A Journey to the Pulpit

By Grant C. McDonald

My parents love their pastor, but they rarely get much from his sermons.

Sound familiar?

Why live with word salad, rabbit trails and bouncing around like a ball in a pin ball machine when you can work smarter, not harder.

Frank pastors a country church. His positive attitude and effective preaching create an air of expectation for something great each week. As a multi-vocational pastor he rarely experiences the Saturday night panic and arrives at the pulpit ready to preach.

George, a loner, also pastors a country church. The services are lack luster, he is approaching burn out and he questions his call to a pulpit ministry. George just toughs it out thinking it to be more godly. Saturday night is repetitively panic time and Sunday often brings excuses. George does not understand that he might need more preparation than does his sermons.

What makes the difference?

Frank recognized his need for help, and found a mentor. He learned to establish the purpose of the sermon first, match it with divine inspiration and have others help gather materials. This reduced preparation time, balanced his work schedule, family time, self-care and sermon preparation. By working on his illustrations and delivery, he could take a lesser quality sermon and turn it into a great event.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Jan 30, 2017
• ISBN: 9781512770896

Grant C. McDonald

Grant walked with one foot in the world of the trades and the other foot in the world of education and management. His background includes Industrial Arts education, manufacturing, building, Saturn space program, preacher, missionary, licensed mental health counselor and facilities manager of a mental health corporation. Grant and his wife Deborah enjoy retirement in the mountains where he became aware of the increasing need for skilled multi-vocational pastors. Helping these deserving servants of God has become his consuming passion.

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Copyright © 2017 Grant C. McDonald.

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Scriptures marked KJV are taken from the KING JAMES VERSION (KJV): KING JAMES VERSION, public domain.

Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

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ISBN: 978-1-5127-7088-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5127-7090-2 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5127-7089-6 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016921631

WestBow Press rev. date: 1/30/2017

Contents

Dedication

Preface

A Personal Relationship

WHY and HOW

Encouragement

Prayer

1. Purpose

2. Divine Inspiration

3. Planning

4. Preparation

5. Illustrations

6. Delivery

7. The Invitation

8. Wisdom

Closing Remarks

Potential Sermon Topics to Match with Texts

Life Lessons and Along the Way

Pump Primers and Life Lessons

Dedication

A Journey to the Pulpit is dedicated to my Lord and Master. Apart from him, there would be no message to prepare and preach.

It would be a gross mistake to neglect mentioning my wife Deborah. Without her patience and technical skills, A Journey to the Pulpit would be little more than just a hope and dream.

To the aspiring preachers and multi-vocational pastors, may God richly bless you on your journey. How desperately you are needed in these rapidly changing times. Take courage in the fact that the early church did a great work without salaried preachers, big buildings or budgets. Almost all that was accomplished was done by people like you.

Pray that I may proclaim it clearly, as I should.

Colossians 4:4 NIV

Preface

Imagine a 26 year old fellow with a wife and three children. In school, he opted for every shop and drafting class available. He enjoyed using lathes, milling machines, hand tools and power tools. He loved the look, smell, touch and grain of wood. Building things was in his blood but none of his skills and interests had anything to do with building sermons.

The young fellow’s spiritual life was like what hikers call a zero day – no progress. His parents were in their mid 40’s when he was born. They were worn out from living through the great depression and educated only to the sixth grade. In short, they had little left to give to the fifth child. His father was an honest, hard-working alcoholic whose health was broken from years of breathing coal dust. He was disengaged and just filling in check marks until the inevitable end of life. The young fellow’s tired mother had a well-deserved reputation as a very good woman to whom had been handed his spiritual growth. It was all she could do to deliver his spiritual life over to a local church. Regrettably, it was a socially minded church with no interest in evangelism.

Over time, and with some unhelpful influences, the young man developed an antagonistic attitude toward preachers and churches. He never read the Bible through one time, not a Gospel, not a letter, not even a part of one of the letters from God. When a conversational comment included the prodigal son returns, he had no clue as to what prodigal meant.

Through the grace of God, he was saved and shortly thereafter invited to go with a group that ministered in the county jail. Incredibly, the team insisted that he deliver a message, a spiritual message! It was pitiful. The truly sad part was that there were people who could have given a few lessons on how to prepare a message. So with good intentions, he blundered along for three years before help arrived.

As you have guessed by now, the young fellow is the author of this book. Would it not seem reasonable for a person with his background and decades of pulpit ministry to offer a helping hand to those who are struggling as he did?

The old cowboys would sit around the campfire at night and learn from one another about trails and conditions they had travelled. Without ever having been there before, the campfire listeners could make their own journey along those same trails. What a great experience it would be to sit around a campfire and talk about journeys with those who have years and years of experience in the pulpit! Since that is not on the agenda at this time, perhaps this book will make your journey to the pulpit easier and more effective.

A Journey to the Pulpit is intended to be a useful guide for people in three special groups. What makes them special? It is the blessed assignment from God for a preacher to stand before a congregation of people and deliver God’s message.

The first group includes those aspiring preachers who have not yet had the benefit of learning methods, processes or steps for preparing and delivering a sermon. The reason for the word yet is that individuals in this group will eventually have an educational opportunity. They may be fortunate enough to attend a bible college, seminary or at least have a mentor. If they are research oriented, the Internet might provide some help. Until then, like the author’s situation, almost any help would be beneficial.

