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According to many church standards today, especially American church standards, to be a good preacher you must:
1. Have a large audience/big following 2. Know how to speak Christianese (using fancy Bible/Christian terminology) 3. Have spent several years in Seminary 4. Have a plethora of bible knowledge 5. Be a confident, talented, eloquent speaker 6. Have a crazy incredible story of how you came to Christ 7. Have well planned out sermons with quotes from other well respected Christian authors/leaders, at least 8 Bible references to back up your thoughts, and extended research on the history and influences of the time period you choose Now here is what God has shared with me about preaching. Well first of all I don’t even know if I like the term “preacher”, it just sounds too … I don’t know too unauthentic and formal to me. Maybe I am a 23 year old single female with scraggly blonde hair, with worn out, unmatching clothes that I’ve been wearing the last 7 months, I have all sorts of random tan lines, and scars on my legs from weird skin thingys (I think boils) that I somehow picked up. I come equipped with my duct tape Bible, my journal filled with notes I’ve taken (mixed with scribbles from the kiddos who got to it when I wasn’t looking).I don’t have what others might consider a crazy And really, God tells us that that is enough. This month, each member of Team HULK has had to step up to preach several sermons in front of large church audiences. We have a service almost every single night, and then 2 Sunday services in a new town each week (all together it can add up to be about 10 sermons a week). This could have been an opportunity where we were drawing straws to see who was gonna have to preach that evening or where we were trying to figure out how many times we could reuse a sermon without anyone noticing, but this is not the case. Instead we have We are a pretty ragamuffin, motley crew if I do say so (ha sorry guys but you know its true). We are a group of all single females in our 20s. We all have extremely different personalities, have very different stories and come from very different backgrounds. We bicker and disagree a lot. We all have our weaknesses. Ha but if I think about it we may be slightly better off than Jesus’ first followers who were poor fishermen and corrupt tax collectors who had no Bible knowledge or anything at all to make them seem qualified to be entrusted with the biggest task on the face of this earth. And yet that seemed to be exactly what God had in mind. I think God chooses the weak on purpose. I have been completely amazed hearing the truth that I know how picky I can be at home when it comes to church and who I want to hear preaching that Sunday. But the truth is you can receive truth from any believer as long as their heart is for God. God doesn’t give us any formulas of how to preach the gospel, He just asks us to do it, offering us His hand so he can lead us through it. “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold I am with you always, to the end |
