“Hauntingly Familiar”
One of the joys of ministry, for me and perhaps for you, is that while there are many “normal things” in ministry, there are also many unforeseen things that are not always bad! It seems to me that variety and fresh challenges go hand in hand with local church ministry. That is also true serving you here in the district office. One common thing in ministry is the multiplicity of conversations you and I can engage in on so many levels. We’ve got “keyboard warriors” that love to blast out everything they think about, well, everything. You’ve got others that say very little, but when they speak, it’s usually golden! You have people who only talk about theology. You’ve got people that don’t! You’ve got people talking to you about sports, news, things happening locally, things happening in the U.S.A., things happening in the world, etc. I’ve never charted it, but I wonder how many conversations I have in a thirty-day period. As I was preparing to write this column, I kept a mental list of the conversations I had yesterday and today, and it came out to at least 78. Notice that I didn’t say 78 different people; I said 78 different conversations. Some were really short, like, “I’m heading out now, oh wait…” or longer ones that went 45 minutes with the same person. (NOTE: I just counted that as one conversation even though we covered many different topics). Hopefully, you get my point: ministry affords the potential to have a wide variety of conversations.
I say all that to share a brief snippet of a conversation I had a couple of weeks back, where I was speaking with a friend (not in the RMD). We were talking about which season we enjoyed preaching most on — Christmas or Easter? I said I enjoyed preaching Christmas because I spend four times a year thinking about it (March 25, June 25, September 25, & December 25), whereas Easter I only had been thinking about it when it was coming up on the calendar. Please note that each season is important — the question was which did each of us think about more when it came to preaching. Now, back to my friend — he said his was Easter, but that is because it was “hauntingly familiar.” I thought what an interesting phrase to use — I’d only ever heard that phrase used in a rock song back in the early 1980s. So I asked my friend what he meant by that phrase, and he said, “so many people have heard the story of the death and resurrection of Jesus it’s….so….well….hauntingly familiar! How do I preach something fresh when everybody already knows what I’m going to say!”
Maybe you have felt that exasperation at times, when it comes to preaching either at Christmas or Easter. This conversation got me to thinking about all the many things that can be preached at this season that happens to fall this year in April. To help me, I went back and re-read the accounts in the gospels. Upon completing that, I realized that if I read from when Jesus was in Gethsemane until the time He was raised from the dead, by the power of God the Father, there are only 13.5 pages in my old NIV 84 Bible dedicated to this — in total! That’s not very many pages out of the 1,094 pages of that particular Bible and yet even with only 13.5 pages, there is much within these sections of God’s Word that can be brought to life and meaning to our people this Easter season with the empowerment of the Holy Spirit!
My prayer for you is that God would indeed bless you with freshness from the Holy Spirit to preach, with power, the changeless message of forgiveness, redemption, freedom, reconciliation, salvation, and surrender that encompasses this Easter season. Might there be a turning of hearts and lives to the Lord because of His visitation upon you in the preparation of His Word to the people who will gather in your church setting! Would that people who have already found salvation be encouraged and led to take greater steps of maturity in following Christ! Imagine how different your place of ministry would be if these things were to occur. It’s not too late to mobilize the people of your church to pray and ask the Lord to accomplish these things for sake if HIS Kingdom, HIS Glory and HIS Name! Please know I am praying that God may bring newness of life to you and your ministry during this “hauntingly familiar” season!
Happy Easter!
~Jonathan