The second group includes the multi-vocational preachers who are not likely to attend a bible college or seminary. The great need for preachers in this group can be seen in the May 28, 2015 issue of The Christian Index regarding the Danielle Association. We have 51 churches, 41 of them are part time… The title of the article is Education, training key to building bi-vocational numbers, says missionary. Missionary Robbie Smith comments that Most of our churches are declining numerically, and the ones that are plateaued are struggling financially. We have also learned that 55% of the pastors of a large denomination are now multi-vocational and the number is expected to rise to 60% within the next five years.

The multi-vocational pastors are disadvantaged in two ways. For all practical purposes, their limited available time precludes attending a bible college even if one were close to them. Additionally, most of them are financially limited. Internet on-line courses are available, but even these are in competition with all the demands of pastoring a church, tending to a family and making a living. Not the least of their personal needs is the often neglected requirement for down time and self-care to avoid burn out.

The intent of this book is to address both the limited time and financial issues. The multi-vocational pastor must have time-saving options for sermon preparation that still yield a quality sermon. Additionally, the options must be financially viable.

The increasing need for multi-vocational pastors is a clear indication of the uncertainty of the present era. A close friend showed a stack of church bonds. The churches had either gone out of business or are no longer able to meet their financial commitments. Church staff positions are being reduced and programs discontinued. Things that we believed were stable have been destabilized. As these changes continue, the need for multi-vocational pastors or church staff is expected to increase. Our challenge is not to lament days gone by but to find ways to help highly deserving and much- needed multi-vocational pastors.

The third group includes pastors whose pulpit ministry is already developed. Their needs would more likely be reminders of things that are already known but have been neglected. It is no surprise that when the hand of God’s blessings is upon a church, the needs and demands also increase. Oftentimes, the pastor begins to sacrifice self-care and time for renewal. The increased demands are incremental and insidious and often go unnoticed. One day, being worn down, tired and unmotivated, the light comes on and reality crashes in. We know to not let this happen, but it just creeps along like kudzu.

Do not be disheartened by the changing times and our need to adapt to them. The rapid and far-reaching growth of the early church was mostly accomplished by faithful people in the trades and businesses. Are we, once again, being called back to that same pattern? Jesus did not build his incarnate ministry on professors and the elite. He started with fishermen, tax collectors and seemingly unlikely people who spoke the language of the people. Was not the New Testament written in Koine Greek, the language of the market place? When the population is sufficient, there will be large churches with full-time pastors. Even so, there will always be a need for the multi-vocational pastor.

A Personal Relationship

Sermon building is born and nurtured within a relationship with God. The relationship is so important that it even rises above the essential skill of biblical competency.

Apart from this special relationship, we can actually be oppositional toward God. The early church was greatly troubled by a biblical scholar named Saul. He knew the Scriptures, but he lacked a personal relationship with God as we can see from his behavior. He went house to house searching out Christians to have them imprisoned. When God’s wonderful servant, Phillip, was being stoned to death, it was Saul who stood by holding the clothes of those who threw the stones. Saul was biblically skilled, but fiercely oppositional toward Jesus and Christians and believed he was doing God a favor. When God called Ananias to go to Saul, Ananias reminded God what a nightmare Saul was to the church and the Christians. Ananias did not want the assignment and tried to talk God out of it because Ananias did not want to face a person with such a fearsome, oppositional reputation.

What changed Saul into a Christian debater, teacher, preacher and missionary? It was a dramatic encounter with Jesus that resulted in a personal relationship that changed everything. It was not enough for Saul to just know about God, he had to know him personally. As one who was called to minister to the gentiles, we know Saul by the Greek form of his name, Paul.

When we embark upon a journey to the pulpit, we need both biblical competency and a personal relationship with the Lord. Being religious is not enough. We can see this in John Chapter 8 where Jesus was addressing a group of religious leaders. He informed them that they would not find eternal life by searching the Scriptures as they had done for years. They had to see that He, Jesus, was the one to whom those Scriptures pointed. What really cut deep was when he explained that they did not even have the love of God in their heart. In essence, he told them that without a personal relationship with God, their biblical understandings were skewed and loveless.

In these pages, you will find how a personal relationship leads the sermon-builder to purpose, inspiration, preparation and delivery. The stronger the relationship, the more powerful and effective will be the message. There are many things to consider, but spending time with God (as in any good relationship) cannot be ignored.

As the years go by, you will look back on sermons you have preached, words you have chosen and thoughts that came to you. You will smile and realize that these were not yours alone. They grew out of a personal relationship that strengthened and deepened as you worked with God. The things of this world will matter less and less, and in great humility, you will hunger more and more to hear the words of your Master, Well done, good and faithful servant.

We establish our personal relationship through a spiritual birth by receiving Jesus into our heart and surrendering our life to him. In the moment that occurs, we establish a personal relationship with him that cannot be broken by our earthly death. It is the personal relationship that gives us eternal life.

Eternal life is not measured in numbers of years. Jesus said, And this is eternal life: that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent, John 17:3. We enter into heaven and obtain eternal life not by what we know but by whom we know.

When we are born again, the Holy Spirit becomes