Preaching Temptations

From an old sermon…”The desire to please people is poison for disciples. It leads to tentative, careful, moderate, safe, speech and action. It makes us cowards. Here’s how it works in the church. To be crass for a moment: full pews translate into cash. Cash equals survival. If you leave, or stop giving Good Shepherd dies. There is a lot of temptation for me in that.

On top of that, for pastors, a big church means success, influence, glory. You go to any pastors’ conference and sooner or later in almost every conversation someone will ask: “so, how many people do you have on a Sunday morning?” It’s tempting to shape the music, the liturgy, the sermon in a way calculated to please the most people – to steer away from difficult topics, skip hard passages, to mold my words to fit what I believe most want to hear.

Eight years ago a former prominent leader here said: “You’ll know my opinion of your sermon by where I sit. If I’m bored or I don’t like what I hear, I’ll go sit in the stairwell.” We were small then and couldn’t afford to lose anyone. So when he’d do that I’d freak out. I had to decide – and it’s not past tense, I still struggle with this – I have to decide every week, whom do I serve? If my goal is to keep the numbers up, then there are passages I’ll never preach, texts I’ll de-fang, soften or twist, true things I’ll never say. But if my goal is to be your pastor – to love you by explaining God’s word and applying it, then sometimes I’ll be unpopular, sometimes you won’t like me. I’ll say things you wish I didn’t. There will be times when people leave because of what I say.”