K.C. Wahe

Sitting on the shore of the lake of Tiberias or the Sea of Galilee this morning in utter silence was awesome. Again, it makes you rethink how one should preach anything having to do with Jesus and this body of water…

If you want to hear someone really sing, “here comes the sun,” I point you here.

Because of some kind people and the graciousness of my bride and kids I am currently with a group of pastors on a Holy Land tour.

I can say this much. My preaching will be different because of what I’ve seen and heard this week. 

My most powerful experience yet was taking a boat ride out to the middle of the sea of Galilee or “lake Tiberias.” The driver turned the engine of the boat off and someone read this.

I also give this short clip to illustrate.

I am horrible at taking time off as a pastor. I am usually running at full speed, always thinking about what’s next. I’m always thinking about next Sunday’s sermon and the folks I need to visit or I haven’t seen in church. Resting is something that I don’t do enough of and I need to. I know this about myself. It’s an area I am learning about. I recently talked to a respected friend who does spiritual direction on the side and offered to be my spiritual director. I am realizing this is something I should have in my life especially as I continue to be in ministry as a pastor. I of course said yes!

While away this past weekend I had an interesting experience happen to me while cruising the streets of Folsom after a happy dinner with family and some friends.

The kids were walking about a half block ahead of us. As I approached the corner I noticed a guy standing on a crate and a couple of folks huddled around him and I noticed that our kiddoes had stopped with their buddies to listen.

As I approached the crate dude and his buddies, I looked over at my older kid and he says, “My dad’s a pastor as he’s talking to crate dude and he points his finger over to me.” I knew exactly what the crate dude was doing. He was preaching.

Now this corner he had chosen as his platform for proclaiming, “good news,” was a very quiet corner. No one was around. As I walked this particular street I had noticed that there were three or so small restaurants and at least two very loud bars about a half city block away.

He was a very nice guy and did a good job being a witness to Christ’s love, but I found myself feeling a little impatient. “I was on vacation I thought to myself and here’s some guy trying to preach to my kids and their buddies.” The crate dude looks at me and says, “who is the most hated man on earth?” I said Jesus? He smiled and continued talking to the kiddoes.

As I stood listening, one of his huddled buddies leans over to me and says, “are you offended by what he’s doing?” She says, “Is he doing something wrong or saying something wrong?” I said, “no, he’s doing fine.” I did say though, “You know you guys are on the wrong corner. You should be at the bar up the street.” She looked at me with an uncomfortable smile and I walked away and got some toffee at the candy store. I kind of felt bad for my comment and thought, “nice come back Wahe, you nerd!”

The couple of friends we were walking with are people who I think are very cool. They’re not your typical church folk. As a matter of fact, they kept walking while the kids stopped and listened. I wondered why they kept walking? Was it the dude standing on the crate that turned them off? Was it his presentation of the gospel? Was it because he was standing above us, looking down at us?

As I processed this experience I wondered to myself are people looking for pastors to be genuine and real? Pastors who actually care and take a moment in their busy lives to step down from their crates every Sunday morning and actually take an interest in the people they’ve been called to shepherd. This is something I have continued to learn about in my growth as a pastor. People are looking for pastors to be genuine and real. Pastors who actually care. As the kids came into the candy store, we did talk for a moment about the crate dude and his buddies. One kid showed me that they were giving tickets out to go to heaven. Literally tickets they had printed up with little Bible verses on them.

Maybe its me. Maybe I’m just a nimrod and I’m jealous that the guy can stand on a crate and kick into full preaching mode on a street corner. Who knows. The experience did make me think about my preaching and my heart for preaching God’s love. I couldn’t help but think about Paul’s words from Romans, “For I am not ashamed of the gospel.” Am I ashamed sometimes?”  Do I treat every moment I have as a pastor to preach God’s love with passion? I still love what one of my preaching professors once said to my preaching class in seminary, “sometimes the gospel is offensive.” Do I use every moment in my life for being a witness to Christ’s love even if the truth sometimes is painful to hear? Should I be crate dude? Or should crate dude throw his crate away and take a seat in the bar next to someone who needs someone to be real with them? Someone to love them as Jesus loved the brokenhearted? Someone to step down from the crate and actually care?

Maybe crate dude was there for a purpose that night and the Spirit of God was convicting my heart about my preaching and what I need to work on in my ministry as a pastor especially when it comes to preaching every moment given to me as a pastor.

My favorite vacation moment? Watching our kids enjoy being with their friends and watching t-bone try to figure out how to skip a rock on a river.

Now back to our regularly scheduled vacation time.

Watched the ABC special on Randy Pausch tonight.

I learned something tonight again from the guy.

I have nothing to complain about.  

I Learned a new way to preach from Randy tonight.

“Do not tell people how to live their lives. Just tell them stories. And they will figure out how those stories apply to them.”

I pray that I can be half the husband, father, and man he was.  

