The Vision Thing

By Ted Newkumet
Created: April 11, 2004
Modified: April 23, 2004
© 2004 All Rights Reserve

 

The goals and plans for the newly recreated The Shy Preacher Web Site.

---

It’s About Me!

I start things I can’t finish.  It’s a fact of my life, one I cannot ignore or at least, ignore at my own peril.  My bookshelf is full of half-read books.  Last year’s attempt at do-it-yourself plumbing has left us with no running hot water in the main bathroom, no water in the upstairs bathroom, and no water to the outside faucets with no idea on how to complete the job.  The Shy Preacher is the victim of that fact too.  The hopes and dreams I had for this site got all tangled up in a mass of conflicting priorities.  Was I going to be a writer or a web designer?  In the end I became neither.

Another fact of my life is that my failure to finish things has lead to my failure as a leader.  Time and again I had ideas, I had plans and I had a team, and time and again I froze in place and left people hurt and bewildered.  It was one such time that is the indirect beginning of The Shy Preacher.

When I entered college, I thought I was going to become a preacher, to pastor a church.  After two years, I flunked out/dropped out and returned to my home, a confirmed failure.  But I still kept inching towards my goal, tried to stay faithful to what I then thought was my calling.  Then, came the fateful day.

I was given the chance to preach at my church.  It was a good message, much better then the messenger could have produced on his own.  It was truly inspired by God for his hurting people.  It had to have been, it couldn’t have been from me.  My church had been a powerhouse of growth in the 1930s, 40s and 50s.  Momentum carried it through the 60s, but even then the edges of the dream were starting to fray, membership was starting to decline.  In the mid-70s we experienced our last true growth spurt as the then pastor encouraged us to embrace our changing neighborhood.  But by the 80s an almost evil combination of church politics and local crime sent our church rapidly heading to its end.  At one meeting I had attended, the pastor talked about who populated the next generation of my church and placed his hand on my shoulder.  I was it.  It was me.  I was the next generation of the church.  Most of my peers, the sons and daughters of the leaders of the church, had moved on to other ministries or had separated themselves from church all together.  In short, the future was bleak, hopeless.  The message I gave, the sermon I preached was based on the books for Moses.  The Israelites were in the desert and the time had come to chose, press forward to the Promised Land or return to captivity.  “That is the choice before us.  What will you choose?”

In a moment of sheer passion I invited people to meet in the church parlor after the service to discuss how we could move forward.  The Sanctuary emptied.  I did the handshake thing in the lobby and went into the parlor for the cookies and Kool-Aid that were common in the old style churches.  People were there waiting for me.  They wanted to see what I had planned … and I had nothing more to offer.  I mumbled a few half-hearted excuses.  I could see the disappointment in their eyes.  I excused myself and I ran and I hid.  First I had failed them, then I abandoned them, and I never tried to preach again.

A few years later the once great church passed into history, closed its doors as an independent entity for the last time.  While I know I did not kill the church — in the end it suffered the fate of Laodicea (Revelation 3:14-22) — I also know that I didn’t do much to aid in its survival either.

I had gone on to attend another church.  It was big enough and growing quickly enough that I could be “the guy who sits in the back” and stay uninvolved.  I took advantage of the hectic pace of the church to make myself invisible.  I looked at it as a time of healing, but in reality, I was really just festering.  Others were growing in their faith, I was just stagnant.  They were the River Jordan; I was the Dead Sea.

At times it seemed as if the calling was never really there.  That it was all some sort of vain fantasy fueled more by my desire to have the adoration of the congregation then my desire to serve God and His people.  At other times it felt more like God had released me from the calling, no longer desired my service in that way.  But every once in a while, the whisper was there, the still small voice, “It’s not over yet.  I am not finished with you.  Why are you being disobedient to My will?”

The mission of the church I linked with was to turn people to whom God was irrelevant into fully devoted and equipped followers of Christ.  To remain useless and in the back was an affront to its ideals as well as the ideals that I was brought up with.  Over and over the pastors and speakers would repeat the message of Reach, Grow, Trust, Investigate, Seek, Pursue.  I would leave church with that Sunday Morning Buzz (actually Wednesday Night) then go happily back into hiding. 

In the mean time, God kept pointing out to me areas where the bigness of the church could be a flaw instead of a blessing.  The thought kept coming to me “You should do something about it!”  The most vivid of these experiences was during a Christmas Eve Service at what was then our new building.  I came across a young girl crouched in the corner crying.  People were busily moving about with their “Mall Stares” blinding them to this child and her needs.  But to me, she became reality and the crowd became faceless blurs.  I asked what her name was and what was wrong.  She had become separated from the family that brought her as a guest in the press of the crowd. 

