Preaching to Satisfy Your Ego

Simplicity. Clarity. Brevity.

These are the very top virtues for any sermon.

Of course, you have to be true to the text you're preaching. That's absolutely important. But assuming you understand the text at all, then your sermon needs to aim at: simplicity, clarity and brevity.

If you are not aiming at those virtues, you are doing your congregation an incredible disservice. And why are you doing it? To satisfy your ego.

Yes, that's right. I'm posting anonymously and I'm about to say something that many ministers will consider an unfair, unjust judgment that lacks all the facts.

But I'm doing it anyway because I've been in that pulpit. I know what tempts ministers and their egos.

If you are not aiming at simplicity, clarity and brevity as your top three goals after doing justice to the text, it is because your ego has gotten in the way.

Why do I say this? It's quite simple really. Suppose that your number one concern after doing justice to the text was your listeners. Suppose that you were most interested in their best interests. What would that look like?

It looks like this: simplicity, clarity, brevity. When your biggest concern is being understood by your hearers, what isn't your biggest concern?

Impressing your audience.

Now stop and think about that for a minute. If you are concerned about impressing your audience, what will you necessarily NOT care about? You won't care about whether or not they actually understand what you're saying. You won't care if they get it. They don't need to get it to be impressed.

In fact, it's usually helpful if they don't get it, if you want them to be impressed. After all, all they really need to know is how smart you are, or how well read you are, or how good a job you do of crafting an excellent sermon. And if they come away saying, "Man, he knows so much! I'll never know as much as him!" then they're impressed with you, even though they didn't understand.

Who, you ask, are these crazy ministers who care more about impressing their audience than communicating with them? Well, frankly, most of them.

Oh, now I've got you agitated I suppose. But it's true. They want you to think they're brilliant.

You don't believe me do you? Ok, I'll prove it. This Sunday, after the service, when you're shaking your pastor's hand, tell him, "Hey, thanks for that sermon, it was really simple and easy to understand!"

What kind of reaction do you think you'll get?

Then the next Sunday, shake his hand and say, "Wow, pastor. Just WOW! That was absolutely brilliant! You're so well read! Pure genius! Just the way you have with words is astounding!"

I bet you'll get a much more positive and lively reaction. You may even have to excuse yourself from the conversation.

Look, Pastors are sinners just like the rest of us. We can forgive them for it, right?

But they are tempted with a desire to impress their audience. And this leads to all kinds of foolishness that would have no place for those seeking to communicate with simplicity, clarity and brevity.

I have actually heard people speak glowingly of a minister, "I never had any idea what he was saying till the last 2-3 minutes of his sermons, when it would all come together." And there are many ministers who foolishly and recklessly seek to mimic that style of preaching.

Really?

Most ministers aren't quite that far gone, but just about any minister can be tempted to use jargon from time to time. Or maybe they drop some names of some famous authors or ministers and quote them. At length. And no one has any idea what they said, because it's a translation of a Latin text written several hundred years ago. But boy, that minister did his homework, didn't he? We won't doubt his credibility will we? Never mind that we have no idea what he actually said.

But what if ministers sought to impress their hearers with the text instead?

What if their number one goal was for you to understand what this text was saying, even if you were only a child? What then?

You know, we Protestants are very quick to say that the Roman Church was crazy to conduct services in Latin for so long after Latin became a dead language. Why do we think that's so crazy? Because no one knew what they were saying, and therefore what was said was of no value.

Isn't that Paul's criticism of the Corinthian church in 1Cor 14? Verse 9 says, "So with yourselves, if with your tongue you utter speech that is not intelligible, how will anyone know what is said? For you will be speaking into the air."

Ministers - I wish you would actually stop and THINK about that. If no one knows what you're saying, it's of no value to the people you're speaking to. You're speaking into the air. It doesn't matter if you're babbling in some nonsense baby talk and claiming it's the language of angels, or if you're speaking in Latin to people who don't speak Latin, or if you're just arrogantly using big words and complex sermon structures because you have a fancy seminary degree and you want everyone to know it.

A lot of ministers like to say, "My sermon this morning has 3 points, and they are..." and then they proceed to list them. This is ridiculously helpful for people taking notes.

And yet, one minister once said to me that he never does that, and he never does it very deliberately because it insults the audience's intelligence. It's not that he had 3 points and just failed to disclose them, it's that he was against having points at all. His sermons were like one gigantic run on sentence.

My eyes were opened when I invited a friend to church one Sunday, and he actually came. And the sermon text was some passage from the Old Testament that was 3 chapters of genealogies. Yes, 3 chapters.

My poor friend walked out absolutely bewildered. He had no idea what had just been said and learned NOTHING. He certainly wasn't about to abandon hope in anything and everything but Christ.

What a shame.

Yes, I know. The genealogies are Scripture too. I get it. But seriously, muster a bit of courage. If you can't preach an intelligible sermon on some passage of Scripture - SKIP IT!

Oh, but my conscience won't let me do that! That'd be like saying that this passage isn't Scripture!

