If Sunday is what it is all about, preaching is the ‘thing.’ It is what we are all about as pastors. We spend a lot of time – sometimes too much – in all kinds of meetings, deliberations, confrontations and endeavors – but when it all comes down to it, if we have been ‘called’ (that’s the word we use to describe the inner sense that God wants us to enter into the ministry – it is very real, I can tell you) to lead churches, then we are about preaching.

Preaching is a thrill. As painfully tedious, heart-rending and mind stretching the process of preparation can be, the delivery is equally or more exhilarating and fun – it is a thrill to let loose in the pulpit – to throw all inhibition to the wind and freely proclaim the Good News – a ‘religious experience’ of its own kind. From the pulpit (whether an ornate piece of furniture or a music stand), and following the service, we are privileged to see lives that have been touched and affected by the message. This can be quite sobering actually. But for a preacher, preaching is the thing. I’ve talked with professional athletes who will tell you that ‘game day’ is the thing – that all the pain and sweat and sacrifice of getting into shape, and of long, hard practices, melt away when the umpire says, ‘Play ball!’ and the crowd begins to cheer. Okay, I know we aren’t professional athletes (though most of us want to be), but there is something about that moment when the singing is done and the prayers have been prayed and the scriptures have been read – and it is time to let it go and preach.

Preaching is also exhausting. I once heard someone say that a 30-minute sermon causes a pastor to expend the energy of an eight-hour workday. That may be a stretch, but it is draining to ‘leave it all on the field’ each Sunday morning. I have never met a preacher with any reasonable gifting and a healthy sense of call to the pulpit who does not utterly spend himself every time he gets up to preach. Frankly it doesn’t matter where or when – but it is its own kind of grueling experience to preach. It is the most draining emotional moment I know of, and it leaves us quite vulnerable once the message has been delivered – which exposes a whole different set of issues. But for every preacher who is committed to what he has been called to it would not be nearly as meaningful if those few moments on Sundays were any less draining than they are.

But there is a dark side too. We don’t like to admit it but we preachers put a whole lot more weight on any given message than most would ever know. In a sense it is the highpoint of our own practical unbelief in the Gospel because we easily tie much of our own sense of value into how well our messages are received. Maybe a more honest way of putting it is that we put more value into the volume of praise we receive from our messages than we would want to admit.

You can’t know the ego-dissolving effect of one person whose compliments of the day’s message are betrayed by a face that gives the slightest hint of rejection. For us this insecurity pours into the size and popularity of our churches, along with a whole laundry list of external and artificial measuring devices we allow ourselves to be defined by.

I wish it weren’t so because it is embarrassing to admit that we can be so shallow and self-serving.

But fortunately God sends ‘moments,’ I’ll call them, in which we are confronted with the silliness of measuring the value of a life and calling based on a 30 minute message.

For me, one of those ‘moments’ involved our daughter Emily. Actually it was after what we call a ‘Maundy Thursday’ service. The word, ‘Maundy’ comes from the Latin, ‘Mundatum,’ which means, ‘Mandate,’ and it refers to the great command of Jesus found in John 13:34 – “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.” So every year, on the Thursday evening before Easter, we celebrate the evening Jesus gave this new command.

On this one particular Maundy Thursday Katherine and I took separate cars to church and Emily decided to go home with me following the service – one I was particularly pleased with, I might add (translation: I felt like the message was a winner). So I felt safe enough to ask Emily what she thought about the service (we preachers tend to go by the same axiom attorneys use in cross examination: ‘Never ask a question you don’t already know the answer to’). In other words I wasn’t asking Emily to tell me something I didn’t already think I knew – I just wanted her to join me in the chorus of my own praise.

As if it wasn’t pathetic enough that I had engaged in this exercise with a thirteen or fourteen-year-old girl, Emily responded, ‘It wasn’t your best.’

With the façade of unaffected calm I replied, ‘Really? Oh well, that happens,’ or some such innocuous comment – but trust me, the damage was done – end of conversation.

‘It wasn’t your best.’

You have to love it. Somehow God had entered our space and through our daughter, He asked, ‘Are you really this shallow, Mike?’ – undoubtedly a rhetorical question because both God and I already knew the answer.

‘It wasn’t your best.’

Then it hit me – Emily offered this with such ease because for her my messages had nothing to do with our relationship – she loved me, and with no suspicion of the slightest sense that I would take offense, she spoke truth – big, humbling, and frankly, liberating truth.

Actually she didn’t say, ‘It wasn’t your best.’ Oh those were her words, but what she really said was, ‘It isn’t a big deal, dad.’

And on the most important level it really isn’t a big deal – even though I want it to be. I want to think that my words are the most important words anyone will ever hear. And there is something to believing that what we say is worth pouring ourselves into, but it is almost disturbing how much we tie our self worth into a message that is intended to be given away and entrusted to God’s Spirit as He works in hearts and lives.

