No More Dead Bread!

What an awesome word this is from Gary Goodell.
"No More Dead Bread!
Permission Newsletter - October 2009

A interesting story was recently passed along to me. It stirred so many triggers inside of me about my many years as a teaching pastor.

"When the waitress came to take our order. One of my friends, when asked what kind of dressing he wanted on his salad, abruptly stated to the startled server, "And I don't want any 'dead bread' on my salad." After letting the comment sink in, the sweet but stunned girl replied, "Oh, you mean croutons!" To which my friend simply nodded in confirmation."

This advertisement came with the story. "Pastors, are you too busy to spend hours of preparation on your sermons? Tired of feeling the stress of having to come up with original ideas week after week? If so, for just $199.95 you can have 52 weeks of quality sermons crafted by homiletical masters, complete with illustrations! Your congregation is guaranteed to be thrilled with the results or your money back!"

Crouton Christianity
Too many listeners have felt the stale effect of "dead bread." For years I actually believed it was my job to spoon-feed others, to sermonize every week, sometimes several times per week. And for those many years I took my study and research seriously, too seriously. For over three decades as a teaching pastor, I became the "sermonator." I was good at my trade (a few others agreed), but seldom did I consider I was unwittingly becoming a well-oiled vendor at dispensing too many buckets of "dead bread."

In my early days as a pastor-teacher, .I was told that any true handling of the Scriptures or honest preparation meant a minimum of an hour of study for every one-minute of delivery of prepared sermon. So by the time I had studied, researched, word-smithed, digested, and then double-digested the message, I was totally clueless that I was serving up some stale and "dead" information that produced little or now nutritional value.

"Behold, the days are coming," says the Lord God, "That I will send a famine on the land, not a famine of bread, not a thirst for water, But of hearing the words of the Lord," (Amos 8:11).

Trying to "live off" someone else's bread is much like my eating habits in the natural. Like most Americans, for most of my life, I lived off processed, refined foods, non-organic, or real foods. Foods, with the nutrients sucked out of them through the ongoing processing of preserving and packaging.

Some of my very wise friends in learning the benefits of good, right, healthy, real foods are helping me eat better these days. For years they tried to share this information with me, but I don't think I was ready.

This seems too much like the sad state of our spiritual diets. Most of our lives we have consumed spoon-fed teaching from someone else. And as good and admirable as many of these fine teachers were and are, we were, in fact, being fed processed or refined theology. Someone else's recipe, someone else's mix, someone else's diet and thus very little nutritional elements designed for us. Just more, "dead bread."

Self-Feeders
Bill Hybels apology to thousands of Christians awhile back was a shocker, and impacted great reviews across the board on the diets we have been serving up each weekend. (Bill Hybels is the Founder/President of The Willow Creek Association).

"The Willow Creek Association has undoubtedly had some of the greatest influence on the evangelical church in America as a movement in the last 30 years. In response to the experience-based environment of programs and participation so prevalent, Bill recently said, "We made a mistake. What we should have done when people crossed the line of faith and become Christians, we should have started telling people and teaching people that they have to take responsibility to become 'self feeders.' We should have taught people, how to read their Bible between services, and how to do the spiritual practices much more aggressively on their own."

I know some who continue to use the Amos 8:11 text for their personal reinforcement of more and more teaching, and more and preaching, but I personally believe it is just the opposite. There is a famine for the personal nourishment when the Lord speaks to you on an distinctly personal basis. And when He speaks to you personally, it is out of your heart hunger and His heart fullness that He fills you and nourishes you.John 14:26, "But the Helper, the Holy Spirit whom the Father will send in My name. He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things I said to you."

Parasitical Preaching I am not saying or making derogatory accusations against all preaching and all pastors. Most pastors I know are very sincere, godly leaders trying their best to encourage, motivate, inspire and even equip the saints they lead. And a good sermon that brings insight and revelation to you about the Father, and builds you up and inspires the body of Christ is a good thing. Especially a message that makes you dig deeper and longer on your own into that revealed truth.

The problem happens when you take that sermon in as your sole (soul) food allotment for the week. The pastor has done all of the preparation, and all of the work, and once you take a few bites of his meal, your appetite is wet, but you go no further. You just quit for that weekend and wait until you get another serving, or another teaching, or another sermon, next weekend. The point I am trying to make is that any good sermon, as good as it is, is not your daily diet. No one can eat for you, or feed for you. You have to learn to eat, see, and to hear from God for yourself. As Frank Viola states it is not necessarily pastors but the modern pastoral office and role that is profoundly skewed. Is it possible that the sheer prominence of today's pastoral-teacher role has become problematic? That the mere presence of this role, and consistent visibility of these gifted leaders could actually cause an unhealthy dependence upon them and their position for ministry, direction, and guidance? As long as today's pastor-teachers hang around delivering these hot sermons, the people in the church tend to become more and more dependent on the pastor's personal relationship with God and His ability to present the Word.

