Dead Bread

“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.

That analogy has stuck with me all these years, and I remember it every time I order a salad that comes with “dead bread.” I actually don’t mind croutons that much, and have even purchased a bag when passing through the salad isle at the supermarket. There are so many flavors now: herb, parmesan, bacon-ranch, etc; all so conveniently located that I just reach out and take them as I pass by while filling my cart.

However, when applying my friend’s unflattering adjective to preaching, my heart is stirred over a phenomenon, which has gripped America’s pulpits in recent years.

I recall opening my mail one morning some years ago and reading my first advertisement for “dead bread”:

“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

As you know, in Third Day we have felt and discussed this pain about “dead bread,” for years, maybe because I spent so many years thinking it was my job to feed others, to sermonize every week, sometimes several times per week. I do know that for most of those years I took my study and research too seriously. For over three decades as a teaching pastor, I became a well-oiled vendor at dispensing “dead bread.” It was even said back then, that any true handling of the Scriptures or honest preparation meant an hour of study for every one-minute of delivery of the sermon in the pulpit. By the time you had studied, researched, word-smithed, digested, and then double-digested the message you didn’t even know that the bread you were getting ready to serve up was such simply” dead” information that it produced little or now nutritional value.

Obviously, I still get chances to speak, teach, recant, rant, cajole, whatever, a lot in different places all over the world. But the thing that has changed in me, rather than my need to impress or “WOW the crowd,” with my anointed knowledge and teaching. I would really rather just genuinely connect with people, exposing them to my passion for a personal God, and hopefully stir their own personal appetite for them to go after Him.

For you guys who still teach on a regular basis, this is a subtle shift. First, please don’t take yourself or your gifts too seriously. Please handle all of your sermons and all of your preparation lightly or loosely. Keep in mind at all time, God may just have surprises and suddenlies for any meeting you might have called.

Quite frankly, by the time your group gets to your study or your service, they have already tasted the best. They have read the latest Charisma Magazine, the last top two best sellers from Destiny Image Publishing, have read The Shack and have listened to the last three podcasts from Bethel on their iPod.

That may not be a totally bad thing. Maybe their increased appetite for God has stirred them to consume all of that stuff. But it is just a matter of time, until they will get dissatisfied with the stale “day old manna” dispensed by others and want some of their own “fresh bread,” from the Father. And when that happens watch out.

Getting into a life of solitude with God without any religious props will ruin you for any one else’s food. Even as Israel was warned to not even try to keep a “crumb” of manna until tomorrow, God continues to promise us daily “fresh bread.” The late Henri Nouwen emphasized most of his life that we will never have true community until we first settle the issue of solitude and develop our own secret life with the Lord.

VISITATION OR HABITATION

I think what the Father is pursuing in His people these days is the revelation that their life in God is to be a habitation. 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, “go do” devotions, anymore that we “go to meetings.” We enter into a life style of delightful communion and connection with our Heavenly Father. For years we “conference junkies,” were caught going from meeting to meeting to find the newest thing, when all along He was offering us “fresh manna,” spoon-fed to our needs.

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

If it is time for anything, when everything is shaking, it is time to hotly pursue the face of God, and when heaven touches earth, we will not only want to spend time in His presence, it will become even become your “magnificent obsession,” and your “dangerous delight.”

MENTORING THE MESSAGE

I am involved in a several small groups in San Diego, and currently help facilitate a men’s mutual mentoring type group. What I am enjoying is the whole process of simply getting the guys to talk, releasing them and coaching them to openly discuss their journey with fellow travelers. So refreshing and so exciting is to witness when they even surprise themselves by what comes out of their mouths, such great insights and revelations and wisdom.

I find these kinds of settings do several things. When people are allowed and encouraged to openly share, they discover the treasure that is within all of them. Again, this is a deep process of self-enrichment when you are sharing a message with others and feel like you really have connected with the group and God and receive the amazing pleasure that comes from that.

When people are in gatherings where they can openly share, they also get encouraged to steward their own gardens or reservoirs more diligently, in order to get more, so they can give more. And then of course, the wisdom pools that are created as several people unpackage a Scripture or a concept, rather than all of the insight coming from one or a few individuals. It is literally stuff to write about.

One of the best ways to mentor this message that God wants to spend time with us, speaks to us and communes with us, it to keep facilitating these open “third day” meetings, where the DNA is about the potential, participatory “priesthood of all the believers.”

DAVID’S DETERMINATION

We are all getting the same passion David had for a habitation of 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 be, 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).

Where do you think He lives? What are you building Him? Let me pass along some thoughts from another Third Day brother, Brad Nelson in Oakhurst, CA:

“In Him, we live and move and have our being.

We actually exist in Him. When we invite someone to meet Jesus we are inviting him or her to consider living in Him. This makes more practical sense than inviting Him into our Hearts. We are not inviting them into an organization or into the ministry of someone.

Buildings are made of stone cannot exist within Him. Corporate institutions and man made organizations cannot exist within Him. Living stones are the only structures that can exist within Him. Our membership in Him is direct and real. We get to know Him and not about Him. Because knowing Him, "is" to know about Him. Jesus said to His followers I do not have a place. That is because He is the place.”

IN THESE TOUGH TIMES

Making a commitment to follow Jesus is a lot like the commitment we make when we enter into marriage, it is the commitment we signed up for when we said our vows. And when the going gets tough, sometimes just remembering the vows is the only things that keeps you going.

My second book, “Where Would Jesus Lead?” is at the publishers. Pray all goes well for an edit deadline and the publishing of the book. Also, the next book, “Welcome Home: Church as a Way of Life,” is being pieced together through a cooperative effort of some of my old mentors and what we wrote through the years about the church as a family and a “way” of life.

I am committed to "buy up my time" in these all important days and keep looking for and living off of "fresh bread."

Gary Goodell
May 2009