Every teacher and spiritual leader needs to craft a life message.
Neutral and objective content, or “information,” is way less valuable than it used to be. We need to teach through our hearts if we are going to get anyone’s attention and have any influence leverage.
Truth is, most teachers and preachers don’t have much of an intellectual/spiritual “carbon footprint.” They tend to be less colorful and influential than their marketplace counterparts. They also tend to be less sure of themselves and what they believe.
Many of them end up licensed in complex institutions (school districts, church denominations) after going through extensive formal training which encouraged them to present a secondary or “derivative” message rather than a primary one.
The great teachers, on the other hand, have actualized self-awareness. They know exactly what they believe and why, and are willing to suffer, if need be, for their convictions. They have somehow integrated their own big life lessons (most of them learned the hard way) with a mastered particular linguistic-teaching tradition (Math, Methodism, etc.) and are able to present to students from many different angles with very little “finish” effort necessary.
Like skilled singers, they teach in their “natural voice and range,” and they don’t Milli Vanilli someone else’s findings.
I was taught (9 years of post-high-school education) to minimize my presence in teaching/preaching and to attempt to approximate and pass on a pure form of some abstract “Gospel.” The truth is, Gospel is only mediated through real people with real souls. One can’t learn, memorize and teach the Gospel from a book, even if it is the Bible.
This is why so many Christian sermons say absolutely nothing. They are crafted by foot-noters, not by red-blooded God-wrestlers. When one tries to teach “error free” rather than “Spirit led,” the engagement level drops to unbearable lows.
To be a teacher or a preacher, you have to be living a life that other want to lead, otherwise you have no credibility.
One of my seminary teachers, Carl Braaten, offended many in class when he said: Preach blasphemy, but just don’t bore me.
So what is your life message?
Mine has three parts:
1) I believe in personal empowerment. I am looking for a better word, and I may craft one. Capacitation. Mightying. Destiny Building. De-marginalization. Abilifying. My grandfather, who was a huge influence on my young life, left home in junior high and worked the harvests from Kansas to Canada until he graduated from the University of North Dakota with an MBA. He took me out for breakfast at Denny’s every week all through college and taught me from the empowerment classics of the depression era (Dale Carnegie, Napoleon Hill, Russell Conwell, etc.). This take on life is woven into the very fabric of who I am. It’s practically genetic.
I get criticized about it and I really don’t care. Poverty and disease are curses, not blessings. Jesus spent much of his ministry frustrated that people didn’t grasp the power that was theirs.
2) I am passionate about leading people into transformational encounters with the living God.
I don’t believe that salvation is a contract, but rather that it is an encounter between a real person and the living God. Paul on the road to Damascus. Martin Luther caught in a thunderstorm between towns. These were full-bodied encounters, not lists of “truths” to be signed by the agree-er.
What’s more important, the consummation of a marriage or the license? Truth is, lots of folks have an unconsummated relationship with God.
I like to create an expectation, among expectation-deficit Christians, that God is real and that an encounter with him will change everything about the way they live.
Call it Pentecostal. Call it Charismatic. I believe in calling the Spirit of God down on people and letting the living God direct what happens. He doesn’t need my help.
Paul to the Ephesians: Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?
The Ephesians to Paul: We have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.
Then Paul laid hands on them and You-know-who showed up.
I’ve written a book about this part of my life message and my journey. Have a look.
3) I love the Bible and treasure its narrative.
Along with the French lit critics, I believe that when you enter the narrative, you enter on its terms, not yours.
Just like being in a foreign country, you try to fit in, not to impose your worldview.
The Bible is so much richer when we don’t deconstruct it with “higher criticism.” Trust the narrative when you read it; try to think like the writer. The writer is not a “premature” modern person. When you travel, have respect. The Bible is written by people with a deeply supernatural worldview. This enriches us if we enter into the world of the Bible with an open mind.
So, in a nutshell, my teaching is deeply biblical, empowerment-driven, and spiced with Pentecostal spirituality. It’s who I am. It’s how I have to teach.
For an sampling of this mix, listen to my podcast.
I was raised Lutheran and am proud of that. What’s comical is how people question my Lutheranism based on the fact that I teach a primary message. As if Luther ever did much footnoting of anyone… He, like Paul, taught a deeply primary message. Like Paul, he also mastered a tradition, but the tradition didn’t own him.
What’s your life message?
Only you and God get to vote on it….
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Follow me on Twitter @RobinwoodChurch and Facebook (David Housholder).
4 comments
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December 2, 2009 at 4:00 am
Tony Hunthausen
I appreciate your thoughtful words and agree with what you are saying. A good preacher/teacher is one who has confidence in who he is, knows what he believes, makes it his life message, and is bold about sharing it.
Pastors/teachers suffer from the same humanity as the rest of us. I’m convinced that a couple of life’s addictions are what block many of us from personal empowerment – the addiction to the opinions of other people and the addiction to the past. It seems these two addictions could certainly color how effectively one might fashion a sermon.
Your thoughts on personal empowerment also remind me of those words by Marianne Williamson that are often attributed to Nelson Mandella, ” Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn’t serve the world. There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We are born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us, it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”
Be empowered, keep your light shining bright, and you will continue to be a blessing to many via #’s 2 and 3 of your life message.
December 2, 2009 at 4:36 pm
Justin Wise
Dave
This is a tremendous post. Like you, I believe that God gave us a personality that he wants to utilize and breathe through to show what a life lived with him can look like.
Nothing upsets me more than when people say, “I just want to get out of the way and let God speak,” or “It was all him and none of me.” For the former, I’d certainly hope you’d want to let God speak and for the latter, that’s not even possible.
We’ve been crafted with personalities and personal experiences that God can use–must use–in order to further his reality on earth.
Thanks for the eloquent reminder.
Justin
December 5, 2009 at 9:25 am
Bob Rognlien
Thanks Dave. I am finally getting clarity on my life message:
1. Life on Life Discipling: Investing my life in open, willing, high-potential people so that they will, as I am, become more like Jesus and help many others do the same.
2. Multiplying Missional Communities: Coaching those disciples to form missional communities where they can make disciples and lead them to do the things Jesus does (the Kingdom of God).
3. An Empowering Experience of God: Mediating the presence of the Spirit to others so they are empowered to live a life that extends the Kingdom of God even in the face of spiritual strongholds and opposition.
I plan to spend the rest of my life doing these three things by God’s grace for as long as he lets me . . . glad I get to do it with friends like you!
December 12, 2009 at 10:14 pm
Carl Hamper
good call on wanting a better word then “empowerment”. that word has been overused, political overtones to many. when somebody tells me they want to “empower” me, i expect more rules and higher taxes!!