T. David Beck: The Simple Way of Jesus

I'm back from my hiatus from blogging with a scary story for a Halloween day... A couple of days ago I had a conversation with Mike, my favorite Sacramento barista, about what I do as a pastor. He's not a Christian, and I don't think he has a lot of church background. He asks great questions. As he was making a mocha for another customer, he inquired, "So do you... you know... preach?" It was like being asked if I pull kittens' tails and throw rocks at children. I said, "I do preach, but at the same time I'm not sure how I feel about the word 'preach.' It carries a lot of baggage." He said, "Yeah, like all that fire and brimstone. That's not good. Well, what do you do if you don't call it preaching?" Quickly fumbling for a way to reinterpret preaching on the spot, I replied, "I help people imagine what it is to live a constantly improving life." As he put the finishing touches on the mocha, he smiled...

Delta blues music from the 1920s and the postmodern culture we currently live in -- what do they have in common? And in what way does blues music resemble good preaching? Here is what I discovered tonight. Charley Patton In his book on the history of the blues entitled Deep Blues , Robert Palmer explains that black music underwent several fundamental changes in the 1920s. One of the most important involves the standpoint from which the music is written. Older black music tended to be written from a detached standpoint. A song might be about a possum or a train engineer. Blues, on the other hand, was an expression of the singer's own experience. It told a story from one man or woman's perspective. The blues meant a transition from objective to subjective. ( Deep Blues , p. 75) Interestingly, Palmer connects subjectivity to freedom. "Only a man who understands his worth and believes in his freedom sings as if nothing else matters [than his subjective experience of ev...

Why do pastors preach sermons? Because that's what all pastors do? Because the Bible tells us to preach? Because of something else? For that matter, if you go to church, why do you do that? What do you hope happens when you go to church? To be honest, these are not easy questions to answer. As a pastor, I sometimes get into the middle of the week, and I feel like I'm preparing to preach because Sunday's coming, and I'm supposed to preach. I mean, that's my job. I don't always stop to ask the deeper question, why am I doing this? What do I hope happens when I preach? I credit another pastor, Andy Stanley, for insisting that we pastors ask the deeper questions about why we preach (see his book Communicating for A Change ). So I'll come out with it. I hope people at Sanctuary are inspired to be with God, listen to him, and do what he says . I've talked about this at church before. It's simple, but when we relate to God and obey him, the best thing...

Last Sunday at Sanctuary, I preached on money and the Christian life. I hadn't planned a money sermon. It was just the next parable in Luke after the parable of the Lost Sons. The sermon raised a question in my mind. How often should an American pastor talk about money? Consider the following facts: We Americans have a lot of money . Regardless of the recent economic downturn, Americans still do extremely well on a global scale.  American culture is deeply materialistic . We tend to measure success and failure in terms of financial advancement, possessions, and comfort.  American evangelicals hardly ever talk about money in church . Pastors tend to preach on money once or twice a year, and that's only to check a box on the annual "necessary sermon topics" list. Either that or pastors want to move a building program forward so they preach on money. I may sound a little cynical here, but I don't think I'm too far off base. The pastors I have been around don...

A few words about preaching... I have been to a handful of pastors' conferences over the last four years and listened to many great speakers, and here is an observation. The speaker who talks out of Scripture has the greatest impact. Most of us pastors want to preach because we love God's Word, and we feel like we have a lot of valuable things to say about it. And, most likely, we do. Our temptation is to want to display our learning and our insights. As a friend of mine put it, we contend with the temptation to want to be profound. Or, as I put it, we want to "dress up" Scripture, treating it like a manikin that will look much more interesting if it is sporting the latest fashions. Now don't get me wrong, I love to hear a well-crafted sermon. And sermon-making is an art form of the highest degree. However, I am still left with my observation that I seem to walk away from pastors' conferences remembering a Scripture someone expounded rather than the cool p...