Preaching:
Are these people from your staff or do you draw from laypeople in the congregation?
Nelson:
They are drawn from the congregation, which is why for us we can’t do it Monday
through Friday during the work week because two-thirds or three-quarters are
volunteers. And we have a group that we rotate so it’s not always the same group
of people. We might have a dozen and then we only invite six. You get too many
people and it gets too complicated.
The average church
can do it. That’s the cool thing. There’s a lot of pastors that say, “Well,
I’m not that creative.” They’ve got creative people in their church.
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Preaching:
What are some things you’ve learned about creativity that would be helpful to
other pastors?
Nelson:
I think I am blessed and/or plagued with a creative mind. I’m blessed because
creativity comes naturally to me but I’m plagued because I’ve got a hundred
ideas and you can’t use them all but you hate to see them wasted. And I love
creativity but I sometimes don’t like to follow through — it’s my weakness.
I think you can
govern or guide creativity so that the creative types in your church are invited
to share ideas on message planning and such and it can be a great thing, but
obviously there are parameters. For example, my friend pastors a big church,
about 5,000. They had this big drama leading up to Easter and he said he had
to pull the plug on it the last minute because it just wasn’t quality. So he
wasn’t driving the thing but he was the quality control person. Just because
you have creative people you can’t let them run wild.
I think there is
that fine line between allowing it but saying we’re going do it with excellence
and we’re going to do it well and not just shoot from the hip. By allowing it
sometimes you push the envelope. But you also have some parameters for excellence
and quality in communication. I think sometimes in the past people have heard,
“Oh, we want to be more creative,” so then they allow a bad drama to happen
or something crummy and then it ruins it for everybody. Then they say: well
we’re not going to do that again.
Preaching:
What would you like to say about preaching that I haven’t asked you?
Nelson:
I think that the stakes are higher today because communication is more confounding
today. My theory is one of the reasons we are seeing mega churches and these
satellite churches is because a lot of people just can’t stomach mediocre preaching
today. And I think because preaching is more challenging today, the people who
are good at it are drawing bigger crowds and now we’re trying to franchise it
through these satellite ministries.
All of us need
to continually hone our skill, and many of us need to either decide: are we
going to be preachers in the traditional sense or are we going to be communicators
in a contemporary sense, then really step up the quality of what we do and why
we do it.