Blues Preaching Wears Me Out

Michael Flake and I compared notes last Sunday afternoon and agreed - preaching the Blues, especially grief and loss, wears us out. Emotionally, spiritually, and physically more than normal.

I look into the congregation and see dear people wrestling with more profound loss than I can imagine. I want to honor, encourage, and spur them toward love and good deeds in their blues, without acting falsely like I 'know' their experience.  I must hold open much of the past and present grief in my own life for these four weeks, in order to authentically engage the Scripture and the subject. That confronts me with my own pain as an open wound for a month. 

Then there's the priestly side of ministry (the prophetic side is teaching the Bible, no matter what it says).  The priestly aspect is that while every Christian is a priest, and Jesus is our only high priest, the preacher at some level is representing/embodying/lifting up the congregation before God in a public response to God's Word on all of our behalf (I believe this aspect comes into play whenever a Christian leads a group to encounter Scripture in a setting of any size).  When the preacher (or worship leader) most effectively does this, the people of God have more than an informational response ('that's the correct way to be a Christian in my blues').  It invites and exemplifies the congregation in a way to 'be' before the LORD that is hopefully transformative from where they 'be' before they walked into worship.  If this were an essay, I would try to explain that better, but that's all I've got today.

My primary solution to these heavier-than-normal-feeling preaching burdens - a heavy dose of being sure I'm teaching the Bible (let the Spirit of God through the Word of God do the heavy lifting), combined with loads of empathy.  That's why last Sunday was a 30 minute exposition of the shortest verse in the Bible - "Jesus wept."  That's why this Sunday will be an exploration of Jesus' authoritative promise: "Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted." When in doubt, do what Jesus does and learn what Jesus teaches.

The other solution is our 'blues worship' - true blues music includes and understands-without-facilely-resolving peoples' hardest life experiences of loss.  Blues music in the context of worship opens our own spirit to the Word of God in more profound ways that I ever predicted.

Blues preaching wears me out, but I love it.  My guess is that if you are participating in this series, a couple of weeks of 'naming your losses' in church is wearing you out a little bit.  Stay in it.

Comments

[robin kenniston]

It is true that this sermon series always is a bit of an emotional roller coaster, but a ride that we happily and willingly participate in. This is real life, real struggles for real followers of Jesus, in a real house filled with blues, but more importantly, filled with HOPE.