Furthermore, the pastoral office itself destroys so many of those who populate it, so it is clear that Jesus Christ never intended for anyone to shoulder that kind of enormous responsibility and power. There is no scriptural context that supports that "one-man teaches all."

So, in this way it becomes parasitical. Parasitical in the sense that the congregation learns to live off its leaders, their study, their research, their devotions, their prayers, even their personal life in God. While one of the age-old reasons for discontented parishioners choosing to leave a local fellowship has been the complaint that "we are not being fed here," it remains such irony, as the true purpose of biblical leadership is not to feed the saints, but to stir hunger in them and then equip them to learn to eat on their own as "self-feeders."

In Search Of A Personal God
Even the most recent statistic say that of the 15% of Americans who do not now identify with any religion still indicate that 51% of them believe in God. Barry Kosmin, a lead researcher states that this trend clearly favors a potential Great Awakening. In other words people are not satisfied with the current packaging of today's religious services, but want a deeper, more meaningful relationship with God.

This hunger is evident when conversations get away from the presenting religious format and get around to conversations about a personal relationship with a personal God. We don't just want facts about Him, or even fellowship with others about Him. We want more, we want His face. But, we not only want Him, He wants us.

God Doesn't Want Just Weekend Visitation Rights
God doesn't just want to visit you for an hour or so on a weekend. He wants to move in with you. He wants to live with you, to actually dwell with you. He wants habitation and not just a scheduled visitation. The Father is pursuing His people these days for increased revelation in their lives that comes only through a habitation of daily nutrition, daily intake of His fresh revelation, and the daily consuming of His "fresh bread."

Psalm 91:1, "He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High, shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty." The word "abide" there means to spend the night, or as The Message says it, "spend the night in Shaddai's shadow." In the NT, in John 15:7, "If you abide in Me, and my words abide in you, you shall ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you." And of course the word "abide" there means to live, to dwell indefinitely.

So, we no longer just, "do" devotions, anymore than we just, "go to meetings." We instead, enter into a life style of full delightful communion and connection with our Heavenly Father every day. For years as "conference junkies," we were caught up in going from meeting to meeting to find the newest thing, when all along He was offering us His personal "fresh manna," spoon-fed directly by Him to meet our daily needs.

I even knew of families who packed up everything and "moved" across the state and/or the nation in an attempt to position them in some setting where "God was moving," or where they had heard a prediction, or a prophecy that "He would soon be there."

We are being wooed to a whole new way of being with your Heavenly Father through solitude, silence and prayer. Just you, alone, face to face with Him. No props, no mediators, no "in betweens." Just you and Poppa in raw time, in real time, you spending time with the maker of the universe.

If it is time for a shift, particularly when everything is shaking, it is a shift to hotly pursue the face of God, and when heaven touches earth, we will not only want to spend more time in His presence, it will become our "magnificent obsession," and our "dangerous delight."

Mentoring the Message
I am currently involved in helping to facilitate some men's mutual mentoring groups here in San Diego. What I think I enjoy most is the whole process of simply getting others to talk, releasing them and coaching them to openly discuss their journey with other fellow travelers. And to witness these men opening up, even surprising themselves, by what comes out of their mouths. What incredible insights, pieces of the picture, parts of the revelation and words of wisdom that come out of these interactions.

I find these kinds of settings do several things for others and for me. When people are allowed and encouraged to openly share, they discover the treasure that is within all of them. This becomes a deep process of self-enrichment when as someone starts sharing what they see with others, and the feeling that they really have connected with the group and with God.

When people openly share the things of God in gatherings with other believers they get encouraged to steward their own personal gardens and reservoirs even more diligently, because they want to get more, so they can dig up more, to harvest more, in order to give more, and to stir more hunger in one another.

What "wisdom pools" are created as people in a gathering unpackage a Scripture or a concept together, rather than all of the insight coming from one or a few elite (the overly trained) individuals. It starts to feel like a planned and yet spontaneously prepared feast. Leaders or facilitators in these groups must resist the temptation to "over lead" or "over feed" as they keep prodding and creating a safe atmosphere for the priesthood of all believers..

David's Determination And Yours
I think we are all feeling a similar passion that David had for a habitation of God. "Dead bread," will not work, over-cooked or over-worked regurgitated food from someone else is not satisfying, not nutritional, not even functional. David had a determination; he wanted a home with God.

"O God, remember David, remember all his troubles! And remember how he promised God, made a vow to the Strong God of Jacob, "I'm not going home, and I'm not going to bed, I'm not going to sleep, not even take time to rest, until I find a home for God, a house for the strong God of Jacob," (Psalm 132:1 - 5, The Message).

So, go ahead, build Him a place in your life, find a secret place, and give Him some specific and intentional sacred space. You have to eat. And you have an ever-present teacher, the Holy Spirit. You have a deep hunger that longs to be satiated and satisfied, and can only be met from Him. So commit in these times to "buying up more of your time." Get more intentional as you spend time living fully off the "fresh daily bread". God Himself serves up! In His grip,

Gary Goodell