No, it's not like saying that at all. It's admitting that you can't preach a coherent sermon on that passage, and you're sparing your flock the pain of having to endure an incoherent sermon.

And seriously, WHERE is the principle of lectio continua found in Scripture? Or do we not believe in Sola Scriptura anymore?

For those of you who don't know the jargon, what I just said is that the principle of lectio continua - which just means preaching through a book of the bible, chapter by chapter, one passage at a time until you finish the book and move on to the next one - is not found in the Bible anywhere. Nowhere does God command that in Scripture. However wise the principle might be, it's nowhere to be found in Scripture. And Sola Scriptura is a Latin phrase that just means Scripture alone. The point is that the Bible alone gets to tell us what to do, not some stupid principle that men made up, no matter how wise.

So for Christ's sake, and the sake of your hearers, SKIP that passage you can't preach. Maybe no one can preach some of those genealogies. Then maybe no one should preach them.

Or is it better to speak into the air and waste an opportunity to drive the point of the gospel a little deeper into someone's thick skull this week? Or actually communicate to those visitors who aren't sure if they should be there?

Because if you're trying to impress your audience with what you know, with your mastery of the Old Testament canon, with your familiarity with the famous authors of the church, your knowledge of Greek and Hebrew, or the subtle nuances of how to craft the perfect sermon according to the coolest theory you've ever heard - then you aren't preaching the text anymore at all.

You're only preaching yourself.

You're not saying, "Hey, look at Jesus!"

You're saying, "Hey, look at me!"

I know how strong the temptation is. I have felt it. You want them to listen to you. You have to establish your credibility. They have to accept what you're saying. They shouldn't question you. They need to just do what you tell them...right?

No.

No, you don't need them to listen to you.

They need to fall in love with Jesus.

You need to decrease, he needs to increase. You need to DISAPPEAR in the pulpit.

Preach the WORD.

As long as you're preaching the Word, what you're saying has all the credibility your sermon needs. It's the Word of GOD.

It has been proven by Christ's resurrection from the dead and ascension into heaven. It has been proven by the apostolic authority bestowed on the men of his choosing. It has been proven by signs and miracles of all kinds performed at the time when the foundations of the church were laid.

The Bible's credibility has been MORE than established.

I have news for you, preachers. You HAVE no credibility in the pulpit except that which you BORROW from the text! No one gathers to hear YOU on Sunday morning. They gather to hear from GOD.

To the extent that simplicity, clarity, and brevity are NOT your goal in the pulpit is the extent to which your preaching is simply to feed your ego. To that extent, you are not preaching the Word of God but only preaching yourself. To that extent, you put up your own ego as an obstacle between your flock and Christ Jesus, their only hope for salvation. You are risking peoples' eternal salvation for the sake of your EGO.

I don't envy ministers on judgment day. 

This is one of the reasons why I no longer envy them for today. I know that temptation. I am glad I no longer have to face it, at least not with such high stakes.

If you think that temptation didn't have a strong pull on me, just look at how long all my posts are on this blog! Terrible! Sorry readers!

What is Wisdom Worth?

As a child, I struggled - as we all do - to be assured of approval. I was desperate for it. Whose approval did I want?

Well, of course, as is the case with any child, I wanted my parents' approval. But I also wanted the approval of teachers at school, Sunday School teachers at church, and perhaps more than all of this - my peers.

Yes, I was a little people pleaser growing up. Not because I wanted everyone to be pleased with me for its own sake necessarily. It wasn't really praise I was after. Mostly I wanted to avoid getting in trouble with anyone in authority, and wanted to avoid being looked down upon or teased by my peers. I was ruled by fear - the fear of the consequences of a lack of approval.

My desire for approval, however, was a red herring. Have you ever heard of where the term "red herring" comes from? Well, ok, first and foremost, it's one of those secret terms that only well educated people are familiar with, so they use them as much as possible in order to impress their audience with their erudition. The word erudition is another such word. It just means you want to impress the audience with how smart you are or how well read and well educated you are. To be all those things is to be erudite. See? Now you too can be in the club, and can dumbfound your audience with how stupid they are in comparison to yourself...

Yes, I'm talking to you, preachers.

But I got off topic. I was talking about red herrings. Actually, I just succumbed to a bit of a red herring myself. A red herring is simply a distraction. The term comes from when people would train hunting dogs or blood hounds or whatever to track by scent. They'd give the dog a scent to track, and then they would use red herrings (a particularly pungent kind of fish) in an attempt to distract the dog from the scent they were tracking. This taught the dog to be disciplined and focused on the task at hand.

So my desire for approval from literally everyone (anyone) was just a red herring - it was a distraction. Whose approval did I actually want? God's of course.

When I had no choice but to walk away from the ministry, THIS was the most painful aspect of it. I was just absolutely sure that I did not have God's approval anymore, if I had ever had it at all.

This is the most difficult part of abandoning the ministry, and it is especially difficult if it comes in the context of also being rejected by the church.

