Somebody said to me recently that the church has the most eloquent speakers in North America.  I’d never thought about that before.

It might be true, though.  If you listen to even a sampling of preaching podcasts and compare them to the speeches made by business leaders or politicians, you could make a strong argument that the church has better orators than the marketplace. 

Which raises a deeper question: why isn’t the church as a whole growing or advancing?  If oratory skills alone wowed people and changed lives, why aren’t most churches growing? And if your church is growing, is it growing for the right reasons?

That got me thinking about my own preaching.  Like most preachers, I want to be the best communicator I can be. So I solicit feedback on my talks: what worked, what didn’t?  I listen to other preachers to grow spiritually and to shape my preaching. Once a month or so (although it’s never a comfortable thing), I’ll watch my own sermons and try to learn and grow. 

But if I’m not careful, what I’ll try to do is to become a better speaker or try to come up with clearer outlines, structure and metaphors.  As I was thinking about this again over the weekend, the irony hit me: that’s not what the Bible says changes lives.

About 1,950 years ago, there was a tension of sorts between two preachers.  One was a brilliant orator.  The second preacher wasn’t much of a public speaker at all.  But the second preacher made the argument that it’s not clever speeches that change lives – it’s Christ and Christ crucified.  The first preacher was named Apollos.  The second we know better as the Apostle Paul.  Paul, a poor public speaker by his own admission and unimpressive to others , said that the real power in preaching comes by the Spirit of God. 

This week, I’m going to be personally reflecting/praying over the power of God as revealed in preaching.  If it’s primarily how God uses preaching, I want to focus more on that.  If I’m not intentional in focusing on that, I’d probably just focus on speaking more clearly and convincingly.  (Not entirely wise.)  I’d love to hear from preachers/communicators on how you approach that.

Second, I’d love to hear from people who have been impacted by preaching.  How did ‘the power of God’ come alive in preaching for you?  In what ways have you experienced the demonstration of God’s power in preaching apart from eloquence?

I know I have blogged about this a few times already in 2008, but I have to sound this trumpet again.  I in a very different place than I have ever been (much more overflow) because I have margin in my life in a way I’ve never had before.

Because I’ve been focused for several years on learning to do less for more, I find myself in the unique place of having more unstructured time than ever before and "doing more" than ever before by doing less.

The benefits?

• My devotions are growing richer.  Reading the Bible and praying are less of a responsibility and more of a time of exploration and discovery.  Not every day, but many.
• I’m home more at night.  Like a lot.  5-6 nights a week.  That was unheard of five years ago.
• I have almost every Saturday off.
• I have more time to write.  I think my messages are better and I can even do stuff like blog. I’m toying with a book.
• I spend a lot more time with key staff and leaders and Connexus.

Don’t get me wrong, I still have time management challenges weekly.  This week for example, I had two evening meetings, a full day staff retreat, regular staff meetings, my small group and five one on one meetings, a ten hour drive to Philadelphia (I leave at noon today) and four talks on the Orange Tour before driving home Saturday afternoon. Plus I blogged a lot and wrote a message for Sunday (back Sunday to teach).  (Oh, and I cleaned out my inbox.)  Margin and doing less for more does not mean you’re lazy, it just means you’re focused on what you’re best at and that there’s enough space in your life that a full enough week like this one is offset by more balance other weeks. Next week for example, I am home four out of seven nights. The following week: six out of seven.

The other upside is that my disposition, my mood, has changed. It’s hard to have overflow when you never sit down, are constantly on the go and feel like you can’t get it all done. Here are some shifts I noticed in my personality because I have more time off and more margin in my life:

• I’m more generous.  I find myself helping out more around the house and in virtually all situations without thinking someone else should have done it.
• I have more patience for hard situations.  When something goes wrong or people go off on me, my fuse is longer and my compassion is greater.
• I have more energy for each day.  I just sat through an eight hour meeting yesterday.  Normally that would have killed me.  I stayed engaged through the entire thing.
• I rush less.  I am naturally an insufferable rusher.  I take more time for people and more time to listen.
• I am more charitable in how I interpret things.  I am more likely to assume the best in others, not the worst or something in between.
• My devotions have become richer.  Busy-ness is the enemy of intimacy (with God).

