Being a “Preacher”. What a strange job it is. You stand in front of people and speak in an attempt to impart to the listeners something that will be beneficial to them, something that will help them in their journey as followers of Jesus, knowing all the while that, in a group setting, few people have the ability to concentrate for more than a few minutes at a time while somebody else talks. And it’s not even really their fault. It’s just the way our brains work - brains designed by God, by the way - always gathering and filtering data being received through any and all of our senses. And there are so many distractions in any crowd, and in any space where a crowd gathers. Preaching - it’s foolishness, isn’t it? Shoot, that’s exactly what The Bible calls it – 1 Corinthians 1:21, New English Translation. Even the Great Apostle Paul was a boring speaker, and he knew it – 1 Corinthians 2:1. In fact, he was such a bad preacher that history records that he actually talked someone to death! [See Acts 20]. We’ll circle back to this story in a bit.
The point is, if Paul himself had such an effect on people, what chance have I got?
There’s a least one difference between Paul and me – Paul had a special calling from God, and a special gifting of the Holy Spirit, to do what he did for The Kingdom. For me, I’m not so sure that preaching is my calling or my gift. What passes as “preaching” for me is almost always simply me talking out loud to myself – something which used to get people labeled as being a little bit strange. No, my “preaching” probably sounds a lot more like “foolishness” than anything Paul ever said. And, without a special calling from God or gifting of the Holy Spirit for preaching, well, what can you expect?
Of course, it’s not really the actual practice of preaching that the Bible is referring to as being “foolish”. It’s the content of the message that Paul was preaching that 1 Corinthians 1:21 is referring to as being “foolishness”. And you can probably hear in your mind the reaction many in Paul’s day had to this message, and that many still have today – “What is it you’re saying? There is a God who made everything from nothing, that humans are the very pinnacle of His creation, made in His own image, and that He loves every one of us, [EVERY ONE of us?] so much that He sent His Son to live here as a human, and then die, and then come back to life again, so that whoever believes in Him will live forever? No way! That makes no sense. That’s just foolishness!”
Which brings me back to the point I’ve been trying to make – if my preaching is not arising from a special calling and/or special spiritual gift, how is the Gospel of Jesus message going to get out into our community? How are we going to grow?
Here’s one of the things I get to do as the preacher. I have the time to explore things about The Story of God that are interesting to me. For example, just yesterday, something got into my head about one of the early believers. He isn’t as well-known as Paul. He didn’t play as large a role in the expansion of The Church in the First Century as Paul. He was not as important in the greater scheme of things as Paul. But, to those whose eternal destinies were changed by coming into contact with this guy, he was every bit as significant as Paul, and probably more so. I’m talking about Philip, sometimes known as “Philip The Evangelist”. Listen, when you find yourself labeled as “The Evangelist” – not just “An” Evangelist, not just “Another” Evangelist, but “THE” Evangelist - man, you have got it going on!
You can read about Philip The Evangelist in the Book of Acts. And, I thought I had a pretty good idea of who this guy was – you know, one of the seven guys sometimes called “Deacons” who were appointed by The Apostles to make sure the non-Jewish church folks who needed help surviving were not overlooked; the guy who fled Jerusalem when the persecution got bad after Stephen was stoned to death, but who talked about Jesus to whoever he met wherever he went; the guy who The Spirit led away from a thriving church work to meet and preach to one dude riding in a wagon “on a dark desert highway”; the guy who had four daughters who were PREACHERS [yes, you read that right].
What I didn’t know about Philip is that there is some reason to believe that Philip The Evangelist is also the same person as Philip The Apostle. [See “Biographical Sketches of memorable Christians of the past – Philip, Deacon and Evangelist”, at http://justus.anglican.org/resources/bio/264.html.] And some of this “evidence” has to do with the fact that Jesus intimately involved Philip The Apostle in the logistics of the miracle known as “The Feeding of the 5000” [see John 6:5] – perhaps preparing him for the role he would need to play one day in serving needy people in the early Church, perhaps preparing him to look beyond what man can do to see what God can do. Cool, right?
I think Philip The Evangelist came to my mind yesterday because we have a guy at our church named Philip. And our Philip told me Sunday that he had followed a prompting in his spirit that he believed was coming from The Holy Spirit a few days ago. And he told me about the interesting things that happened as he followed the leading of The Spirit that day, which included performing a karaoke rendition of our 2023 Theme Song, “People Get Ready”, in front of people he really didn’t know. And he told me of the positive reactions he received from many when he suggested to them that they hear the words of the song in a Biblical, spiritual way. My response – mind blown!
Our Philip may not think of himself as an Evangelist. But his story may be, and I believe actually will be, the answer to the questions I posed earlier about how the Gospel of Jesus message is going to get out into our community, and how our church is going to grow. For the message to get out, for us to grow, we can’t rely on our un-gifted preacher. Instead, it is going to take all of us being like Philip [both The Evangelist and our Philip] in that we must be intently listening for, and intently expecting to hear, the promptings of The Holy Spirit every day as we go about the business of living our lives. And then, most importantly, it’s going to take each of us following the promptings we hear and feel in our spirits, even if it takes us out of our comfort zones in meeting and talking to people [or even in singing to people, right Philip?]. That’s what Philip in the early church did, and that’s what he kept on doing so much that his daughters became PREACHERS too [and yes, you read that right, again], and that’s what he kept on doing so much that they finally started calling him “Philip The Evangelist”. In fact, that’s what many of the un-named people of the early church did – our unknown brothers and sisters who we will meet and rejoice with in Heaven someday. And that’s why the early church grew in ways that seem miraculous to us today.
That doesn’t sound like “foolishness” to me.
Oh yes, circling back to the guy who The Apostle Paul actually talked to death in Acts 20. Through the power of The Holy Spirit, Paul brought him back to life. The guy’s name was Eutychus, which means “fortunate”. Cool, huh?
Ambrose Ramsey | Pastor and Shepherd