At any rate, back to childhood. I can remember being so desperate for approval (or rather, some assurance of approval that might penetrate my thick skull) that I grew quite frustrated with my entire life situation. I remember quite vividly crying myself to sleep growing up, often accompanied by pillow-muffled screams.

Now, you may think that's a little unusual. But then again, maybe you don't. Or maybe you do, despite the fact that you can probably relate to it. But the truth is, I was THAT kid growing up. You know, the one no one wanted on their team (I sure hope teachers have figured out by now that letting kids pick teams is just an awful thing to do), the one the other kids always made fun of. Kids can be cruel.

So you'll understand why the story of Solomon appealed to me so strongly.

You see, one Sunday, I went to church, and heard the story of how Solomon became king of Israel. When Samuel anointed Solomon as king, he told him on behalf of the Lord that he could ask for anything - ANYTHING - he wanted, and it would be granted.

Well, Solomon apparently gave the best answer one could give when presented with such an opportunity. He asked for wisdom. I didn't remember the details. I only remembered what he asked for and how the Lord responded. The Lord, I was told, was PLEASED. So pleased, in fact, that he bestowed great wealth on him and wisdom and he became Israel's greatest king.

Of course, as a kid, the riches was totally lost on me, and I certainly couldn't understand why anyone would want 1,000 wives (what's a concubine?). However, I did figure out that Solomon asked for wisdom and it pleased the Lord.

To me, this was a magic formula. To me, it was as simple as putting two quarters in a soda machine (remember that?) and getting a can of Coke. The request for wisdom was two quarters and the Lord's pleasure with me was my can of Coke which I desperately wanted.

So every day from that day on - well into high school I think - I prayed for wisdom when saying my bedtime prayers and thought of Solomon.

Now, you might say that my theology was all screwed up. It was. You might also say that I was trying to manipulate God into approving of me. I was. But I was also just a kid. As tainted with sin as that prayer was, it wasn't ONLY sinful. After all, I just wanted God to be PLEASED with me. He himself told me in his Word that it's good to ask for wisdom, and I believed it and asked him for it myself. So it wasn't all bad, nor was it all good. But that's pretty much all I can say about the prayers I said this morning.

For example, I recently helped a friend get a job. He thanked me profusely. He assumed that I had gone out of my way to help him simply because I was being kind to him. After all, he needed a job and I was able to help and I gave it to him. And when he thanked me, I looked at him with a smile and said, "Are you kidding? I didn't do it for you. I did it to feed my ego." Of course, I was joking. But the best jokes have an element of truth to them, and this was no exception (and yes, we both laughed - it's all about the timing). The truth is, the help I provided him was not purely altruistic. In some sense it was about feeding my ego. When I was a child, I idolized the idea of the mafia don who bestowed favors on people all the time, who then owed him a favor in return, along with their loyalty and their love. This is one of those ways that I've just always been tempted.

However, it would be wrong of me to withhold that help from my friend, simply because my help would be tainted with sin. Sure, I took some pride in having helped someone. And knowing that in advance, maybe I could (should?) have refrained from helping him to avoid the temptation. But then he wouldn't have been helped and wouldn't have a job. So I did it, and yes, I did indulge in a little secret self congratulations. But the Lord used it anyway to provide my friend and brother in Christ a job that he really, REALLY needed.

In the same way, the Lord used my sin-tainted prayers as a child to bring about his purposes. He did answer those prayers. He did give me wisdom.

You know, when I was a child, I was pretty sure that Solomon was given wisdom in much the same way that Neo learned Kung Fu in the Matrix. If, for some reason you haven't seen the Matrix, please correct yourself as soon as possible. In it, Neo basically downloads knowledge like a computer. In 10 seconds, he learns Kung Fu. Anyway, it seemed very much to me that in the story of Solomon, he asked for wisdom and then was instantly wise. In Solomon's case, that may be how it happened.

For the rest of us, however, it's not. I had little idea what I was actually asking for. It turns out that the road to wisdom is paved with suffering. For example, see Heb 5:8, which says that Jesus learned obedience through suffering.

Now, I've often had quite a bit of trouble understanding that. How is it that the sinless Son of God had to LEARN obedience? Well, I don't think it really means that he had to learn HOW to obey, so much as he learned what it TAKES to obey. In suffering, Jesus learned specifically what it COSTS to obey.

In the same way, I think, wisdom has a price. You aren't born with it. You suffer and then become wise. Perhaps Solomon had a rough childhood. After all, his mom and dad had an adulterous affair, after which his mother got pregnant, which caused his father to have his mother's first husband killed so that their adultery wouldn't be called to account.

It may be the case that Solomon's brothers, and possibly even the people of Israel gave him a hard time about that. In fact, it's probably quite likely. The Jews thought that bloodlines were a very big deal. And everyone probably knew at the time what happened. We still know all about it 3,000 years later! I think Solomon probably had a rough time of it. Maybe he even screamed himself to sleep a time or two. Perhaps that's where his humility came from, as exhibited by his response to the prophet who anointed him king.