How much margin do you have in your life?  Is margin related to overflow?  Can you imagine moving into a place of deeper margin? What are your patterns that make you "better" and which ones make you ‘worse"?  What can you do about it?

Most people have a to do list.  But do you have a not to do list? 

If you are going to do less to accomplish more, you need to stop doing things probably more than you need to start doing things. Why?  If the gravitational pull in life is toward complexity, more, saying yes to whatever and being reactive, then it’s going to take intentionality to reverse that.

Here’s why: not all activities are created equal.  Some bring far greater reward for the same amount of effort than others.  Why not focus on those that bring the most reward and eliminate those that don’t?

That’s hard step, but here are some shifts to doing less in order to accomplish more that have helped me in the last few years:

In ministry

1. We cut all mid-week programming except small groups, believing that small groups provided the best opportunity for life-change.  As a result, participation in mid-week ministry went from 35% of weekend attenders participating in mid week ministry to 68% of weekend attenders participating in small groups.  We also do a better job in small group ministry.
2. We cut our most successful non-family children’s venue (Vacation Bible Camp) to do a better job focusing on Sunday mornings and equipping parents to develop their kids spiritually and morally at home.
3. I have focused more of my time on working with the leaders on staff and key leaders in the church. I say no to most outside meetings that are not in some way related to our mission or vision.  Ironically, that has given me more time to hang out with more Connexus people.

In my life, I:

1. Began to turn down almost all speaking engagements except those related to family ministry or leadership development.  Even I hate saying no, but it’s been effective and made me a better leader. Rather than randomly saying yes, I carefully and prayerfully discuss opportunities with my family, our elders and key staff.
2. Decided not to develop a new personal hobby for the next five years and instead focus on opening time to simply be around for my kids.  I’ve found that one of the best way to parent teens is to be around when they are around.  Schedule less…be available more.

There are other shifts I’ve made and we’ve made, but you get the idea.  I think one of the greatest releases for me has been to figure out this truth: we have a role in the Kingdom of God but we are not the Kingdom of God. Other churches can do the things we’re not doing.  Other people will fill roles I can’t fill. 

Most of us assume we have to do everything to be effective.  What if God saw us as most effective at doing one or two things?  There are some things you or your organization does that you are simply great at or could be great at. Michael Phelps is a classic example of this. He’s not the entire Olympics, but he’s an incredible swimmer.  And to become a great swimmer, he had to say no to becoming a great tennis player, an NBA player, a Harvard student or whatever else he might have become.

Not everything you or I do brings equal results. How much time do we spend on things that bring little to no reward, often in the name of being "well rounded"?  Why not stop doing that and start focusing on the few things that bring greatest results?

What scares you about this?  What excites you?

Life has a gravitational pull.  And the pull I feel is toward doing more.  And I think that’s based on an assumption that more is more.

When our church was small, we didn’t do much, but when it began to grow bigger, we did more.  When the kids were little, we didn’t have many activities for them.  But as they grew older and more capable, the tendency is to enroll them many things to develop them.  You start off in life with a small house, but the tendency is that as you get older and make more money, you buy a bigger house and accumulate more stuff.  The underlying belief under all of this?  More is more.

My problem with more is that I found it both overwhelming and ineffective.  As I struggled to do more, it seemed like I accomplished less.  As our church did more, I honestly feel that we became less effective at helping people grow spiritually.  Even with two kids, our family was out almost every night of the week between church, music and sports. (If exhaustion was a measure of greatness, many families border on near-genius today.)  And while we are still in the same house we first bought 11 years ago, I’m amazed at how much stuff accumulates without trying.

More becomes the default for most of us for these reasons:

• Life drifts toward complexity, not toward simplicity
• Life drifts toward more, not better or less
• Saying yes is easier than saying no
• Strategy takes thought and planning – doing "whatever" is much more natural
• Being reactive is much easier than being proactive

I no longer believe that more is more. That’s been a huge shift for me in the last three years.  We’ll talk more about why tomorrow.  For three years, I’ve been fighting the default of more, and ironically discovered that less leads to overflow.

In the meantime, check in for a minute about how "more" has been working for you.  When do you feel overwhelmed?  Why does your life keep moving toward "more"?  To what extent do you believe that more is better?  How has that belief served you over the years?