What was I to do?  This was the sort of thing I’d normally leave to my wife to handle.  But she wasn’t around.  At first I made myself a barrier between the girl and the crowd to ensure she would not be trampled, and then I shouted, “We have a problem here!”  Which stopped a few more people and from those people I was able to pick-out some of the leaders in our Christian Ed and Childcare Program.  They were able to make all the connections that lead to reuniting the girl with the family and life continued on.  The thought that occurred to me that night was “How many adults are there in that place suffer from the same feelings of being overwhelmed and lost in the crowd while there, only to lack the courage to be open with the tears in order to maintain an image of maturity?”  I kept thinking, “Somebody should do something about this.”  The word “somebody” linked to the famous Jesse Jackson quote, “YOU are SOMEBODY!”

Finally (in the fullness of time?) they (God?) removed the final barrier to my participation in the life and ministry of the church.  It had begun to conduct Saturday Evening services to help alleviate the over crowding at their three Sunday services.  I worked on Sunday Mornings.  I couldn’t make commitments I couldn’t reasonably expect to keep, could I?  This created an opportunity and in preparation for the additional service one of the pastors during his message issued and invitation/challenge to become more involved or to leave and seek a place where I could grow.  To move up or move out.  In a way, I kind of did both.  At the church I started to become involved with the information table where I could meet and greet people and help them learn to navigate the ins and outs of the church, both its physical plant and its web of ministries and programs.  Simultaneously, I also made a couple of forays into helping to plant new churches.

Unfortunately, neither church plant took root.  But it was in the context of those smaller ministries where it began to feel safe to reveal portions of my heart and my history.  The pastor of one of those church plants allowed me to produce the small group Bible Study we had before each service.  From the material I produced (Philemon’s Response to Paul was originally a part of those studies.) the suggestion came that I produce a regular article or newsletter of some sort where I could present my ideas.  From that suggestion, The Shy Preacher was born.

I considered it a chance to redeem my faithless past.  It was a chance to develop the skills and grow the dreams that the Lord had planted within me.  Then after a few simple articles, it became another unfinished project to nag the back of my head.

This year, my church participated in the “40 Days of Purpose” study based on The Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren.  The premise of the book and the study was to contentment comes from submitting to God’s Will and letting him direct you to the purpose he has planned for your life.  As a result of the discussions in my small group for the study, I allowed myself to be transparent enough to remove, however briefly, the “Guy Who Sits in the Back” Mask and admit my former plans and passions.  The thought of restarting The Shy Preacher toyed in the back of my mind.  At the same time another fascinating thing happened.

In the nearly two years since I founded The Shy Preacher it hadn’t generated even one unsolicited response.  Suddenly, out of nowhere, someone who had stumbled across my site asked a question.  A response!  A real response!  Mind you, the question was along the lines of “Do we know what really happened to Joseph, Mary’s husband?” and the response was a studious and detailed analysis of direct and indirect references to Joseph in the New Testament that started and ended with a “No, we really don’t know what happened to him.”  But it was a start!

It was time to try another leap of faith and trust The Lord’s presence in my life if not in my ministry.  At times it feels like I am building a boat in the middle of the desert.  But what do I have to lose?  A little more dignity?  There isn’t much dignity in being stuck anyway.

It’s Not About Me!

If I treat The Shy Preacher as a blog for my thoughts and ideas it’s going to quickly get old and boring.  If this site remains about me it will once again become a victim of my ego.  The true author of this site has to be the author and finisher of my faith, The Lord Jesus Christ.  In my opinion the best way to surrender The Shy Preacher to Christ is to increase my efforts to invite other people to create articles and messages for it.

On the original site I had included an invitation to other authors as a throw away item tossed in at the last minute.  In this version, however, the invitation is the focus.  To create a virtual community of people who will support each other in learning how to present and express the Gospel.  In that community we are all going to be one-another’s students, we are all going to be one-another’s teachers.  We will share ideas and inspirations.  We will share Bible verses and resource materials.  We will become that unbreakable three-stranded cord where Christ is the third strand!

The people that will contribute to this site won’t need to be perfect.  The standard of the site will be Constant Improvement; hopefully, we will all be inspired to pursue perfection by the Holy Spirit.  Each article will be followed by opportunities for the readers to discuss and review what we have written.  These comments will assist us in producing material of increasingly higher quality.  My position won’t be so much that of the wise and trained trail guide, but that of a fellow traveler taking his turn with the compass and map. 

