the basic message #E223
12/13/03
Here's a little test for you: You're walking through a parking lot at a mall and you hear a car alarm go off. Do you: (A.) Quickly find a security guard and alert him. (B.) Run toward the direction of the alarm to scare off the car thief. (C.) Do nothing. Most of us, I would surmise, would do nothing. Why? Because the sound of car alarms has become routine and most are generally false alarms. A false alarm reminds me of another sound:
1 Corinthians 13:1
If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.
Can you make the connection here? I think most sermons have become clanging cymbals in America today. We have pastors that want to talk about the love of God, yet when it comes to the war in Iraq, love is absent from the equation. Once again, Americans let their patriotism overcome their Christianity. George W. has become the poster-boy for empty Christian love in America, and his popularity with professing Christians is quite strong. Yes, I'm aware that innocent people were executed by the Saddam regime, so are you suggesting that we unleash our military on any nation that murders innocent people? If your answer is yes, then we will have to wage war on America. We still routinely murder hundreds of thousands of babies each year through abortion. How can we honestly condemn Saddam when we are even worse? Clanging cymbals. How can we even begin to show the world Christian love when we don't show it on our own turf? Clanging cymbals.
The average sermon spoken in America has a very short life span. Before you disagree, let's do a little experiment. What did your pastor preach about last weekend? What about the weekend before? Most of us can't remember the last sermon, much less any from the past. The sermon has become yet another car alarm- we hear it, we look around a bit, and then continue on our way. I have an idea for our churches: After we hear the sermon and return home, let's take out a pen and paper and jot down in 50 words or less what the sermon meant to us. Then we'll give that back to the pastor for his review. Will it work? Heck, we'll never know, because 99% of the church will refuse to even try. Getting to the Sunday lunch buffet at Ryan's holds much more importance than understanding and appreciating the sermon. Why is it this way? Clanging cymbals.
I've noticed that the best way to get the congregation's attention is to bring in a guest speaker. If the speaker is at least average, he will have the ear of the congregation simply because they're eager for a change. There is a Baptist church in Baton Rouge that's had the same pastor for 40 years. He has people in his congregation that have been there that long, with many of his congregation being there for 20 years or more. What can he say new that will interest them? Not much, therefore he has become a...............clanging cymbal- a car alarm that no one pays much attention to. How can we change this deadly, stagnant situation?
Since guest speakers get more attention than the regular pastor, how about having guest speakers for 26 weeks of the year? Let's take the Southern Baptist Association as an example. If 26 churches wanted to participate, each pastor of those churches would simply travel a short distance to speak in another pastor's church. By using this rotational format, each pastor could preach in his own church every two weeks while the congregation can have a brand new speaker every other week. I'd almost be willing to bet that attendance would increase on the weeks that the guest would speak. The pastor of that church might not be happy with that, so the chances of this plan even getting a try are slim and none. Clanging cymbals will always prevail.
I mentioned my idea to a young Baptist pastor a few years ago, and he immediately shot the idea down as impractical. "Why not?", I probed. "I'm not just the speaker here, I have to nurture my flock", he responded. Seems to me like nurturing the flock includes providing the best spiritual food for their brains to process. But he would have none of that because he's a ............... (fill in the blank)