This week I was at our annual clergy retreat over at Snow Mountain Ranch near Winter Park, CO. This is always a great week, not so much because of the program but because of the relationships that we build. For me, it’s a time to sit and talk about ministry, books we’re reading, theological stuff–all the things that we ministers love to talk about but rarely get to because of the demands of the job.
This year, I was asked to preach at the first service of the week. Now I have to say that while being asked to do that is quite a privilege, it is also very frightening. After all, there are no better critics of preachers than other preachers, each of whom is sitting there thinking, "I could do this better." I’ll confess that I can be just as critical.
But maybe that’s because our humanness has a tendency to catch us. We find ourselves in competition with each other, which is really quite ridiculous given that there are plenty of people out there who need to hear the gospel. None of us has the corner on communicating it, but we all want to be liked and recognized just like anyone else.
At some point, however, we have to get out of the way of our own preaching and let God do the work of giving us what we need–and then giving God the credit. If any of us are effective in communicating the gospel it’s only because God has taken our inadequate words and "clay jar" brokenness and done something amazing with them.
So I prayed about this a lot before offering the sermon, and when I stood up to preach for my peers I really felt a burden lifted from me. We were all there together, all dealing with the same stuff in our churches and in our own lives–the wrestling with God that so characterizes ministry. I decided to talk about that from my own perspective and it seemed to resonate. It didn’t feel like a clergy gathering but like a community where we were all in it together.
I have to say that it was a fun experience, just like it was fun last year to hear some of my friends preaching. It proved to me that all of us have something important to say…a word to share with each other from time to time. If we can get over ourselves and let God speak through us, we can all be blessed!
