What Do They Pay This Guy For, Anyway?!

Even I knew at the time that the Bible would transform people’s lives. It already had transformed mine!

I can still remember my first years as a Christian, and the feelings easily return. It was so exciting to know God personally! It seemed like I couldn’t get enough of the Bible, and meeting with other Christians to worship and pray about everything in life! One of the best parts, though scary at times, was learning to tell others about Jesus Christ!

Finding a Church was Exhausting

Trying to find a church was much harder than I had expected.  The town I was living in at the time was saturated with evangelical churches. The problem in many of them was the preaching.

I didn’t know anything about preaching at the time, having only been a Christian for three years. I thought preaching was about teaching people the Bible, so they could become Christians and know God in Christ more truly and deeply. But I was in for a surprise.

They were Preaching Many Other Things

In many churches I visited, one didn’t even need a Bible. This was not because they provided them, or published the verses in a bulletin or projected them on the screen, but because Bibles weren’t even used. Go figure!

Some sermons didn’t even mention Jesus, except maybe at the very end, believe it or not. So many focused on personal moral issues or current political issues, harping on them week after week. Way too many sermons were way too cute or clever to be true, at least I knew they couldn’t be from the Bible. A few talked about theological concepts at levels that were beyond me, and from looking around the room, beyond most people. Some preachers obviously enjoyed their illustrations too much, and some congregations did as well.

The list of unimpressive preaching examples could go on and on. But, honestly, for most of the sermons I heard, I could have stayed home and learned more from the Bible on my own, if that were the only reason to go to church. It was so depressing.

Why didn’t pastors preach the Word of God? This was so confusing to me. All I wanted was the Bible, nothing fancy.

What was so Hard about Just Doing the Job?!

I had a hard time figuring out what some of those pastors must do all week, if that was all they could come up with on a Sunday morning. I knew the pastor had to run the church and care for people in need. But, after sampling so many churches, I was beginning to wonder what they even paid this guy for? He was not even doing his main job, for crying out loud!

Maybe I was wrong, but if the primary responsibility of the pastor is preaching the Word of God, then it seemed to me that it should be given primary attention by the pastor. These were the verses I knew at the time, and maybe a few others:

Acts 20:27 ESV “I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God.” 

Ephesians 4:11–14 ESV “And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.” 

2 Timothy 3:16–4:5 ESV “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching. For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. As for you, always be sober-minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.”

Eventually, the Lord led me to a church that preached the Word very clearly, simply yet deeply. Over the next two years, I came to know God much better, love Him more and serve Him as a new believer under spiritual transformation in Christ.

That was what I was thinking in 1988, anyway. I have grown much since that time, but this adventure of mine as a young Christian trying to find a church that taught the Bible has forever shaped my view of preaching, and pastors.