The shameful reality is that without those ‘moments’ (and there have been more than I want to admit), we preachers are often guilty of treating Sunday as though it is all about us, as though every particle of value we have rests with one singular message – that will make or break us, that God has no chance of converting a single sinner if we don’t get it right – how arrogant.

And so we look for the worst kind of praise. I loved the scene in Soapdish, a spoof on the soap opera industry, starring Sally Field and Kevin Kline. Field plays an aging actress who constantly needs her ego stroked by her equally aging public. Whenever she needs a praise ‘fix’ she has her writer (played by Whoopie Goldberg) take her to a mall outside of New York City. At the mall Goldberg walks at a distance behind Field, as though they are not together – and then at an opportune moment she shouts like a starry eyed fan who discovered a star who has disguised herself to avoid the crowd she really is desperate to have notice her – this draws the treasured autograph seekers and temporarily appeases her desperate and pitiful need. For a lot of us preachers that strikes a little too close to home.

As I wrote earlier, on the most basic of levels, we don’t believe the Gospel to the degree that we can actually convince ourselves that a ‘dog’ of a sermon would be enough for a community of people to not desire or love or accept us any more – that our denominations will not recognize us at our national gatherings and that our friends will surpass us in celebrity or speaking engagements – you name it – it’s ugly.

The real issue is not so much about the success of a given message but of the actual value and dignity we receive from Christ. Do we really believe that He fills us with Himself and that we have nothing to bring to the table apart from Him, or do we live in this perpetual nightmare of constant performance – a never-ending struggle to earn the delight God finds most pleasure in freely giving, without condition?

And I think that it is in the pulpit that we preachers wrestle with this more than anywhere else. Sure, we struggle with all those other temptations. But on Sundays we are exposed in every way – within ourselves, before people and before God. At least that is how we feel. And there is something in us that doesn’t want to believe that people would value us simply for who we are – because we don’t. In fact I think we project our own sense of worthlessness on our people – almost to say that since we can’t handle our own imperfections no one can – or should. I told you it is embarrassing.

The sad thing (as though that weren’t enough) is that our wives see all of this. They witness the seeming confidence and security in the pulpit (the thing the general public that really doesn’t know us sees) as we proclaim that Jesus has come to renew all things. But then, if we are not careful to live that out, our wives stay away because they know that we ‘can’t handle the truth.’ It is really something we have to deal with and come to terms with if the most important people in our lives are going to feel we value them above those who don’t know us but who easily stroke and puncture our way-too-fragile egos.

‘It wasn’t your best.’

And I find it interesting that when God addresses what He likes about preachers in the bible, it isn’t what they say, so much (even though we are called to accurately preach the Word), or how they say it, but just that they do it.

In fact, what God praises (if you want to call it that) is not the mouths, but the feet of His messengers:

Isaiah 52:7 – “How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news, who proclaim peace, who bring good tidings, who proclaim salvation, who say to Zion, ‘Your God reigns!’”

I think that what God is saying is that the message is already there – so He isn’t impressed with what we say so much as the fact that we have been called to deliver it. And I suspect that this is at the root of my deepest insecurities as a Christian pastor – almost as though God would somehow divest Himself of His grace when it comes to me – that He would actually measure my worth on a weekly basis by the glibness of my tongue when instead, wisely, and graciously He applauds my feet. And I want to somehow be able to hold on to that.

‘It wasn’t your best.’

So this is what God has been teaching me:

– I can’t possibly live and die on one or two or more messages and enjoy Christ at the same time. There is no question that I wound the heart of God with such egocentric thinking.

– It is sin for me to inflict such insecurity on my family. As much as I can, I am committed to refuse to cause my wife and children to walk on eggshells because I didn’t raise Lazarus from the grave with a given sermon (sadly I’m usually more devastated when people don’t laugh at my jokes). The mantra, ‘It is just one message,’ has become gold for me.

– My commitment is to celebrate others’ preaching – to no longer cheat others and myself from their gifts out of an insecurity that drives the most ugly of critical spirits. Sometimes the worst critics of preachers are preachers. We brilliantly find the most creative ways to spiritualize our jealousy as we assassinate solid messages and heartfelt offerings – of friends.

– Regardless of the effectiveness or power or passion of a given message, I have an ego problem that will never go away, as long as I am in the pulpit. Therefore Repentance has to be a constant companion. As much as I can’t handle a bad sermon, I am even worse with a good one.

‘It wasn’t your best.’

Thanks Emmy.

Mike Khandjian is Sr. Pastor at Chapelgate Presbyterian Church in the Greater Baltimore area.

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