If you can GRILL, you can PREACH!

-
One of my favorite pastimes is cooking on the grill. My family has a joke about it because I always say it's a great night for the grill, despite the weather. When I grill, I know there are a few things that has to be done in order for my family to enjoy a nice steak; food has to be selected and prepared; I have to spend time at the grill; and I have to know when to take it off and serve it. I believe the same is true for preaching. 
  • Selection and Preparation: Much like my New York strips, sermons need to be prayerfully selected and prepared. I think it's a tragedy when preachers use everyone else's sermons instead of getting on their face before God, asking for a word from heaven. I'm not against borrowing sermon ideas or series ideas...but sermons need your uniqueness and so does your church. Some people borrow sermons and allow the Spirit to tweak it and make it a perfect fit for the people who gather on Sunday. Others borrow sermons because they're too lazy to pursue God or they're looking for the newest coolest series. Sermon selection and preparation should always be led by the Spirit. God is still speaking to his messengers. 

  • Manning the Grill: I have noticed that if I am cooking for my family and a few friends, I can produce a killer steak while having a conversation on the deck. However, when ALL my family comes over, I have less time for conversations, but have to spend more time in preparation and cooking; if not, the quality goes out the window. Here's a truth that only preachers will get; preaching to seventy people is different than preaching to seven hundred. You can pull off a Saturday night special with seventy people (you know, pull one out of the hat around midnight on Saturday) for a while; but the larger your church gets, you'll need to spend more and more time praying, preparing, and building your sermon. This means you need plenty of alone time with God to receive and build a great gospel message. 

  • Serving the Steak: My favorite part of grilling is pulling those mouth-watering steaks off the grill and placing them in front of my family. My mission is accomplished. I think as preachers, we need to know when the sermon is done. There's nothing worse than preachers who preach a dynamic sermon, only to kill it by chasing rabbits with stories that don't matter. Never confuse quantity over quality. It's not how long you preach, it's what you preach. Know what to say, but know when to shut up and allow your people to consume what you have selected, prepared, and served them. 
What are your thoughts?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Creating a Healthy Leadership Board in your Church

-
Image
Healthy churches have healthy boards. Regardless of the term (elder board, board of directors or leadership board, etc), it is invaluable to have a team of men and women who keep their finger on the pulse of the church. Leadership boards should be made up by individuals who love Jesus, the mission of the church and the pastor (in that order), who are called and gifted to help the church move forward. One of the greatest challenges of creating healthy boards is determining who should be on the board. There are scriptures that define what the heart of church leadership should look like (1 Timothy 3:1-7, Titus 1:7), but selecting the right people can certainly create anxiety, especially due to the decisions they are tasked with. For example, most leadership boards hire or fire the lead pastor, determine the salary of the lead pastor, approve the annual budget and sign off on building projects or acquiring property. So yeah, it's a lot of responsibility.  Whether your church is install
Read more

Staying Alive in a Growing Church

-
   There's lots of things in the world that creates energy and excitement; a championship basketball game, the Super Bowl, or even a good movie. Yet I believe there's hardly anything that can compete with the excitement of a growing church, especially if you're a pastor or serve on staff at a church. Every pastor wants his church to grow; and when it does, it is exhilarating. However, with success comes stress and when a lead pastor and staff ignores the stress, the season of success can be short lived. Typically growth-related stress hurts us because it causes us to neglect crucial areas in our own personal lives.      Here are three train-wrecks you want to avoid as your church grows. As a lead pastor, you need to make sure your staff is aware of these as well.  If you'll take care of these, chances are, you and your staff will stay alive and endure the stress that comes with the success of every growing church.  Grocery-Store Death : Too often pastors and le
Read more

Building an Invite Culture in your Church

-
Image
Growing a church isn't easy. It takes dedication, hard work and good planning. Even though there are tons of books and blogs out there about it, many  churches  still struggle in  attracting new people.  Despite the latest greatest growth strategies, friends inviting friends is still the most effective way to bring new people to church. When people become intentional about bringing their unchurched friends to church, they get to witness life change up close and personal...and when that happens, the church moves into a culture of invite.  Here’s three things to help build an invite culture in your church:  Design a gospel-centered invite culture Determine  your invite platforms Develop  people to be path leaders  Creating the Design  A healthy invite culture must be designed around the why more than the what . When we focus on the  why , it removes us from the what and automatically answers the who ,  because  the why is always about people who aren'
Read more