Friday, July 16, 2010

5 Excuses for Preaching Too Long

I got to thinking - I have probably attended about 3,000 church services in my life time. On an aveage of an hour each, that gives me about 3,000 credit hours; enough to have a few dozen degrees in church-i-anity. I am feeling good about myself, my church experience and while that lasts, I am going to do a little analysis.

I have noticed that in our church culture (a nice way of saying religious Pharisees) preachers some times run on a little bit. On occasion, God is done, and they are not. So here are five signs that they know this is true, but are in denial.

- "In closing" Why don't they just say, I am not done yet, I have more to say, and those who want to, can leave now. Here's why. If they did, it would sound like a commercial toilet flushing as folks headed for the door. Mary Anne and I usually close our eyes because we know there are going to be 4 or 5 closings.

- "Paul preached all night" Yes, and he was beaten, stoned, shipwrecked and imprisioned - I am not seeing the comparison.

- "Can you give a few more minutes?" I already did and you wasted them on some stupid illustration about a frog in a bucket of water.

- "I'm under the anointing." I asked God and he said it was NyQuil.

- "You come to church once a week, and I need to fit this in." Yes, and this is the reason I only come once.

I apologize for my sarcasm. I actually have a reader that likes my blog better when I am not so caustic - I am hoping that they'll see the humor in it.

I have been enjoying church much more than the previous few years. We've had prophecy, healing, teaching on deliverance, great worship, a cool communion time and some of the other regular church stuff.

How about you, are you engaging God on Sunday morning?

8 comments:

Charlie Chang said...

BAHAHA I love you man. This post is awesome. Especially, the frog in a bucket of water illustration. I know EXACTLY what you're refering to.

And also, their anointing was nyquil.

Lately, I've just been opening my eyes during prayer time. It's good to see what people are really in agreement with when the prayer is being said. I don't know, it's encouraging to me.

Great post.

nicodemusatnite.blogspot.com

Tony C said...

Were you being sarcastic? I thought you were just being David...

I became most joyful in my worship when I finally concluded other people have nothing to do with it. Don't get me wrong, I love fellowship with my church family and my pastor often challenges me with his sermons, but I use his sermons as a jumping off point to dig deeper in the coming week...not as the final word on the subject.

I guess you could say he's my weekly Guidepost magazine...

David said...

@JCC - I thought that frog illustration would get to a few Baptists along the way. LOL

@Tony - I agree - it is about Jesus - but man, a short sermon can be right from the Holy Spirit's mouth!

Anonymous said...

ZZZZZZZ... actually long sermons provide an opportunity to increase dreams, and dreams are part of the Acts 2 prophecy ha ha -daryl

David said...

@Daryl - I'll be thinking that every Sunday until I go to glory.

photogr said...

What we need is more enlightenment.

Sarcasm Snuffer ;-) said...

LOL@You! -->Very humurous, as sarcasm and (in reference to TonyC's comment) David usually is. :-) I really can't comment objectively here as I have yet to hear the Nyquil "loaded" frog in a bucket illustration LOL... though I've heard the donkey in a dirt hole analogy a few times now(and I quite like it! haha)
Keep up the humor, always love it. My point only being that as the church body, we gotta stick together as one, respecting, building up and encouraging eachother, and those God has called to lead us, delivering His Word, even when they miss it in our evaluation... We all have. And, maybe just maybe, how the frog got out of his bucket jam might just be what a "younger" Christian in the church body needed to hear that day. :-)
n then again... maybe not(?) LOL ;-) Bless ya...

Tracy said...

So you were pretty funny. I think anyone who's been in church services for more than 2 years has experienced at least one sermon where the preacher did seem to speak on longer than the Spirit was leading.

However, to be candid, I've said way more things in my life than I was led to. My mouth has caused me more problems through the years than I care to think about. I'm grateful that I'm SLOWLY changing in this area.

I look forward to Sunday mornings. I get to sing songs of praise and thanksgiving alongside others, and I'm encouraged by the Word. Just recently as we were driving home from church I was saying how exceptionally good it it had been and my 16yr old son told me that I always say that. I told him that it's because it just always seems to be so.

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