than forward in realizing that goal.

Wrightians and the Neo-Reformed: 'All One in Christ Jesus' | Christianity Today | A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction

The Atonement

I respect Phillip Yancey and his thoughts on just about anything. When I saw this recent article from Christianity Today I was intrigued. Yancey has such a way of putting things together in ways that summarize but don't reduce theology down to a skeleton of its former self. Here is the link http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2009/may/32.72.html