But whatever the case, I'm pretty sure wisdom is learned through painful experience. For instance, if you get an adjustable rate mortgage that you can just barely afford to make the payments on today, and the payments skyrocket tomorrow because the interest rates finally rose, so that you eventually have to foreclose on your house, chances are you will wisely avoid anything but a fixed rate mortgage going forward. Thus a tiny seed of wisdom is planted in someone's heart and nourished with suffering.

If you ever have a chance to go to visit someone in the hospital who has been battling some disease for a long time, please do so. You'll find that they're very wise. They care very little for the things of this world, and they look to the age to come. What a pleasure and joy it is to visit some sweet little old lady, barely alive in her hospital bed, who is nonetheless sweet to the nurses, kind to the other patients, worried about taking her pastor's time, grateful that he would come see her, etc. Wisdom. She knows from her suffering that what really matters is not this age, but the age to come. She's ok with suffering in the body for a time because she is looking forward to being raised from the dead.

And so it is with those who have been badly burned, spurned and abused by the people of God, the church. You see, they have been exposed to the ugliness that persists in every church of every denomination, no matter who the pastor is, no matter how godly the elders, how high the offerings are, how many people sit in the pews, etc. Every church everywhere is tainted. Every church everywhere is impure.

And every pastor, at any time, can find himself suddenly shepherding a flock of wolves, bursting and belching because they have eaten all the sheep and have turned their greedy eyes to their shepherd (or the shepherd's intern).

God promised to meet your needs. God promised you salvation in Christ. He did NOT promise that you could always be a pastor.

Oh, how I hoped in my own desires as if they were promises of God! I graduated seminary, I landed an internship, I endured the worst that that minister and elders could dish out during said internship, and I even endured the seemingly required year or so of unemployment while I waited for my first call. But that call never came. Was God being unfaithful to me? Was God being mean or cruel?

No.

At what time did God promise me in his Word that if I did all the things just mentioned that I would earn the right to be a minister?

Without realizing it, I had devised my own covenant of works and assumed that God had entered into that covenant with me. According to my covenant, I'd check all the boxes required to be a minister and if I checked all those boxes, I'd become a minister. That was God's responsibility to me. We each had our responsibilities in the equation. I did my part, he did his.

But that's not how it works, is it?

God promised us that if we would just worry about seeking his kingdom and his righteousness (whose righteousness - mine or God's?), then he would take care of the clothes on our back, the roof over our heads and the food in our bellies. It may be that he'll give you a job, or it may be that the deacons will help you.

God promised us that if we have faith in Jesus Christ, he will impute the righteousness of Christ to us and permanently unite us to his Son by his indwelling Spirit, who will be at work in us, conforming us to the image of his Son, growing us in righteousness and reforming the desires of our hearts. And he promised to do this completely by his grace, by his mercy, not for anything done in us, or by us, but simply because he chose us.

Oh, they say, but God is love! How can he choose only SOME? When I choose to marry my wife, am I being unloving to all the other women in the world? And at the same time, if I choose every woman in the world, what makes any of them special? As they say, when everyone is special, no one is.

But I digress. The point is, God promised us salvation from the condemnation earned by our sin, the condemnation of eternal death, and instead has promised us eternal life by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. And he has promised to provide for our needs.

But he never promised I could be a minister. He never promised any former minister that that man could retire a minister. In fact, the Bible says in Jude that "certain men have crept in among" us, and that those men are up to no good. They're here to cause trouble, and trouble they will cause.

For you ministers out there who want to believe that your church will never turn on you, or that your ability to make the people in your church like and appreciate you is the source of your security, think again. Who killed Jesus? Who was screaming, crucify, crucify? It was not those outside the church. It was the church.

Who was it that threw Jeremiah into a sewer? Who persecuted Paul? Who murdered the prophets? On whose heads did Jesus place the guilt for all the prophets?

It has ALWAYS been the people of God who had the most hostility toward the prophets, toward those who speak to them on God's behalf.

We are always so concerned about the evil outside the church. Who cares? It's all small time compared to the evil WITHIN the church. The church contains the greatest evil that has ever been on earth. They are Satan's hidden sleeper agents, walking among us, pretending to be one of us. They're so good at it they have begun to believe their own lies.

And they are everywhere.

What price would you be willing to pay to gain wisdom?

God asks us all to pay different costs, but make no mistake, we will all suffer to gain wisdom. We have to. There's no other way to learn. You cannot learn that debt is dumb until you get deep into debt and have to work your butt off to get out of it. You cannot learn to be wary of office politics until you've been stabbed in the back.

God wants us to be wise. Christ is our wisdom, says the Scriptures. But he learned through suffering. We do too.

And God sure did answer those many prayers as a child.

He has answered those prayers many, many times over.

But there is one time when he answered that prayer the loudest, the clearest.

When I was left with no choice but to walk away from the ministry, that's when God answered the prayers of a child who once desperately asked God for wisdom, just because he only wanted to please his God.

And as I reflect back on all that anger, all those feelings of betrayal, how I felt so hurt and rejected by God - I have actually been taught something by that little boy I used to be once upon a time. That little boy was willing to do ANYTHING to please God.

