So I didn’t intend to do a series of posts on preaching, but I was so frustrated on Friday I would have built an office tower out of tooth picks to avoid writing the message. 

It finally came together Saturday by noon.  I just hung out and played with the family for the rest of Saturday, reading it over before bed.  Sunday I woke up terribly nervous about it, and rewrote elements before 6 a.m. I was having panic attacks about the message’s dreadfulness.  (Preachers understand what I’m talking about.)

We have two services.  At 8:30 I felt it really got a shaky start, but then I got on a "roll".  Don’t know what else to call it.  But I found myself saying things I really wanted to say but mostly hadn’t planned to say.  At least not the way they came out.  It felt like a service with some anointed moments. But when I sat down I asked my wife Toni how it went and she said "Good, but did you plan on using the Bible in your message at some point?" I got so caught up in it that "moment" I actually forgot to read from the Bible. I had Matthew 7 ready to go on the screen – had prepped for it.  Flat out forgot it. Not good.

So, I actually dropped a personal story from the message at the 10:00 service and read from the Bible and still felt like it was a moment God has somehow orchestrated.  Praying God uses it.

We captured both services on video but this week I opted to use the 10:00 as our download service (I’ll often ask the tech gurus to use 8:30 if I thought it went "better").   The message should be accessible here by late Monday (or just download the video or audio podcast off iTunes). It’s called "What Christians Can Learn from the East".

At the end of it all, preaching is this strange dance where you know it’s really all God and yet you have to do your part, in faith, and offer it up to Him.   But somehow, that often comes with a lot of drama inside.

Oh yeah…gotta start writing for next weekend…and outline the next two series – one on sex called XXX: Does God Like Sex? Got another for June on family issues tentatively called Elephant in the Family Room.  Sundays come around with amazing regularity around here.

Thanks for listening.  Praying for you preachers and thanks for everyone’s prayers.  I needed (and need) them, and am grateful for you.

So the message is written…finally.  This one seemed so hard to write, and in the end it seemed so simple. Man, what a lot of work…but if it changes one life, it will be so worth it.

Thanks for the prayers, and other preachers and followers of Jesus…praying for you today too.  Here’s to what Jesus is going to do with it all tomorrow and beyond.

Almost every preacher who has been charged with the responsibility to communicate the message of God’s Word can tell you this story.  Message prep is hard.  Just hard.

Figure this out.

In last week’s message, I closed by encouraging people to get personal in their relationship with God – to pray and read the Bible and expect God to be there personally.  I said God might show up.  That has happened to me in spades this week.  I’m reading Deuteronomy every morning and it’s like God is speaking directly to me in 3D Imax with THX surround sound. It’s been so powerful. My prayer life has had the most joy it’s had in it in months over the last two weeks.  Amazing.

Now I need to finish the message for this weekend, and I feel completely stuck. I have pages of notes, believe God is in it, am excited about the text, but I’m stuck. I’d rather mop floors or wander aimlessly through a semi-frozen creek in hip-waders than write. If a telemarketer called right now, I’d be grateful.  Aaargh…. I just feel so inadequate, so burdened.  And my spiritual life is good (i think).

People who don’t preach, maybe you might pray for those of us who do preach.  Just so you know, there’s no crisis here (it’s probably not an "attack" nor is there some big counseling thing that needs to happen), and I’m not sure there’s a way "out" except through it. As a preacher, maybe we just have to live it. There’s just a burden associated with preaching that pretty much every preacher feels regularly.  Biblical preachers felt it too.  I can pretty much relate to everything Jeremiah said at one point or another in my preaching life. 

Other preachers – holler back.  You feel this?  Let’s share some stories. 

People who don’t preach (consider yourself blessed), you get stuck here sometimes?  This experience ever pop up this way in your life?

Thanks to Carlos Whittaker for his Creative Chaos blog post -  a post for leaders to share their stories the creative elements they used in their Easter Sunday services.  We went out on a ledge and tattooed someone live during the message.

I was so proud of our Connexus team for this one.  I wanted to start Jesus the Guru – a series about Jesus’ place in the growing movement toward eastern spirituality – with the idea that all of us, regardless of culture, race, era we live in, or background all have an instinctive longing to know God, because God imprinted that on our heart.

As our creative team thought through this, we kept coming back to tattooing someone to make the point. We talked about it theologically and concluded that Jesus handled the prohibition on Leviticus (otherwise you better take off that poly/cotton blend shirt).  We also prefaced it by saying in our announcement time that what we were going to do is something we don’t recommend for teens in any way.

Here’s a close up of the ink! You can watch the message online here or download the podcast (video or audio) off iTunes by searching "connexus community".

