Think Wink.

This week I want to post the lesson I gave yesterday during Sunday school. In this post, I want to reflect on the experience. One has to know first that I am teaching junior high schoolers and that I have not spoken to a group that young for years. So I was asked to teach two weeks ago because the youth pastor, Jimmy, is very busy. He is my boss at UPS, he goes to MBTS, he is a youth pastor, he coaches basketball, and his wife is ready to give birth to their first child, Justus; he is a very busy person. So until April or May, Jimmy, Shane (a personal friend of ours who is desiring to be a foreign missionary to Central and South America with his wife and one-year-old Hallie), and myself are going to rotate every Sunday morning. Yesterday was my first day. This is to help Jimmy to be able to be a disciple of Christ, a youth pastor, husband, father, coach, student, and employee.

So I preached yesterday on 2 Corinthians 4:4-6. It is the passage that my entire worldview is filtered through and shaped around. I had spent some time in the library reading some commentaries on my passage and I had done some translation work on the passage the week before. Yesterday I preached. I spent the night before praying and reading over my sermon. Then Sunday morning, I spent twenty more minutes in prayer and went to church. I prayed all the night before and that morning for the hearts of the kids to be ready to hear the text, for the Spirit to protect me from error and to prepare me to preach the text. I arrived, got out the marker-board and poured out my heart from this text.

Then the dread hits me that I might have said something wrong, that was unbiblical, or unfaithful to the text. I really love these kids and care for their eternal souls. I also love my friends Jimmy and Shane and respect them, look up to them in some respects. They did not say anything to me because Shane and his wife took their daughter into the video room where they would view the service with their daughter and not disturb the congregation. Jimmy and his wife had birthing classes all day until that night when we had our bi-weekly youth night. After an amazing sermon on the burial of Jesus (a young man about nine years of age came forward and gave his life to Jesus and is going to be baptized on Wednesday–Praise Jesus!), I went over to Shane’s apartment with some other friends for lunch, still Shane said nothing. So I wasn’t feeling as bad, but I really wanted to make sure I hadn’t said anything.

That night I went to the youth activities. All of the kids and Jimmy all came up to me and told me how great a message I gave and they really enjoyed it. Whew! After we finished fellowship, worship, and watching a message by Paul Washer on the Beatitudes of Matthew 5, Jimmy and Shane came up to me. I thought, “Oh boy, here it comes. I screwed something up in what I said and I’m not ever going to be allowed to speak to these kids again!” Jimmy said, “Henry, your lesson today was amazing. Your content really blessed me personally, let alone the kids.” Shane pipes in here and says, “Oh I know man, I really wished Laurell could have been there!” Then Jimmy gives the bomb, “But,”–oh how I hate that word like that–”you need to make sure you aren’t using the big words that we are used to using in our own everyday conversations. Then you also need to not be so animated when you speak. It is very distracting for young kids to pay attention because their maturity level can’t handle it.”

Whew! That was it. My sermon was fine except I need to do a better job explaining myself and I need to not be so animated. If you have ever seen John Piper preach, that’s me. I am animated in my entire presentation. I use my whole body to try to communicate to my audience, not just my voice. I must say that when I was at SBU, Dr. Bennett told some of us preacher-boys to find an effective preacher and try to figure out what makes him/her an effective communicator and incorporate it into our own preaching. I am also a product of the stage and I like to be busy when I am up on “stage” before a group of people. But now I have a new problem, figuring out how to undo years of habit. But I am grateful to Yahweh that I was faithful to his word and I just need to communicate better to 7th and 8th graders.

Prayer for a new church

Preaching is a Means not an End.

The Gospel of the Glory of Christ pt 3