To Itinerary Preachers

This is a heart-felt message.

I’m not talking to you.
* If you enjoy your congregation like you enjoy your fans, you don’t belong to the pulpit.
* If you see the congregation as to be manipulated by rhetorical skills and not to be loved and to have compassion upon, you don’t belong to the pulpit.
* If you inflate your ego by showing off how many Sundays you have been invited to preach, particularly if you’ve posted them on social media in the guise of giving thanks or soliciting prayers, you don’t belong to the pulpit.
* If you are intoxicated by audience adoration like any performer, you don’t belong to the pulpit.
* If you delight in constructing sermons with rhetorical flourishes and choreographing your delivery, you don’t belong to the pulpit.

I’m not talking to you if you are in the above company.
The Holy Spirit will easily weed you out, probably from within your heart.
And you can stop reading now.

But if you have cleared the above hurdles, and feel you are invincible under the Devil’s arrows, then you belong to my target audience in this piece.

Best to listen up.
From an old timer.

Years ago, I visited a well respected retired Bible Professor, on an island of HK.
He told me he was grateful with God’s gracious gifting of him in his ministry.
But he had one major regret: that his ministry was at the expense of him attending church without his wife all those years.
Because he had to preach every Sunday in different churches.
For many years.
What’s lost couldn’t be recouped.

Then some time later a less senior but perhaps by now equally respected Pastor-Professor who had since ascended to the top of the seminary, told me that he had made it a rule to attend all his speaking functions with his Mrs.
I can attest to the validity when I was there, but not sure I can still, for it is highly unfeasible, practically.

What am I driving at?
Perhaps something contrarian.
Let me share from first person.

I was an unknown commodity.
Then owing to my work, people and churches came to know me.
Perhaps even appreciated the gifts God endowed.
Then invitations to preach on Sunday arrived.
Not mega churches.
Nothing to gloat about.
Just churches.
And they poured in.
Soon almost every Sunday was booked in advance.

That clearly was God opening doors to ministry—after all my calling was to preach the Word!
So I thought.

I knew the pitfalls.
I knew I would be going all over HK every Sunday.
This week Tsuen Wan, next Northpoint, then Chai Wan, Tuen Mun, Yuen Long, and so on.
I relished that for I enjoyed going places, meet people, knowing the locals and of course eating their goodies.

But that would be tiring for my Mrs.
Worse I could be preaching the same sermon every week.
I had no theological hangup for preaching the same sermon to different audiences, for I was convinced that God’s message was in the sermon. It would by its force, not novelty, move God’s people.

But how cruel it was to force one’s wife to sit and listen to the same sermon week in and week out!
Just couldn’t do it.

All these were legitimate.
And honest.

So I made it a point that one Sunday a month I would accept no speaking engagement and spent that with my wife to whichever church she would like to go.
I thought that would be a good balancing act, home vs ministry.

It wasn’t.
For me at least.

Two disjointing resulted.
First, the disjointed connection to one’s local assembly—one’s local church.
Second, the disjointed connection to what my wife had been attending to during those Sundays she attended alone.

And the feeling of attending alone must not be underestimated.
Perhaps to my sin, I did.

All these couldn’t be scientifically measured.
The work of the Holy Spirit can’t be scientifically measured.

Increasingly the connection to one’s home church was weakened.
Simply couldn’t follow.
Couldn’t put the finger on the pulse.

The unrootedness really hurt even though the love for one’s home church remained, forever I guessed.
The end result was an alienation and eventually withdrawal from membership.
Drama in between omitted here.

Also with that the connection to what one’s spouse is connected to.
And that’s a lot.
Unanticipated.
At great cost.

Comparing itinerary vs home church preaching, with hindsight it’s no brainer.

I had the blessing from God to stay in one church for close to 6 years.
Preached there only, with exceptions when I traveled to cities of my home churches.
I grew to love the congregation and they me.
I learned to preach an entire book and ditch the bells and whistles like PowerPoint——my self-deprecating joke was that I had neither power nor point!

But I thoroughly enjoyed it.
I grew in awareness of my ministry, calling and authority.

I worked hard every Sunday but got to lunch with my wife, and perhaps with some members.
We got to go home together and then I unwinded by devouring the Sunday newspaper (paper version of course) sans the comics section, which was for my daughter when she was still there.
Week in and week out, it was tiring, fanfare-less, but rewarding.
Extremely.

Come to think of it I now wonder if God ever designed for itinerary preacher.
Not in the mode of Paul moving amongst Mediterranean assemblies, but in the HK mode of replacing the local church pastors on regular Sunday rosters.
Whatever valid reasons there might be for local churches to require preachers to stand in on a regular basis, and they are not to be discussed here, it wouldn’t turn out to be good for the itinerary preachers.

Sure, more Sundays at various churches helped the profile and connection of the seminary, organisation, or the cause of the itinerary preacher.
No question.
But the cost is heavy.
Often creeping upon them.

It’s best not to embark on this slippery journey.

And on the part of the inviting churches, better not too for it robs the sweet opportunity of grooming and growing one’s own pastor, not just in homiletical acumen but pastoral heart.

I suppose no one would listen, neither preacher nor church.

But what’s to be said must be.

I’m sure that senior retired professor would agree, whichever country he now enjoys the well earned retirement, with his Mrs.

May happiness be with them forever.