Well, one day, God asked me to walk away from a career I had been carefully cultivating for about a decade. All that effort I put forth, all the sweat, tears, money, stress - not to mention the price my wife paid - all of it had to matter less to me than pleasing God. I had no choice.

My God asked me to lay it all aside and, like Abraham, to go to the land which he would show me later.

That's when God answered the desperate pleas of a little boy. Because when I said, over and over, "Please give me wisdom," I was really saying, "Please just let me glorify you."

It's a privilege to have walked this road. It really is. I have learned more than I could ever possibly articulate in something like a relatively incoherent blog post. I have gained some small measure of wisdom through what I have suffered.

And it was all worth it.

What is Wisdom Worth?

The price I paid was small. I would pay much more.

I am tempted to wish that God would ask less of you, but then, that would be to wish that God would give you a smaller measure of wisdom. And I wish you a large measure of his wisdom, and I hope he gives me much more.

And I know what it costs.

How an Internship Drove Me from the Ministry

Well, here goes.

When I graduated seminary, I took an internship as a way of easing into the ministry. I thought it would make the transition easier. I thought I would be under the care of a more experienced minister who would take me under his wing, guide me, shape me, patiently correct my mistakes and gently show me those more excellent ways.

I couldn't possibly have been more wrong.

In some churches, Sunday School classes are a very solemn, quiet affair. The pastor presents some teaching, everyone takes notes, and the class ends on time - with enough time for everyone to use the bathroom and chug a cup of stale, weak coffee before the worship service.

Other churches are a bit more...spontaneous. Colorful. Stressful for interns.

I was used to the former, but this church fell in the extreme fringe of the latter. When I began my Sunday School series on the world's least controversial topic, ecclesiology (ahem), several people complained quite passionately to me afterwards that I hadn't allowed for more discussion. You see, I had printed out handouts with room for note taking and even brought a bag of pens. And I timed the lecture perfectly, and had even allowed 5 minutes for questions.

What I would soon discover was a very powerful culture of contentiousness that permeated that church completely. My strong statements defending presbyterian church government and other classic reformed doctrines regarding the preaching of the Word and the administration of the sacraments proved to be like chum in the waters off the coast of Australia. Every Sunday was like a feeding frenzy. Boy did those folks like to argue and pick things apart.

Now if you've ever been in an adult Sunday School class, you know that there's almost always someone whose questions aren't really questions, but more of an attempt to teach from their seat. Often they try to prove the teacher wrong by logically backing him into some corner and forcing him to admit his mistake.

If you're well educated in seminary, have strong critical thinking skills, and most importantly have done your homework in preparation for the lesson, it's usually not too hard to handle such hecklers. A smile, keeping your cool and remaining respectful goes a long way. Not everyone acts that way out of malice - some people, that's just how they learn. And if it's a layman, most ministers, even some interns, can probably handle it just fine and the class is none the worse for wear.

But when it's the elders, that's when things get dicey. To disagree publicly with an elder immediately turns up the heat immensely. To say that this has to be handled delicately is a tremendous understatement. Many young wanna-be ministers have had to abandon their aspirations for the pulpit because a Sunday School class turned into an embarrassing scene from which there was no recovery.

And the elders of this church knew what they were about. They were well read and very sharp. Some of them were professors, some were executives, etc. And they wanted to see every single disagreement - of which there were shockingly many - to its bitter end.

And yet, I could have even dealt with that if the pastor had helped me. Had he rescued me from uncomfortable situations by defusing them, that would have been a huge relief. Had he taken me aside afterwards and made sure that I understood why it went down the way it did, and how I could avoid it next time, I would have been so grateful.

In fact, had he but prayed with me once in a while, or even just offered me a few meager scraps of encouragement, that would have been at least something.

But to my horror, the pastor was the worst of the bunch. He never encouraged me. He never prayed with me. Well, ok, I think he prayed with me 3 times over the course of the 2 years I was there; I shouldn't say never. That's unfair.

Instead, he led the charge. He led the people of this congregation into regularly publicly humiliating me. Almost no one in that church attended Sunday School hoping to learn something. They attended Sunday School to listen very, very carefully to see if there was something in what I said that they could take issue with. They were honestly constantly on the prowl, seeking to find some chink in my armor, some weak spot that they could attack.

And if the elders knew what they were about, this guy totally had me out-gunned. I think I'm a pretty smart guy. I did well as an undergrad and went to a very difficult seminary and obtained an MDiv with over 100 credit hours. And what's more, I did my homework in preparing these lessons. But this guy was scary smart. He had a PhD. He had a photographic memory. He could read his Greek or Hebrew like you and I read children's books. He'd forgotten the content of more journal articles than I'll ever read in my whole life. And his mind worked at the speed of light.

So naturally, my best answers came to me only after stewing on things he'd said for 3 days.

I learned extremely quickly that arguing or even appearing to argue or defend myself in any way was not only pointless but dangerous. I learned to just take the criticism, whatever it was, and smile and thank whoever it was. Anything to end the feeding frenzy.

