Paul
Okay so as you all know...i am a pastor, one of the things that pastors do is to tell people about Jesus, and one of the ways to do this is to get a bunch of people together and tell them stories and encourage them. in fact, that is why we have Lifeline.
one of the challenges of that is trying to tell people about Jesus and His love for them in a way that they will remember and understand. that is why we have boring preachers... it is hard sometimes to tell people this stuff in a n exciting way.
Well there was a pastor named Paul, he was preaching to a bunch of people in a house one time, and he was preaching for a long time. the longest i have ever talked at Lifeline was an hour. that was way too long. well paul had been preaching all night, and there were people everywhere in this house who came to listen to him.
there was a young man named Eutychus sitting in the window listening to Paul preach... but somewhere after the first few hours he got sleepy and fell out of the second story window and died... so without skipping a beat, paul gets up walks downstairs to the dead body of Eutychus, and prays, and God raises Eutychus from the dead. as soon as Eutychus was back, Paul started preaching again and preached until morning.
probably the most memorable sermon of all time (except the sermon on the mount)
my question is this, was Paul a boring preacher? do you think maybe Eutychus fell asleep again? Paul obviously was a man of GOd, but did that make him an exciting preacher?
hmm lots to think about...
posted by Pastor Phil @ 11:13 AM
5 comments
5 Comments:
I'm a fan of Paul.
The story of Eutychus is one of my favorites. so classic.
As dad would say "youdacuss too if you fell out of a window".
Is the sermon a viable method for communicating the gospel? It seems like Jesus and Paul spoke in addition to what they were doing. Demonstrating the gospel. Like when Paul raises Eutychus from the dead. Jesus and Paul almost always were speaking to specific people in a specific situation. They didn't really pick good sermon topics.
As a pastor I struggle to make my "sermons" less of a "monstrous monologue by a moron to mutes" and try to make them more interactive. We teach through the Bible chapter and verse, so that we don't pick and choose. We encourage people to read the text during the week before (since they know what it will be based on). We recently started our website blog so that people can comment, ask questions and tell stories to enrich the story-telling that begins on Sunday and will hopefully carry throughout the week. Finally, people can interrupt me at any time to ask questions. Unfortunately, the format of a person speaking up front and people sitting in the "audience" ends up being a barrier for open learning to happen.
Are these things perfect? No. Do I keep preaching? Yes. Should I continue? I don't know.
i wonder if people would have taken time to listen to him in the night if he wasnt that great of a speaker, but charisma isnt entirely important
i think it is such a tricky balance, because Christianity is about Jesus, not us. however when we have Christ in us, people can see Him.
i believe that Christ is entirely captivating, so people should be drawn to us.
we see by the conest of Paul's life that people were willing to sign up for death missions to serve with him, so he had Christ shining through...
i think that Eutychus probably was just tired. probably had a long day. in that way he was an example of someone who went to church when he didn't feel like it.
hmm... in that it shows us that we may experience Christ in unexpected ways even when we aren't looking for Him.
"context"
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