What if pastors were to live honestly before the people of God? Lives unashamed of revealing to the world the reality that we don’t have it all together. We think, feel, and breathe the same kinds of things that every other person sitting in the pews encounters on any given day.

I was talking with a close friend of mine this afternoon and the discussion came up that the pastor needs to be able to reveal to his or her congregation a kind of authenticity that makes a clear statement that we don’t profess having it all together. To go one step further, that within the proclamation of the word, the good news of Christ’s love, that every sermon I preach should include my willingness to be authentic as a way of illustrating the message of God’s love. Transparency of mind and spirit, coming to the table, letting it all hang out, making the word come alive for the sake of the gospel being heard and received in a way that convicts the hearts and minds of God’s people.

My preaching professor in seminary always commented that he’d rather have folks leave church after every sermon with two or three ideas that were easily remembered as opposed to an exegesis of the word “chair.” I wonder if the pastor should take it one step further? How about two or three ideas that reveal God’s heart for God’s people and that are made applicable through the pastors willingness to be authentic?

What does it really mean to be authentic when it comes to preaching?

It means that somehow with God’s help, power, and the Spirit of God always working in the preparation of the sermon, that I somehow tell the ego that burdens me daily to take a hike. Get honest. Be real. And don’t be ashamed to allow my heart to speak through the word God has given me on any particular Sunday.

(This is a painting that my friend Jenny Smith painted of the pulpit at Princeton that I preached from on one occasion)

Something I’ve come to appreciate in my short time as a solo pastor are the opportunities when folks are able to fill the pulpit for me on any given Sunday. I enjoy preaching every Sunday. Whatever the season might be. Advent, Lent, and Easter and everything and anything in between. I’ve had a couple of our church members preach this past year and a couple of good friends of mine. Over the next two month I’m having some folks fill the pulpit for me. It will give me a chance to be fed and to listen. It will also give me a chance to connect with those hanging in the pews. Something that sometimes is hard to do when you’re helping lead worship.

I’ve thought a lot about this all day. This idea that we pastors who’ve sensed God’s call to full-time ministry have some how entered the “big show?” Let me be clear that I’m not trying to say that we in the pastorate are better than those in the pews. I don’t want to be better. I had a professor in seminary talk about the preacher rising up from the pews to bring good news is where good news really should come from. His point being that the preacher is just like me. He or she deals with the same things I deal with. His thought also was that we’ve placed so much focus on the person sitting above us, in an elevated position on a Sunday morning, rising to the raised pulpit in the sky, that we’ve forgotten that there was a time in which the people of God would rise from the midst of community to proclaim God’s mission. This big show metaphor points me back to a time in my life as a youth where I got to watch some wonderful people in leadership positions. These folks were awesome in their presentation of the gospel. I looked up to them. I wanted to do what they were doing. I wanted to be part of a life changing experience that would impact the world for Christ and these folks were good at what they did and I myself was impacted or I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing in the church today.

I can even remember way back as a youth growing up in the church, attending church youth camps and I’d watch those putting on the big show and wondered what it would be like to be the one up front. I’d look at these folks with awe and thought they were some kind of “super” Christians. I thought that if I only could do what they were doing I’d be super Christian guy too. My first summer serving on staff at this same youth camp I attended as a kid and that I truly love with all of my heart, I saw a different side of the “super Christian.” I was kicked out of my box of “naiveté.” I was about 17 ½ years old and worked as a dishwasher all summer long at this camp. It was where I learned what it meant to really be in ministry. This is where it took place for me. 300-400 persons a week, three meals a day, 5-6 days per week, you do the math. That was a whole lot of dish washing.

I have to confess, I was so jealous of the folks up stairs and up front that there were days I wondered if I’d ever be doing what they were doing in ministry. Something happened though that first summer serving on staff at that camp. I realized that the folks who were up front, upstairs, doing the big show stuff, that I wanted to do so badly, were just like me. When I was older and when I had my first opportunity of serving in the church as a full-time youth director I was also blown away. This image I had was wrong and unfair. There were people full of sin and as broken as the next person. They were me. This was hard to swallow. I had placed these folks on such a high pedestal I felt guilty. What hit me though was that they were just as much in need of restoration of the soul as I was. They hurt and confronted their own stuff. They dealt with real life issues and struggled with many of the same things I’d struggle with. But they were always ready to be sent out on God‘s mission. Ready to respond to the ministry of proclamation. Ready to serve and love as Jesus loved, even in spite of what was happening in their own lives.

