I had the opportunity to attend a two-day conference on preaching and teaching at Willow Creek Community church on October 18-19, 2004. “Communicating in Today’s Reality” consisted of six outstanding sessions: Bill Hybels “Leading, Teaching, and Having a Life”, Ed Young, Jr. “Preaching to Seekers and Believers”, Erwin Raphael McManus “Speaking from Mars Hill”, Larry Crabb “When the Wells Run Dry”, Richard Allen Farmer “Making the Mummies Dance”, and Ken Davis “The Power of Focus.”

The presentations focused broadly around the topics of self-care and the clear communication of the Gospel. Here are some of the key insights gleaned from the conference.

Self Care

1) Honestly assess one’s calling, talents, and capabilities. Bill Hybels challenged those in attendance to “pay the price of ruthless self-honesty” in order to discover a sustainable life in ministry. First, he stressed the need to revisit our own callings. Calling is the foundation for a sustainable ministry. If our calling is not sure, then we will waver in the face of any challenge or setback. Hybels emphasized that we as individuals are responsible for knowing our calling. Secondly, Hybels talked about the necessity of understanding our pastoral gifts and particularly knowing their rank order. Pastors need to know their top three gifts. Furthermore, pastors need to know which of their gifts energize them, which gifts deplete them, and which gifts neither energize nor deplete them. The lesson here is balance. We pastors must learn to balance the amount of time spent utilizing our gifts so that we can remain effective for the long haul. For example, teaching and preaching are the two gifts that energize me. I also have gifts in leadership and administration, but I find that, when I employ these gifts, I tire quickly. Thus, if I find a week in which I have to expend a great deal of time in administration, I have learned to balance this by blocking out time to reenergize my internal batteries. Last Hybels pressed pastors to weigh our ministry capabilities. If we want to find a sustainable pattern of ministry, we need to know our ministry “fit.” If we are best suited for service in a rural region, we should not long for an appointment in a suburban area. Think of ministry capabilities in terms of three areas: Geography (rural, suburban, or urban), Size of Church (small, mid-size, or large), and Demographics (mono-cultural or multicultural). Knowing our ministry limits serves to help us to function at peak effectiveness.

2) Cultivate deep community. Larry Crabb warned the audience of the tragedy of an unobserved life. Dr. Crabb in his ministry of counseling and teaching is encountering too many pastors who have lost a deep sense of self because they live their lives in isolation and alienation from others. He offered this memorable quote: “Ministry is not worth being in it if I can’t be myself when I am in it.” Christian community is not merely something for the laity. Pastors also need to be in mutual and authentic relationships with others. As you read this, ask yourself: do I have 2 or 3 persons with whom I have no secrets? Obviously, one’s spouse should be one such person, but our clergy spouses are often as alienated and bereft of deep community as we are. We owe it to our marriages, our own self-being, and our ministries to develop and nurture relationships in which we can be transparent.
 

Communicating Clearly

1) Develop and deploy teams for sermon preparation. The great communicators of our day spend 20+ hours a week in sermon preparation. This, however, is unrealistic for many pastors who do not have a large staff to assist them. Ed Young, Jr., offered a team oriented model that takes some of the pressure of sermon preparation off of the pastor. By using teams, Young is able to add hours of preparation to the weekend message because others are doing aspects of the work for him. The key to using teams is advanced planning. If we are content to work week to week, teams will be of little help. Experiment by planning a quarter of messages in advance. Then, pull together a team of worship planners. Your team should be diverse in terms of age, sex, and Christian maturity level. This way you will gain the perspectives of the different groups within the congregation. Share your thumbnail sketches of the message topics for the quarter. Brainstorm regarding potential illustrations, film clips, props, and music that could be used in support of the message. You will find that the use of teams will help free you to focus on the exegesis and take the pressure off of constantly having to find or create illustrations. Your worship team can also help you to evaluate the worship services after the fact. Beyond helping you craft better sermons, you will also be offering a training ground for other teachers and possibly future pastors in your church.

2) Learn to read the Bible through the eyes of unbelievers. Erwin Raphael McManus is one of the most exciting young church leaders in the world today. He is lead pastor of Mosaic Church in Los Angeles, California. He has demonstrated a penchant for reaching a young, urban, multi-cultural population with the gospel and deploying them in sacrificial service to the world. Large percentages of his congregation participate in yearly mission trips. During his session, McManus stressed the need for pastors and teachers to read the Bible through the eyes of unbelievers. He argued that the Bible contains everything that the Church needs to reach the world for Christ, but that for too long, we in the Church have focused on transmitting the religion of Christianity rather than the true power of the Gospel which is an encounter with God through Jesus Christ. We as preachers and teachers need to learn to read the Bible anew so that we can make it understandable to a generation that is far removed from the cultural Christianity in which many of us were raised. We need to learn to speak Christianity in the language of the street rather than merely in the language of the Church, which is largely incomprehensible to those who stand outside of it. McManus challenged the reluctance of many in the institutional church to change our ways by saying, “If we’re not convinced that people are worshipping the wrong god, we will never pay the price to reach them.”

3) Choose the right words. Richard Allen Farmer delivered one of the finest lectures that I have heard on the use of language in the sermon. Farmer challenged us to not be content with merely crafting good sermons, but rather to take the good sermon and make it great. Toward this end, he offered a number of suggestions. Here are a few: Pray for words that will stick with your audience for twenty years. Always prepare manuscripts so that you can play with the wording of key phrases and edit the sermon before delivery. Listen regularly to other great communicators in order to learn how they help their audiences to follow their words and how they use language. Read widely both for illustrations and for learning to craft descriptions of the world around us.

4) Maintain focus. Ken Davis convincingly demonstrated the need for every sermon or lesson to be focused around a concrete goal. Too many of our sermons are ineffective because they are disorganized and ill-planned. Davis argues that we need to craft our sermons with the goal of the message in mind. What is it that we desire our audience to think, do, or care about in light of the biblical text that we are interpreting? Once the answer to this question is clear, we then build the sermon around this single goal. Every joke, illustration, bible reference, or sermon point serves to move the audience toward the goal, or it is dropped from the message. Focus requires discipline, but its fruits will be an audience in whom God can work mightily through our proclamation of His Word. Davis ended his presentation and the conference as a whole by exhorting us, “Be relentless in your pursuit of being better.” Our people deserve our best. Delivering clear, focused biblical sermons also honors the God whom we serve.

As you may have gathered, I found the conference well worth the registration costs. The above paragraphs contain only a fraction of the insight and learning that I gained. Beyond the outstanding teaching, those in attendance were treated to inspiring worship, cutting edge drama, and the opportunity to network with like-minded evangelical pastors and lay leaders. I found the entire experience to be deeply encouraging and I returned home inspired and empowered to grow in my effectiveness as a preacher and teacher of the Gospel.

Additional information about conferences offered through the Willow Creek Association is available at www.willowcreek.com. You will also find several of the above mentioned sessions available for purchase on DVD.

by Dr. Brian D. Russell
Associate Professor of Biblical Studies
Asbury Theological Seminary – Florida
Orlando, Florida