I remember my preaching professor at seminary telling us that we ought to preach out of the overflow.  What he meant was that the best preaching happens our relationship with God is deep enough that it overflows into Sunday.

I like being in overflow  It means there is something left in the tank even after you give lots away.  It means you don’t need to manufacture energy…it’s there.  It means you are not chasing joy all the time…it actually shows up as a gift.  It means that there is a deeper synchronicity between your walk and your talk.  It means you are accomplishing more and yet finding rest.

It doesn’t mean you’re perfect.  It doesn’t mean you don’t struggle.  It doesn’t mean you’ve got it all figured out.  But it does mean you’re at least not always running a deficit of energy.

The question is: how do you get to a place of overflow?  That’s what this week is about.

This week I want to blog about some of the things I’ve learned that have helped me find overflow in fresh ways (especially after a season where I couldn’t find it for a while). I won’t blog on obvious ones (read your Bible and pray – I’ve done that enough), but on ones that are more obscure and might get missed.  I’m particularly excited about it because I don’t think these tips are as widely known or practices as they ought to be.

A few of the thoughts are my own musings, but I need to give credit where it’s due: I’ve learned a lot of what I’ll share this week from two people: Reggie Joiner and Andy Stanley.  Having been able to work with these two leaders and learn from them over the last three years has been a real gift.  In many ways, they have helped me find permission to make choices that lead to overflow. So just in case you thought I was smart or something, I need to deflect credit away. 

Anyway…this all starts tomorrow. 

Question: what season are you in, and if you’ve had operated out of "overflow" in the past, what’s generated it for you?

Meet Josh Roberts.  Josh is planting a church in Rome, Georgia called Connect Rome.  I met him last year while on a retreat outside of Atlanta, and it’s been great to get to know him a bit.  He’s got a real heart for people, an incredible servant’s heart.  You can follow him (and me) on twitter too if you are in to that.

Today I’m guest blogging on Josh’s blog about failure. I wrote a fresh post for his blog today about my fear of failure and how I think it drove me in an unhealthy way for years. It kicks off a week of guest bloggers who are writing about failure.  It might encourage you and is something you’ll probably want to check out all week. 

Anyway, give a shout out to Josh this week and encourage him in what he’s doing!

I love comfort. I just worry it’s affected my prayer life and way too many others.

Years ago, I began to see a gap between how I prayed, how the church prayed and biblical prayers.  When I boiled contemporary church prayer life down to basics, two prayers kept coming up:

1. Lord, please keep me from every illness, discomfort or disease now.  Heal me, no matter how trivial my inconvenience is.
2. Lord, I want more comfort.  Smooth out every situation in my life so I face no adversity.

Go to the next prayer gathering or audit your own prayer life and see how much these two basic prayers get air time.  No one would ever pray these quite as bluntly as I’ve stated them here, but I think they often occupy 80-90% of modern prayer.

My problem is that I can’t find much precedent for this kind of prayer life in the Bible.  I can pull quotes from places like Psalm 121 to make me feel better and "claim" that God would never allow those he loves to be harmed (I’ve heard this quoted so often).  But then I can make no sense of the rest of the Bible.

How do you reconcile the lives these heroes of the faith lived with the comfortable life we’re seeking.  Some of them got sawed in two. How do we explain the Apostle Paul’s life?  Read this.  Seriously.  I think many of us would say "sucks to be him".  Jesus’ life was hardly a life of comfort, enjoyment and freedom from harm.

Why does so much North American Christianity seem to be synonymous with comfort, quiet, and upper middle class bliss?  Where the biggest persecution we would want to face is insects in our gardens?

Anyone actually willing to suffer for Christ?  If so, why are our prayers not more like that?

What would the prayer life of a biblically authentic follower of Christ look like?  What would our churches look like if we gave up our comfort for the sake of Christ and others?  Is paying off the mortgage and recarpeting the auditorium God’s #1 priority? 

I’m just thinking out loud here…. How do some of these crazy scripture passages speak to you?  How does it challenge you?  Would you follow the real God?  Would I?

So here’s why I wonder whether we worship a false God.

It seems that much of contemporary Christianity is aimed at keeping us safe.  We should live in our vanilla worlds of peace, prosperity and shelter from the world.  God will protect us from all evil and never expose us or our family to danger.   We pull quotes from the Bible regardless of context to make us feel better.

