A Hispanic pastor once told me
that most middle class white folks look at church differently than
Hispanics. This was news to me. “What do you mean?” I asked. He said, most white folks don’t believe
they’ve heard a sermon unless they LEARN something; while most Hispanics don’t
think they’ve heard a sermon unless they FEEL something. I’m not Hispanic, so I cannot speak to
that side of his remark; but I have to admit, when it comes to how I see and
approach things as a preacher, he could not be more right!
If you really want to tempt me to
sin and stroke my ego, all you would have to do is come up to me after a church service and tell me: “Matt, I
never heard what you said about 1 Corinthians today, it was completely new to
me. Thanks so much for sharing your vast
knowledge with us. Your preaching has changed the way I look at God
and the whole Bible.” OK, if you go that
far, I might think you are laying it on a little thick, but you get the
idea. I relish the thought of being used
by God to open up a new world of biblical understanding for people. However, that is not all there is to preaching, worshiping, or even reading Scripture. If
it was, you might not have had any reason to go to church today. There is also a spiritual, I’d even say
emotional side, to receiving God’s Word.
If you are like me, you might get a little uncomfortable when I start
talking about emotions in worship.
Perhaps you’ve heard overly-emotional sermons, or been in services
where this was the sole focus.
When I
worked in the Baylor mail room, I had a Hispanic supervisor. When he found out I was going to seminary, he
told me a story about what church was like for him growing up that went something like this:
“For starters, we were at the Hispanic
Assembly of God church every time the doors were open. I saw preachers come and go, attended
different classes and camps, and went on mission trips. But the one thing that was a constant for me
was the worship. When I got older I was
asked to play drums in the contemporary service. The more involved I became with the worship
service, the more I recognized a pattern.
Our services would start off slow, build to a climax, and somewhere right
at the end of the sermon, would always explode in an emotional outpouring of
the Spirit. This became a routine for
me, and like most church kids, there were times when I lost sight of the point
of it all. Sometimes, I made a game out
of it. I’d look at someone who was
really getting into the service, and I’d say to myself: 'I bet if I play really
hard and fast for the next minute, I can make that lady speak and tongues and
roll on the floor.'
True story. And I bet the Hispanic pastor walked away
after the service feeling like I do when someone compliments me on all the new things
they learned from my preaching.
We miss out when we focus too
much on either side of the coin. In Acts10:36-43, Peter spells out what everyone “knows” about Christ’s death, burial,
and Resurrection. This was common
knowledge for him, the group he was speaking to, and most people that might be reading this. Interestingly, he prefaces what he knows with what he now realizes as a result of God’s
Spirit in verses 34-35:
"I now realize
how true it is that God does not show favoritism but accepts men from
every nation who fear him and do what is right (NIV) [emphasis mine]."
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