The Preacher

I am walking back through one of the most significant little books for those who are called by the name preacher. Sadly, the term preacher is not such a relevant designation in today's world of Lead Pastors, Teaching Pastors, and other names that may be used. EM Bounds wrote a little book entitled "The Preacher and Prayer" and it is being a firm reminder of the calling on my life.

Often, I am humbled and overwhelmed by the calling and wonder if I am any good at it. What I have found in these days, is that the role seems much more important and much more difficult. After talking with some friends, we have come to see that there is so much expectation, little encouragement (unless it is going really well), such joy and at times disappointment, times of fruit and times of feeling lost in what we are doing. We love and treasure the calling.

No man call fulfill all the expectations of the calling in his own power and that is why so many have resorted to being personality driven, technology dependent or taking the step to water the message down and make man central to the message instead of the gospel being center to everything. If the course of our ministry takes us away from making the gospel central, then it is short of the true calling we have been entrusted with. We will all go one way or the other and you will choose a church that has made a choice about how the gospel fits and is embraced.

Here are some thoughts from EM Bounds:

• Preaching is not the performance of an hour. It is the outflow of a life.
• The gospel of Christ does not move by popular waves. It has no self-propagating power. It moves as the men who have charge of it move.
• The real sermon is made in the closet. The man - God's man - is made in the closet.
• Every preacher who does not make prayer a mighty factor in his own life and ministry is weak as a factor in God's work and is powerless to project God's cause in this world.

The reason this view of the preacher is not the norm, is only natural in a culture that treasures "self "so much. This man-centered view of life has influenced the church as well. The man of God who does not make man more central in the church can at times, depending on the church, find himself in direct opposition to those he is leading. The gospel does not always lend itself to making people feel good and that can be where the preacher and people experience the conflict with one another.

Bounds also said, "The energy of self-denial must be his being, his heart and blood and bones".

This was also John the Baptizers view of life when he said, "He must be more and I must become less."

I want to crucify myself and experience the words of Jesus when he said that whoever loses his life for my sake will find life. Why live any other way if we claim to be a minister of the gospel.

It is a unique time, for far to long the gospel has not been central in many ways as we have made music, media, personalities, good feelings, buildings, and far to many other things as almost equal to the gospel. We need a real return to simplicity of the gospel message. Our future depends on it.

I want to be a preacher of the gospel. I am okay to be called that. How I might be seen by church members or others I cannot control and I also will not stand before them to give an account when my days here are over. So I will choose to pray, love people, share Christ, and be a preacher of the gospel.

I want to live the words of Paul to Timothy because they are biblical. It is enough to live in these 5 verses regardless of what anyone may think.

II Timothy4:1 I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: 2 preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching. 3 For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, 4 and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. 5 As for you, always be sober-minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.