Take one of the most famous embroidered, monogrammed and cheesy arted verses, Jeremiah 29:11-13.  You know it.  People quote it when going through a hard time or as a passage of reassurance and prosperity.

For I know the plans I have for you,” says the Lord. “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope. In those days when you pray, I will listen. If you look for me wholeheartedly, you will find me.

Most people have no clue that the next verses roll this way:

This is what the Lord of Heaven’s Armies says: “I will send war, famine, and disease upon them and make them like bad figs, too rotten to eat.
Yes, I will pursue them with war, famine, and disease, and I will
scatter them around the world. In every nation where I send them, I
will make them an object of damnation, horror, contempt, and mockery.
For they refuse to listen to me, though I have spoken to them
repeatedly through the prophets I sent. And you who are in exile have
not listened either,” says the Lord.

Print that on your daughter’s graduation card….

Now, I’m not trying to be mean, but I am trying to make a point. Jeremiah was writing to God’s exiled people and his message was complex.  God was going to bless them, but he was also punishing them and their relatives, and they weren’t listening well.  Are we just pulling sound bites to make us sleep better at night?

What that sets up for most of us is false expectations – we believe everything’s gonna roll beautifully with God and we’ll never have coffee stains on our veneered teeth.  Then, when plans don’t work out as well as we hoped, we blame God…claiming he didn’t come through for us.

I want to talk more about this tomorrow, but I’d love to hear what passages you get stuck on.  What bothers you about God’s character as revealed in the Bible?  What specific passages make you think you might be dealing with a different God than you originally thought? 

Love the comments so far…let’s keep them coming in. 

I want to embark on a deeper discussion this week about worshiping a false God.  As I shared Friday on the blog, I have this nagging suspicion that too many of us take the parts of God we like, discard the parts we don’t and end up worshiping this God we’ve concocted that doesn’t fully align with who He really is.

The Christian sub-culture is excellent at this, pulling quotes for coffee mugs and cheesy art that make us feel safe and secure, but ignoring the verses around it or other passages that might make us more than a bit terrified or uneasy.  And before I point all my fingers at cheesy Christian subculture, I realize I probably just pick different aspects of God’s character to ‘like’ while I discard others.

My best indicator that my image of God is off-track is when I run into scripture that seems "off", "scary" or down right contradictory to the God I believe in. (I quickly realize it’s not the scripture that’s off). 

For example, last week I read Isaiah 3:16-26 and thought "I can’t imagine anybody preaching that today" (in fact, I thought only crazy people would preach that). Go ahead and read it.  I promise you its offensive at every level.  Can’t imagine finding it framed and quoted in somebody’s living room. 

So to get this rolling, my question is this: what aspects of God do you find difficult to worship? What parts of scripture or aspects of God’s character bother you enough that you want to edit them out?  I’ll share my top ones over the next few days, but would love to hear yours.  Together, we might learn something about who we really should be worshiping.

Fire away – what bugs you about God’s character?

Had a great weekend.  It was fantastic to be in Seattle for two days for the Orange Tour.  Being around Reggie Joiner and Sue Miller and the rest of the Orange team always energizes me. These guys are sharp, and deeply devoted to reaching families. 

We also met a great group of senior pastors and church leaders who are engaging change at a deep level.  I feel excited for families in the Pacific Northwest.  It was awesome to see the number of Canadians who traveled down to Seattle too (and people from Idaho…big trek!)

I think I also fell in love with the city of Seattle. I found myself gasping out loud at the beauty of the trees/mountains/water/city all flowing into one around Seattle.  I would love to go back just to visit.  Ever been there?  Wish I had more time to explore.

As I got back to Connexus Sunday morning it was great to see families engaging.  It was kind of fun to watch our parent-paging system go off again and again during the 10 a.m. service – usually a sign of new families whose kids hadn’t quite "settled".  Our family ministry team has some awesome fall plans to help families engage in leading their kids to Christ and experiencing baptism together this fall as well (stay tuned).  I get excited when I see friends inviting friends and I think of the changes that are happening in families this week because some church leaders cared, sacrificed and gave. 

No real point to this post except a bit of thanksgiving for some church leaders at home, in Atlanta (Orange HQ) and on the other side of the continent who care enough to want to change the landscape of church and family in this generation.  I feel grateful to be a tiny part of that.