Quality Preachers Don't Preach Because They Enjoy It

I am not an award winning preacher, but I am married to one (Find Estee's name on page 99 of this report). I don't teach preaching (although I have recently been riding the coattails of Estee to help work with a college on his preaching). I have never been asked to lead a session on how to preach, however I have pulled preachers together a few times in a event I co-created called "SermonCraft".

View fullsize

Rev. Charles McClure and Rev. Thomas Q. Robbins. McClure has something to say about the nature of the Church and Robbins has something to say about Evangelism. These are two quality preachers.

Like others, I listen to a number of preachers in my denomination's conference from Rev. Phillip Rhodes at FUMC Hurst to Rev. Katie Meek at FUMC Round Rock to preachers outside my denomination such as Pastor Rob Carmack at Collective Church and the great work of Shane Hipps. I have even tried to highlight other preachers on this very blog through the "Preacher of the Month" posts. 

Recently I was asked by a Sunday school group, "How do you come up with sermons?" It was a fun time talking about sermon crafting and I am thankful for the opportunity. In deeper reflection on the art of preaching, there is at least one Truth that has come to the surface about the quality preachers that I hear:

Quality preachers don't preach because they enjoy it. If you encounter someone who feels called to the ministry because they really like to preach, feel free to share this bit of advice - quality preachers don't go into preaching because they like it but because they have something to say. 

That is not to say that preachers cannot enjoy saying something in front of a congregation, but it is to say that saying something is not the same as having something to say. The best preachers have something to say. 

What is Missing in All This Talk About Leadership in the #UMC

Jonathan Haidt's fantastic book, The Righteous Mind, touches on a number of things related to moral foundations theory which is what made this book so helpful for me. However, this post is to point out one of the minor points of the book: leadership. Specifically he says that if we want to take advantage of the "hivish nature" of human groups so to accomplish great things (like that of honey bees) then we need to stop focusing so much on leadership. 

He goes on to cite other thinkers who say leadership can only be understood as the complement of "followership" (something I made note of here). And not only is leadership one half of the formula, it is not even the most interesting half: "it's no puzzle to understand why people want to lead. The real puzzle is why people are willing to follow." 

Haidt makes the distinction that there are at least two types of leadership styles: Transactional and Transformational. And each has a place in an organization. Transactional leadership uses a a combination of sticks and carrots to incentive followers to a specific action. This style of leadership is helpful when quick, short term action is needed. The drawback of transactional leadership is twofold. First, workers focus on looking good to get a promotion, a higher pay grade or greater prestige. Second, leaders have to monitor workers closely and have costly enforcement mechanisms. If you want people to build a boat then train people to be builders, cut checks and those who are better boat builders will work harder and "move up" into supervision and management. But you don't know who is a good worker and who is a slacker so you have to have metrics and tools to assess each worker and then judge them accordingly.

On the other hand, there is transformational leadership which uses bonds of social capital, pride and loyalty to energize workers. Then you have to trust your workers to do their job, which requires less monitoring than transactional leadership is comfortable with (which some would identify as a drawback to this model). So if you want to build a boat, you don't have to teach people to be builders but only to long for the ocean. 

“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.”

— Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Leadership is not only a hot topic in the business world, but we have a bit of a leadership fascination in the UMC. Recently I shared about the "Clashing Shepards" in the UMC, what seems to be missing in all this talk about leadership is the type of leadership we need is one that take seriously followership. If people are following because of sticks and carrots then you know that leader is short sighted. If people are following because of trust and pride, then you know that leader understands followers. 

And of course, there is great African proverb that reminds us, "If you think you're leading and no one is following you, then you're only taking a walk.” 

The irony is that in an organization that talks about being followers of Jesus, when it comes to leadership it is followship that is missing.

8 Years Later and I Still Fear Blogging

Blogging has taken a backseat in the world of Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. It is not that people do not read it is just that blogging is difficult to get any traction in such a noisy internet. For over eight years I have been plodding away on this blog and I have learned a few things.

• Blogger is for PC people, Wordpress is for Apple people and Squarespace is greatness
• Mailchimp is also greatness
• I might be able to build a larger audience if I used Adwords and/or better posts
• Shorter posts are read and shared more than longer ones
• People love lists
• Post titles matter a lot
• Images help
• Building an email list is very helpful to see what is "connecting"
• Post to Facebook and Twitter

Beyond the blogging specific stuff I have learned more about myself than I ever imaged. Perhaps the most important point of self discovery is how much I fear blogging. Specifically how much I fear putting thoughts on "paper" in a public way. I am not a great speller. I am not disciplined in writing and distracted often contributing to mistakes. I did not pick up the basic principles of sentence structure and am not sure what a preposition is. These errors are brought to my attention by someone with some consistency and no matter how much I try to be better I seem to plateau on ability. Each published post is laden with fear and trepidation that I often cloister up for weeks on end and don't write anything (that has happened more this year than any year so far). 

Eight years later and I still fear blogging because of how it exposes so many of my insecurities and inadequacies. Blogging is a practice in humility and a practice that is most formative to me than other areas of my life (except parenting which is just a series of failed attempts to live into the very ideals that I want my children to live into). 

I write this all to say that if you fear something about yourself and you want to "get over it" I am not sure that is the point. I believe the point of the fears in our lives is not to run from them or to "get over them" but to learn from them. Fears are some of the greatest gifts we can receive because they teach us more than we could ever imagine. If it is possible to embrace that which you fear, I would encourage you to do so. You may still fear it, but it will teach you something you need to know.