This is why I do what I do. I feel in some ways I’ve risen up from the pews like those I’ve watched over the years do the same. They’ve inspired me to keep doing what I‘m doing. Being with the people of God at the ground level. This is where change takes place in a persons life. This is where it happens. This where God works. This is where I get to hear how God is working. Maybe what I’m learning is that the really big show stuff happens in the pews. Not in the pulpit. Not elevated up high where the one who proclaims good news looks down upon the people. The one who proclaims good news needs to know what it’s like to rise up from the pews. In some ways the one who proclaims good news sometimes needs to go back to where it all began for them on that day God called them from their brokenness to tell others of the peace of Christ that restores the soul. This is where God works and moves. Not at the top. Not up front. But from the pews. The big show stuff I guess really happens in the pews. This is where I need to get the pulse of the church from. Maybe this is the ticket in bringing hope to the church, that the one called to preach good news, goes to the pews, empowers the people of God to rise up and help with the proclamation of God’s love.

Lord, may it be so.

As a young pastor (turning forty in less than six months) there are some days I am busting with joy that God has blessed me with the coolest calling anyone could ever receive from God in being a pastor to a church. There are other days I wonder if I’m even coming close to making a difference for the kingdom.

What are people looking for in a church? What are they needing? Are folks simply wanting someone to entertain them and make them feel all mushy inside or are they wanting simple truths that can challenge them to look at the gospel in a way that motivates them to think outside of their box of naiveté?

I had a conversation with a relative during the holiday season that left me wondering about the way I preach the gospel. This relative basically said in so many words, “What’s the matter with folks wanting to hear a feel good message?” Of course we talked about pastors and churches that are doing the “feel good stuff” and who are growing by the thousands. Pastors who are polished presenters of a “make you feel good gospel message.” Another relative sitting in on the same conversation says, “when I was a kid, my parents took me to some baptist church and all I remember was hearing a you’re going to hell sermon. What’s matter with the “feel good stuff?”

I came across another person a couple of weeks ago from another church in the area that implied that my role as preacher is to entertain from the pulpit. This person had implied that people want to hear politics and the gospel message somehow intertwined together. I had shared that my call to preach good news was simply to preach good news. Preaching good news meant that there couldn’t be room for the politics of today to interfere with the proclamation of the gospel message. The pulpit wasn’t a place for dancing on the heads of the parishioner with my take on the world.

I don’t have a problem using an illustration or two from the world to make a point. People get the “fluff and stuff” from the outside 24-7. When they enter the doors of the church they need to hear something more than just “fluff and stuff.” In the same respect I had a preaching professor say to us soon to be preachers while in seminary, “You ain’t preaching the gospel if you ain’t making people feel uncomfortable.” Implying that Jesus came with a message that called people to face the troubles of the world and that called people to turn away from sin which made people feel uncomfortable. How do I do this and yet still bring some kind of hope to those looking for just a small bit of hope when they enter the church on a Sunday morning?

One of my hopes for 2008 is that I’d continue to find “my preaching,” voice. A phrase I heard often thrown around seminary like snowballs. I want to be the kind of pastor and preacher that speaks the truth of the gospel. I also want to be the kind of pastor and preacher that helps others become more than just pew participants warming up some old pews. I want to be a pastor where when the words I put on paper somehow become the words that speak to a persons heart via the mouth of God. Words that move people from the pew out into the world.

I had the opportunity to meet Steve a few years ago and heard him preach at his church and really enjoyed his preaching and his style of leadership. The man can preach good news! The guy gets it! Here is a recent sermon he preached at his church about the kind of church Jesus would join and the illustration below is something I think summarizes well the kind of church we all should strive for in the kingdom of God.

I came across this story about Clarence Jordan, who was instrumental in founding
Habitat for Humanity. He visited an integrated church in the Deep South. He was
surprised to find such a large church so thoroughly integrated not only black and white,
but rich and poor. So he asked the old hillbilly preacher, “How did you get the church this
way?” The preacher said, “Well, when our preacher left our small church, I went to the
Deacons and said, ‘I’ll be the preacher.’ And the first Sunday, I opened the book and read, ‘As many of you as has been baptized into Jesus has put on Jesus, and there is no longer any Jews or Greeks, slaves are free, males or females, because you is all one in Jesus.’ “Then I closed the book and said, ‘If you one with Jesus, you one with all kinds of folks, and if you ain’t, you ain’t.”
So Jordan asked what happened after that and the preacher said, “Well, the Deacons took
me into the back room and told me they didn’t want to hear that kind of preaching any more.”
Jordan asked, “What’d you do?” He said, ‘I fired them Deacons. I preached that church down to four people. And not long after that it grew and grew and grew. And I found out that revivals sometimes don’t mean bringing people in, but getting people out who don’t love Jesus.’ (William H. Willimon, Eating and Drinking Among the Lost, Pulpit Resource, Vol. 35, No. 4, Year C, p. 24)

Haven’t had time to really process what I learned from LJO. We were away with some old friends here. It was neat to catch up, watch, and listen to what God is doing the lives of his people.

Here’s a couple of LJO quotes from last week…

“Great preaching is when we allow Christ in his power to meet us at the point in our needs hopes and dreams, so then we can reach out to those we preach.”

“We preach with passion when we listen to the deepest needs of our people.” 

 ”The sermon is the preacher up to date.” 

 Three hopes for me as a preacher.