In the end, we were thrilled with how it turned out.  Numerous first timers said it really caught them off guard in a positive way.  Hey, if you can change people’s mind about church, you open them to changing their mind about Jesus.

A new feature on the blog today…I added Twitter to the sidebar.

Twitter basically keeps you up to date with what people are up to…if anyone actually cares.  If you care, you can sign up, and then you can let your friends know what you’re up to or thinking or anything.  Some of the Twitter posts are quite funny.  Some of them aren’t.  Mine will be a mixture of both, and more, and less, I’m sure.

Going to watch tv now and see if anything grabs me because i’m not tired because i’m too well rested….

I think we are addicted to negativity.  As we move through Easter, this bugs me because I want to be addicted the message of resurrection, not death. It seems our culture lives the other way.

Think about it.  Bad news sells papers.  Good news doesn’t.  I fly a lot these days.  Almost every day, virtually every flight takes off and lands without incident, unlike the cars I heard about on the traffic report driving to the airport. But an incredible safety record in the airline industry never makes news.  If one plane in 100,000 slides off the run way, it makes headlines everywhere.  That’s human nature.

We love to hear bad news about famous people. Brittney Spears is an industry. Tabloids thrive on that stuff.

Churches are not immune.  I can track traffic to my blog and predict that if I rant about something, traffic will go up.  If I complain about something, more people will read it.  When i write a message, it gets a bigger jolt if I spend 80% of it on the problem and 20% on the solution (test it out when you preach, pastors). Controversy sells.  If you are against something, you will gain a bigger audience.

Here’s what bugs me.  This is the opposite of what I actually want to build my life on.  My guess is that it’s the opposite of what you want to build your life on too. 

Try being against something in your marriage over and over again.  Intimacy killer.  Try being controversial at work over and over again.  Fired (unless your job rewards you for that!).  Try stirring up controversy or being critical of God in your relationship with God.  Peace flees.

When Jesus rose from the dead, He rose to bring forgiveness, reconciliation, peace, humility, kindness, wholeness and grace.  All the stuff I long for.  All the stuff people say they care about, but apparently don’t consume much of.

As I think about what to preach about/blog about, I want to be part of the solution, not part of the problem.  I just don’t want to live of negaholism any longer. Really. 

Do you see this?

Easter Sunday is almost here…a day I’m more excited about than Christmas.  Yes, it’s a new series and yes, it should be a great day.  I’m praying for big life change to come people’s way in this next month.  I’ve actually spent an incredible amount of time trying to enter the "space" of Easter and thinking/praying through all its implications.

This year, it’s kind of cool because my birthday lands on Easter Sunday (first time since 1913 Easter has been this early).  I always see my birthday as a time to pause and reflect and think through what I’ve done with the time God has given me and what I should work on.  Usually I feel like I’m tapping into about 10% of the faith God has given us and 10% of the life that’s possible.

So as I head into the next year, in this season of Easter and resurrection and newness of life, some prayers/goals. Nothing earth shattering:

• I want to tap into the full power of God every day to overcome the remaining negatives in my life. I just want resurrection to rule in my life and relationships. 

• I want to lead with all diligence.  Put everything I have into what I’m doing.  Sometimes I skim through things.  Want to be done with that.  The next year of ministry and life really excite me.

• I want to enjoy every moment with my family.  Jordan goes to university next year. All those people who said they grow up so quickly were bang on right.

• I plan to finally write a book.  I’ve been haunted by this/encouraged by many for years. I have a few ideas of my own and some I’ve been working on with a friend.  No big ambitions other than to try to say what keeps running through my little brain and heart.  If my wife reads it that would be nice.

• I want to get better at having fun. Our recent cruise was the biggest relaxation I think I’ve ever had (because when you’re in captivity on a cruise ship you really don’t have much choice but to rest)…I should rest hard as well as work hard.

• I want to discover new depths of joy in my relationship with God and others.  Simply being present in the moment with God and with the people I’m with should help.  I’m always thinking about the past or the next moment.  Want to change that.

That’s me.  Today at least. 

What would you do differently in the next year if you put your mind, heart and faith to it?
What do you want to do with the next year in the power of Easter?

Just back from Good Friday services this morning at our Orillia Campus.  Some thoughts from today so far:

• It was a powerful experience for me personally to be able to share communion with our Orillia congregation for the first time, and I heard from Rich Birch that our parallel experience at the Barrie campus was oustanding in many ways.  (Communion took a long time to serve in Orillia — we almost ran out of bread and juice.  It was a packed house).  This morning was so meaningful for me.

• I’m sitting down this aft to finish up writing for Sunday when we launch Jesus the Guru at our Barrie Campus.  Ever year I feel like I can’t really write Easter until I’ve ‘experienced’ Good Friday. I felt like I experienced it this year, although I still know I’ve missed 90% of its significance.  I’m going to keep thinking and praying.

