Never A Good Sermon

The subtitle for this would be "bad sermons part two, or the sequel".  I was reminded tonight of one of my favorite bad sermons preached by a pastor we nicknamed Cab. Cab stands for "crash and burn" because no matter when or what topic he spoke on, he crashed and burned in front of his audience. Now I know what most of you cynical people are thinking because I am one of you. This poor guy was bad EVERY time? The answer is yes, he was, but allow me to explain. The stage...Rwanda Africa. The audience...a few thousand conference attendees eager to hear an American preacher. The star...Cab, an American preacher from the south U.S. who probably was great in front of American congregations. A bit of background info...this is a renewal conference for several thousand people in northern Rwanda. Rwandan preachers are very animated and excitable when they preach. Lots of yelling and excitement! I was there as one of the worship leaders for the conference, and had a front row seat on the stage for all of the events. Ok so now back to our hero. All the English speaking people had a rwandan translator and it was exciting to watch the translator take the words of the Americans and make them sound really exciting and dynamic. I don't speak kinyarwandan so I can't be sure if they translated everything verbatim, but you sure could tell when they stumbled on a word they did not know the meaning of.  So Cab begins his sermon with the story of the Captain of a naval vessel. Rwanda is a land-locked country and does not have a navy, so the translator immediately has to explain the Navy and figure out that a vessel is a boat, not an object used to carry perfume as they would think. "So the captain sees a blip on his radar screen"....hmm. He didn't see anything wrong with that as he begins to mime what appears to be windshield wipers, trying to explain a "radar blip" to a crowd of people that have no electricity at home. Not really sure what the translator is telling the crowd at this point, but as the story goes on, the captain "radios" the blip to tell them to change course. Explain radio, not the same as the object they get their news from; explain what change course means and why they need to do that. (story falling apart pretty fast now) The blip radios back and tells the captain he should change his course. Back and forth this goes, but in translator time it is in slow motion, very slow.  Finally the punchline...the captain says "change your course immediately, we are a Naval Vessel!" The reply comes back, "no sir, you need to change your course, we are a lighthouse" Cab immediately smiles having delivered a great story, as the crowd roars in laughter...no wait, that was his fantasy. Despite the big smile of Cab, his audience stares deadpan at him. The translator stares at him in bewilderment and asks "what happened?" Cab replies laughing, it was a lighthouse! Ignorance is funny sometimes. Perhaps the people of the small country of Rwanda, with no oceans or large bodies of water near fog may not know what a lighthouse is. Nah, thinks Cab as he begins to mime a police siren trying to explain the lighthouse. Now as I said I don't understand Kinyarwandan, but some words that are particular to English do not get translated and we all understand those. The translator turns to the crowd, and with a semi-puzzeled look on his face says some words I didn't catch then says clearly "it's the Whitehouse!" Great illustration Cab, now they think the Americans hate windshield wipers.

Almost a Good Sermon

Well tonight I went to a youth event at a Baptist Church. I love a good Baptist preacher.  Plenty of Amens mixed in with lots of repetition, and lots of repetition. Let me say that again...no, it's ok, we heard it the first time.  So the young guy was doing alright really. Lets get right into the book of John. He was pacing, he was letting us know that Jesus was in real trouble talking with church leaders. The preacher said that because of what Jesus was answering, if he wasn't careful, he would be stoned to death right there. I couldn't help but wonder; if Jesus already knew how he would die, and we know that as well, the whole "in grave danger" bit wasn't working for me. And what about the image of the cross? Think of how all our churches would look with a stone on top of them. But ok, we move forward.  Jesus tells the Jews that if we sin we may as well cut off our arm (paraphrased of course). To drive this point home he (the preacher) tells the story of the rock climber that found his arm trapped under a rock and used his pocket knife to cut his arm off so he would escape with his life and not die. This was going somewhere. The rock is sin, holding us down...ok. The knife is the word of God, otherwise known as the sword of the Spirit, so we use the word of God to escape sin by cutting it out. I think it works, but uh-oh; he has one last question. He turns to the high schoolers, the people he has been repeatedly been calling children, and asks them, "so what is your rock? Is it sin or is it Jesus?" What? What? Maybe you should ask again and re-phrase. Nope, he didn't rephrase, he just asked again. SO the image he left us with is was either sin crushing your arm or Jesus crushing your arm. He went on to say that our arm would be comfortable under the rock because it is a safe place. Really? Then why did the guy have to cut it off? And I'm not sure but my guess is your arm crushed under a rock may not be that comfortable. His now mixed-metaphor went horribly wrong at that point, but he had no way out. So he prayed that the rock in our lives would be Jesus, not exactly a great ending, but I gave him points for a good start.

What did you say?

I love conversations that wind up funny when they are not supposed to. Just today we were problem solving and so we were looking for a few people that could take over leadership of the event that was falling apart.  One of our staff commented on calling a woman in our church to ask for help and found out she was going through some tough times medically and was going to have foot surgery. So the quote was, "Jill is having foot surgery so she won't be able to step in to help." After a brief moment of realizing what was said, we had a good laugh.
Funny is fun. Not the same when another staff person who makes schedules commented that it is difficult to acquire volunteers for anything at the church, especially a church service that falls on a saturday. "Well what about getting some of the kids who are already in our rotation schedule to carry the candles and cross for this upcoming service?" was the question on the floor. The answer came back, "it's not like I have a pool of people to choose from." Nobody laughed...out loud that is.
And so I learned that apparently all the people that help on Sunday are randomly selected from the congregation. Join us this week for church.

Worship Leader's Retreat

Well you know how much I love a retreat! Actually, this was kind of fun. I got to hang out with a few friends and met some interesting people. I probably only stuck my foot in my mouth a few times but that really isn't important. One of our "excercises" had us break into two groups where one group would sing and the other would pray. Oh the irony of the prayers we had to pray. As they split us in two, one group was called to pray for unity.
Next as an illustration, our leader, a man I love and respect, had a difficult illustration to make. He was describing the energy that can build from the momentum of one person. He likened it to a "whirly" (he is from England) or a tornado as we call it here in the states. I recalled my book on tornadoes from my last post which I gave to my daughter (the book, not the post), now in Oklahoma. Anyway, he began to speak of how it starts small, builds momentum and carries a great energy gathering everything around it. This is so exciting! Sounds great...everyone gets involved. As I began to think how great this analogy was, my friend Marty beside me leaned over and reminded me that what happens next is the momentum goes on, destroys everything in it's path and kills people. Oh.