Of course, it wasn't just Sunday School. No, this was one of those rare churches that actually had a question and answer time as a regular part of the evening worship service. So in the evening service, after finishing your sermon, you prayed and then took questions from the floor about either the evening sermon or the morning sermon.

And this was usually a bigger crowd than Sunday School. I usually preached about 3-4 times a month in the evening service, and I taught a Sunday School series that lasted about the first 5 months of my year-long internship. When that series was over, they decided to give me a break from Sunday School, and I politely declined to do so again.

Now, I also had to turn in every sermon outline, every lesson plan to the pastor the Thursday night before so that he could rip them apart on Friday and I'd have a day to make changes before Sunday came around. Every sermon. Every Sunday School outline. Youth Group lessons. Anything. And he would provide his criticism, which was always scathing, blunt and rude. No exceptions. And, also without any exceptions, I made the changes to accommodate his criticism and sent the materials back to him to give him an opportunity to be satisfied that I had listened to him before Sunday. Sometimes I was even treated to a second round of criticism. All via email of course.

You'd think that that would have prevented him from having any criticism left for Sunday, but you'd be wrong. There was no end to how much criticism this guy could generate. And it wasn't like, "Hey, you need to be more careful to uphold the doctrine of the Trinity." Instead, it was always nit picky, debatable stuff that he really should have allowed me liberty on.

Constant, regular, public humiliation. If every time the intern preaches a sermon and the pastor and elders constantly critiques it and makes him out to be a fool in front of the congregation, the intern has zero credibility. And I could feel it. There was an abundance of evidence of it. Yes, every now and then some lady would whisper a word or two about how horrified she was to my wife at how I was being treated, but this was very rare. And while those brief moments were like a drop of water in the desert, I was still dying of thirst.

To make matters much worse, about halfway through the internship, there was a vote in the congregation about keeping me on for another year as part of voting on the next year's budget. To make a long, painful story short, the pastor botched it by blindsiding the elders with this plan of his to keep me under his thumb another year. And having been blindsided, they obviously didn't support it, especially because they were all sure that I was a moron. (Ironically, when I was licensed in the presbytery, I passed unanimously and every single man present went out of their way to say how well I did and how impressed they were. Even my pastor felt constrained to say good job! Only time he ever did in two years.) And of course, I wasn't there when the congregation voted on it, but I imagine the pastor was too embarrassed to speak about it, and even if he did, he said something blunt and unhelpful that half the people present interpreted as hostile. I doubt any of the elders would have said anything supportive of the idea. And so of course the congregation voted no. It really couldn't have gone any other way, given the way that pastor handled it. (Which totally floored me, because when he brought it up to me, he said we shouldn't bring the idea up until my internship was almost over, and we could add it to the budget at that time. He blindsided me along with the elders.)

Of course, none of this poisoned the atmosphere at all. Nope, not one bit. Sigh.

I couldn't help but see everyone in that congregation as a wolf that voted to ruin my job prospects. My wife and I had no friends while we were there. We were far from family, far from friends, and everyone in our church became an enemy ready to stab me in the back as soon as they had an excuse.

After my internship ended, I was stuck there for about another year while I waited to move on and become a pastor. I filled pulpit still about 3 times a month or so. I would have left that church and attended somewhere else if there was anything remotely close by and if I thought I could do so without burning bridges. But no such luck. And of course I didn't have two pennies to rub together, so moving was out of the question.

Surely now my story is over and I've told the worst of it. No. Would that it were so.

During my internship I had preached a sermon series on a certain book of the Bible. You can't imagine the shock I felt when I came to church one Sunday morning - I had stopped attending Sunday School at this point because it honestly just sickened me to watch people fight over what Dietrich Bonhoeffer meant when he said: whatever - insert random unclear statement here. Who cares what some theologian in love with flowery expressions meant when he said some nonsensical thing that scholars have been debating for decades? What does the BIBLE say??? But I digress...

You can't imagine my horror when I opened the bulletin one Sunday morning to look at the sermon text and saw that the pastor was starting a new series...on a book I had just got done preaching through. I suddenly had a lurching feeling in my gut. This was going to be bad.

But, you say, it wasn't that bad right? I mean, he just really liked that book and it just seemed to fit with where the congregation was at and where he wanted to go, etc. ...right? I mean, maybe he's just that oblivious and insensitive.

Wrong. Never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined someone would ever have the nerve to do what he did.

I couldn't be more serious when I say that it was painfully obvious to everyone that he was preaching through that book in order to do it justice, since I had fumbled it so horribly. He not only preached it completely differently than me, by which I mean that he took a completely different interpretation in every single passage, but he also preached in a very aggressive manner so that he was laying out an improper interpretation and then knocking it down by proving it wrong. And what was getting knocked down was MY position that I had just preached from that very pulpit 6 months ago. Every. Sunday. Morning.