• I feel like all we did this year at Good Friday was provide an environment for people to gather to figure out what the sacrifice of Jesus might mean to them.  I liked it because as a preacher, I feel whatever words or music or moments we might frame to convey the power of Good Friday or Easter will fall short.  So simply inviting people into space and letting God shape lives might be a good approach.  More of that on Sunday maybe?

• I’m thinking that maybe when Jesus died and ushered in forgiveness, He really meant for us to live free of our past.  How much negative thinking from last week/last year/last decade smothers the moment we are in now?  Jesus died for that.  I want to live free in Him, forgiven in this moment.

• I’d love to figure out how to get the planet in on this Jesus thing.  Really.

• Can’t wait for Sunday…just to be together in the presence of a real God who actually rose from the dead and will meet us and our friends there.

Praying for you….

I’m always amazed at how tired I get, and how hard I have to work to keep my life in balance.  I have too many unreturned emails and voice mails already this week and enough work to do to keep me up for a while.  Too much to do, too little time.  Work and life blur together so readily in our wired world.  I’m writing this on my laptop in my living room with my cell phone next to me while my family is off the my left in the kitchen.

One of the things that happened to me on the cruise we were on last week is that I rested — deeply. Because I actually unplugged, I had little choice.  It was awesome.  I came back so rested and awake that I feel fully alive every day so far this week.  It’s so cool.  Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t close to burn out before, but I think so many of us live with a low-level line-buzz of day to day fatigue that we just don’t hear it or feel it any more. 

Over the last month, my bible readings have taken me, among other things, into Leviticus and Numbers.  Right through the passages that talk about offerings, feast days and Sabbath rest.  I think it must have been crazy to be a follower of God in the Old Testament.  Every time you turned around, you had to bring an offering, stop and have a holiday, rest for the Sabbath, or do something that made you break your daily routine and focus on God.  There is a forced rhythm of rest in the Old Testament that grinds you to a halt and into the presence of God regularly.

Do we need more of that?  I have had Good Friday and Easter on my mind for months now, not just as  a preacher but as a worshiper.  I don’t want to miss these moments.  I want to absorb as much as possible what happened and what God was/is doing and what it means.   I think the key to that is to pause — each day — to remember and to keep life in balance.

So, work pending, here’s what I’ve done this week.  Gotten eight hours of rest every night.  Been on the treadmill five times in ten days to overcome my inert lifestyle.  Eaten better.  Took intentional devotional and prayer time each morning.  Spent two night with my family (with a third coming tonight). And let the work "pile up" against my normal pattern.  Usually, I’d squander evenings by doing half work half play and doing both poorly.   

I feel better.  I feel more grounded in God.  I feel more present for people when I am with them.  I feel the presence of Christ more deeply.   Saturday and Sunday afternoon/evening will be "pause" days with my family this weekend.  I want to experience God and the power of relationship with Him and others more than anything.  I want to tap into that same power that raised Jesus from the dead.  That’s what scripture promises.  Why aren’t more of us experiencing it?  Is rest a part of our issue today?

What’s your experience with all this?  My wish for you is the power of Christ fully present in your life and the life of your friends this Easter weekend.  How are we going to get there?  What role do resting and pausing play in all this?

It’s Tuesday…my first day "back".  Caught up on the blog and spent my day in meetings, and just wanted to say thanks for taking over while I was gone.

Eddie…nice conversation starter. As a kid, I thought Glen Campbell was cool, and my secret ambition is to be a rhinestone cowboy.  Naturally, that led to ministry in Canada, and here I am forced to be an opening act for bands in Northern Ontario and performing circus acts in small towns.  Rich has captured my image accurately, and if there is any way you can use me in Nashville, I’m in.  In case you’re interested, there is going to be a musical bit featuring me in the upcoming Jesus the Guru series.  Stay tuned.

Allen, I hear you man.  Most preachers will tell you that Easter and Christmas are the hardest weekends to preach through.  In part, I find words can’t convey the power of what happened.  Our programming team and musicians have pulled an awesome weekend together, and I just saw the Good Friday video we shot a few weeks ago in a near final edit form this afternoon.  I am quite excited and very prayerful about what God might do this weekend at Connexus and through all churches.  At the end, I’m hoping and praying that we would set a great environment in which people can meet the Risen Jesus.

Thanks for the feedback on the Oprah and Eastern Religion post.  There is much more to come as the weeks unfold.

Sorry to hear about all the snow that fell when we were gone.  It will end!  It will.  (I keep telling myself this.)  Totally looking forward to this weekend, and would appreciate your prayers not only for me but for our team and churches everywhere as we move into this most significant weekend.  Pray for our hearts, and for the heart of this world.