June 4th, 2009
Inspiration or Emulation? – How to Build Your Message
Anne Jackson’s last three blog posts have been about how to build a platform. She has wisely thrown out three counter-intuitive principles:
My favorite imperative is the last one on building your message:
It sounds a little over-simplistic, I realize, but hear me out. If you’re anything like me, once something has implanted itself so deeply in your heart, you want to shout it from the rooftops. I remember being 24 years old and intensely passionate about originality in the church. This was about the same time when a lot of contemporary churches were making sermon series parodies of popular TV shows and movies – incluidng my own church. Coming from a creative corporate background, and being a rule-follower, the copyright implications alone were enough to make me uncomfortable. But I also believed (and still believe) that there is a huge difference between inspiration and emulation, and so many churches were falling into the emulation category.
Anne is right on here. I have discovered that one of the greatest barriers in helping others find clarity, is distraction by the large platforms of others. Ultimately we copy rather than clarify.
Here are fantastic questions by Anne about building your message. It’s a process that involves more than “just passionately vocalizing it.” You must continually ask yourself:
- “Why do I believe this?”
- “What are the implications of the message?”
- “What’s required of me to dedicate this season to this message?”
- “Is there a need for this message?”
- “How can I learn more about this and sharpen my own knowledge and passion?”
Building character, healthy relationships and a culturally relevante message biblically based are the basic building blocks to a healthy life and ministry. However, large influential churches advocate that the pastor or preacher should not worry about composing messages looking first for time with God, and Holy guidance, but buying their sermons, copying their stuff. At the end, these influential leaderse said you need to focus and do not have time to do an impacting sermon for every weekend. It just made easy for many not no prepare the message and become lazy about it.
just wanted to say thanks for the repost. they were topics in my head for a while, but wasn’t sure how they would be received. anyhoo, gracias!