Several times he even said, "It has been said that..." and then what followed was my interpretation of the passage (which by the way was in keeping with guys like, you know, Calvin). He frequently mocked how laughably wrong it was and how totally out of touch with the passage such views were. Just when I thought I'd heard the worst, the next week would be something even more outrageous. It became almost comical, cartoonish, yet in a creepy clown, horrifying sort of way.

Yes, instead of hearing the Word of God preached to me on Sunday morning, I got a sermon full of accusations of my incompetence and lack of fitness for the ministry. He never actually said my name, though he hardly needed to, so I'm not sure how much of the congregation actually knew what was happening. Probably not many of them, come to think of it. Doesn't matter. I knew.

And through it all, I did not defend myself. I did not argue with anyone's negative opinion of me or something I said or did. I simply accepted the criticism and sought to incorporate it as best I could going forward.

One Sunday night service, he apparently crossed his threshold. He took great offense to something I said and questioned me about it extensively in front of the congregation, but suddenly backed off and dropped it. It was very odd. As soon as I dismissed the people, he rushed up to me and said, "I didn't want to gainsay you in public but..." he wanted to know where I had learned such crazy ideas. So I mentioned a very well respected and recognized commentary on the passage in question which took the position I had, and mentioned some of the evidence that that author had very carefully amassed. He demanded that I let him see it. (The dispute was quite subtle, I assure you.) Naturally, I agreed to bring it by his office that week. Clearly he didn't believe that what I claimed was in that commentary actually was. So annoying and so typical.

Well, that week was Thanksgiving, so I thought I might be able to use that to delay bringing my commentary to him until the next Sunday, because I just really didn't want to deal with it. By Wednesday, he was calling me, wondering where I was, but I ignored him. Friday night there was a knock at the door. The peep hole revealed that it was...you guessed it...my pastor. Wow.

So I opened the door and let him in. He had come to demand to know why I couldn't return his phone call. He was clearly extremely upset. By this point I was so used to his bizarre behavior that it hardly affected me at all. I calmly led him to a seat and explained that I was hoping to avoid this conversation. And he demanded that we discuss what's going on.

So I did. I let him have it. I said he had done nothing but criticize me and humiliate me every chance he got. I said there was a culture of contentiousness in his church and that he had clearly fostered it. "You didn't want to gainsay me in public? You make opportunities to do so on a regular basis! No encouragement! No help!" On and on I went, telling him the truth.

In that one moment he responded with humility. I was totally shocked. He said that he had interpreted my silent acquiescence to his every criticism as defiance and so was always resolving afresh to be yet more hard on me in hopes of breaking me. He said from day one he viewed me as a threat and he labored against me. I couldn't believe it. Submissiveness is defiance and the weak intern is a threat to the PhD with the successful church, the books, a nice house, etc. It made absolutely no sense. What on earth was wrong with this guy?

But he actually prayed with me - one of the three times he did so - and confessed to God that he was ashamed of himself for how he had treated me.

About a month later, my barely pregnant wife began having contractions and had to go on bed rest for the rest of the pregnancy. I was totally unemployed, waiting for a call. Our only source of income was my wife. Which didn't bother me at all. I loved sitting around on my butt all day while my pregnant wife made a living. Sigh.

I began to think that there was a reason no one was calling, and it was my pastor. I began to think about how it might go down. Suppose someone had been interested in me as a potential candidate. Do you think I'd be the first one they'd call? Probably not. They'd probably call my current pastor first. And what would he say? I was absolutely sure what he would say: not ready. He had said it often enough to me.

I realized there was no way I would ever get a call to a church as long as I remained a member of this congregation. But until I got a job, I couldn't afford to move. Stuck.

And that's when I had no choice.

That's when I threw it all away. That's when I tore my heart out of my chest and cast it out into the sea. That's when I gave up and simply commended myself and my family to God. That's when I abandoned the ministry forever, with no hope I would ever return and no idea what I might do to make a living.

I had a horrible time getting a job of course. I couldn't even get a call back from McDonalds. I finally got 2 minutes of face time with a manager of Starbucks who told me that she had 700 applicants for one opening. When the shock wore off, I asked her how I could get to the top of the stack and she said that I needed to spend a lot of time there, buying coffee, making friends with the other workers, hanging out, being cool. Blogging about how cool everything is. Singing songs I wrote myself about how much I love Starbucks and having the Youtube video go viral. You know, nothing much.

I didn't bother buying a latte. I couldn't afford it anyway.

Eventually I did get a job. An awful manual labor job in a factory for minimum wage. I had several deep tissue injuries in most of my joints and a sprained knee by the time I found a real job on the other side of the country 2 months later.

But I did figure out how to put my training and experience as a ministerial candidate to work for me. Don't worry, I'll post about that too. That's one of the main reasons for creating this blog - to help you figure out how you can recover from this devastating blow. But this is not that post.

Before we moved at last - before our exodus - my pastor had my wife and me over for dinner, along with several other couples. Not to say goodbye to us, of course. He just had some system that allowed him to have everyone in the congregation over about 2-3 times a year. It was just our turn.

And since I was leaving, and I knew I'd regret not saying it, I grew bold during that dinner conversation. Several elders were present as well. I was trying to help my pastor understand why I was abandoning the ministry. He couldn't understand why I wouldn't want to remain unemployed indefinitely and be his whipping boy. He really didn't get it.

So I finally looked at him and said, "I'll tell you why. Because if some church is interested in me as a candidate, who's going to be the very first person they call? You. They're going to want to call you. You're the authority on me. You're my pastor right now. And so your opinion matters the most as to whether or not I'm fit for ministry. And if you were to get such a phone call, what would you say?"

At this point, he started to fumble his words - I had finally caught him off guard. Only time that ever happened. But I cut him off.

"I know exactly what you would say, and so do you. You'd say, 'Not ready,' wouldn't you? You'd say not ready."

The room is totally silent now and all eyes are on us. The elders have gone pale. One of them in particular looked totally shocked at my boldness, like he had seen a ghost.

He admitted it. "Yes, I'd say you're not ready."

I said, "Yep, I know, and so would the elders. But you know what? I don't buy it. Either I'm called or I'm not. This whole 'not ready' business is nonsense, pure nonsense. If I'm called to the ministry, then I'm called - warts and all. No minister is perfect. If I have flaws, then I don't need to get rid of them before becoming a minister. If I'm called, then I'm called as a flawed man. If you guys are so sure I'm not ready, then maybe the truth is simpler than that. I'm NOT called. I can't wait forever. I have a family to provide for and seminary to pay for."

I stayed another 10-15 minutes to be polite. Then I got up and left that godforsaken place forever.

Was I called to the ministry? Lots of people thought so. I thought so. For a long time I remained convinced that I was, and that this man had simply stolen that from me.

Many times it was his name that my screams of hateful rage formed into when I was alone with my thoughts on my long commutes home. I eventually realized that I needed counseling. It helped. A lot.

I actually felt guilty and ashamed because of it all. I figured I wasn't called, and therefore I must have quite arrogantly lusted to be in the pulpit, lusted for my own glory, lusted for an audience to feed my ego. I was arrogant and selfish to go so deep into debt, especially with my wife working so hard to pay the bills. And I wasted a lot of our very scarce resources on food and booze and cigars. Anything to make the pain subside for a while. How wrong I was for even pursuing seminary!

The counselor I saw said something very, very wise one day that clicked. "You may not have been called to become a minister, but you definitely were called to pursue the ministry. The proof is: that's what you did. You didn't sin by pursuing the ministry. In fact, 1 Tim 3:1 says, 'If anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble task.'

"There's nothing wrong with wanting to be a minister. That's a good thing! It's virtuous! It's noble! It is to be commended! So you didn't ultimately become a minister. You did no wrong in desiring this noble task. Of course, we know our intentions are always tainted with sin. Perhaps there was some arrogant lust for an audience. But no minister's motives are ever pure. We're sinners! That doesn't disqualify you from office!"

And then I remembered. How has the church always treated those who brought the Word of God to them? How did Israel treat the prophets? How were the apostles treated, and by whose hand?

How did the church react to Jesus?

Being mistreated by the church does NOT mean you are somehow unworthy of the ministry for some sin or other. In fact, it's precisely the opposite. If you've been mistreated by the church, it's probably a good sign that you are united to Christ, whom they crucified.

Being mistreated by the church doesn't disqualify you from ministry. More likely it qualifies you to inherit the kingdom of God, because you are being made to look like Jesus, who came unto his own, but his own did not accept him.

The book of Hebrews makes some very interesting comments about Melchizedek. It says more or less that Moses shaped his story to make him into a type of Christ, to make him resemble the Son of God. How? Just in how Moses speaks about him: not mentioning his lineage, his mysteriousness, the fact that his death isn't mentioned or what his religion was like, etc. Little details are omitted, questions are asked. And this is so powerful that Psalm 110 comments on it as well, saying that Christ (as we know now from Hebrews) is a priest after Melchizedek's mysterious priesthood that we know nothing about at all.

And here we are talking about it still to this day. One man's story was told in such a way to make him, in a very subtle way, resemble Christ. And thousands of years later we still marvel at it.

What would you be willing to suffer for the same to be said of you? What would you be willing to go through in order to bear witness to Christ as powerfully as Melchizedek did?

Or what would you be willing to suffer in order to gain wisdom? Or to gain eternal life?

There is no price so great that I am not willing to pay it, if only it means I can look a little bit more like Jesus.

When I was a child, I prayed that the Lord would give me wisdom. For some reason, it stuck that God was pleased when that's what Solomon asked for, so every night for years that's what I prayed for: wisdom.

God answered all those prayers when I was forced to abandon the ministry.

I was victimized by wicked shepherds who prey upon the flock. Like a lamb to the slaughter, I didn't fight them. Like Jesus, I did not defend myself. I bit my tongue. And it cost me everything. And it hurts. A lot.

But I guarantee that when we all get to glory, we won't regret it, you and I. Not one bit. Our scars will be badges of honor.

Christ is our wisdom. And he said, "Do not be surprised when the world hates you."

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