In some ways there is a risk that The Shy Preacher’s new emphasis on the writer may create a less reader/seeker friendly environment.  Just like a student driver won’t have the skills of a NASCAR Professional, not everything we write will come out as we intend.  We’re going to experiment with new ideas and approaches that won’t always work on the road to discovering what will.  Ironically, however, I suspect that the reader will end up well served with a much better product.  Because of the interactive nature of the Internet, the reader will have a better opportunity to ask questions and express their own ideas than is permitted during and after a typical sermon/message/lecture.  In addition the more permanent nature of the written word will allow the reader to go back and reread and review what was written, where spoken details tend to get lost to distractions.

Where will you fit in?  For some, you will click around for a few minutes and then surf on to other activities that will prove to be more interesting.  Others will lurk around in the background read things as they are added and absorb what they can.  Still others will become active participants in the discussion and commentary as new articles are added and features are produced.  A few, perhaps you, will feel inspired to take a few baby steps off the boat and try writing something for the others to share.  Whatever your position, I am blessed that you chose to stop by and spend a few minutes here today.

Welcome to The Shy Preacher, ya’ll come back now! Hear?

The Vision Statement

Discussion Questions

The Vision Thing

By Ted Newkumet
Created: April 11, 2004
Modified: April 23, 2004
© 2004 All Rights Reserve

 

The goals and plans for the newly recreated The Shy Preacher Web Site.

---

It’s About Me!

I start things I can’t finish.  It’s a fact of my life, one I cannot ignore or at least, ignore at my own peril.  My bookshelf is full of half-read books.  Last year’s attempt at do-it-yourself plumbing has left us with no running hot water in the main bathroom, no water in the upstairs bathroom, and no water to the outside faucets with no idea on how to complete the job.  The Shy Preacher is the victim of that fact too.  The hopes and dreams I had for this site got all tangled up in a mass of conflicting priorities.  Was I going to be a writer or a web designer?  In the end I became neither.

Another fact of my life is that my failure to finish things has lead to my failure as a leader.  Time and again I had ideas, I had plans and I had a team, and time and again I froze in place and left people hurt and bewildered.  It was one such time that is the indirect beginning of The Shy Preacher.

When I entered college, I thought I was going to become a preacher, to pastor a church.  After two years, I flunked out/dropped out and returned to my home, a confirmed failure.  But I still kept inching towards my goal, tried to stay faithful to what I then thought was my calling.  Then, came the fateful day.

I was given the chance to preach at my church.  It was a good message, much better then the messenger could have produced on his own.  It was truly inspired by God for his hurting people.  It had to have been, it couldn’t have been from me.  My church had been a powerhouse of growth in the 1930s, 40s and 50s.  Momentum carried it through the 60s, but even then the edges of the dream were starting to fray, membership was starting to decline.  In the mid-70s we experienced our last true growth spurt as the then pastor encouraged us to embrace our changing neighborhood.  But by the 80s an almost evil combination of church politics and local crime sent our church rapidly heading to its end.  At one meeting I had attended, the pastor talked about who populated the next generation of my church and placed his hand on my shoulder.  I was it.  It was me.  I was the next generation of the church.  Most of my peers, the sons and daughters of the leaders of the church, had moved on to other ministries or had separated themselves from church all together.  In short, the future was bleak, hopeless.  The message I gave, the sermon I preached was based on the books for Moses.  The Israelites were in the desert and the time had come to chose, press forward to the Promised Land or return to captivity.  “That is the choice before us.  What will you choose?”

In a moment of sheer passion I invited people to meet in the church parlor after the service to discuss how we could move forward.  The Sanctuary emptied.  I did the handshake thing in the lobby and went into the parlor for the cookies and Kool-Aid that were common in the old style churches.  People were there waiting for me.  They wanted to see what I had planned … and I had nothing more to offer.  I mumbled a few half-hearted excuses.  I could see the disappointment in their eyes.  I excused myself and I ran and I hid.  First I had failed them, then I abandoned them, and I never tried to preach again.

A few years later the once great church passed into history, closed its doors as an independent entity for the last time.  While I know I did not kill the church — in the end it suffered the fate of Laodicea (Revelation 3:14-22) — I also know that I didn’t do much to aid in its survival either.

I had gone on to attend another church.  It was big enough and growing quickly enough that I could be “the guy who sits in the back” and stay uninvolved.  I took advantage of the hectic pace of the church to make myself invisible.  I looked at it as a time of healing, but in reality, I was really just festering.  Others were growing in their faith, I was just stagnant.  They were the River Jordan; I was the Dead Sea.

At times it seemed as if the calling was never really there.  That it was all some sort of vain fantasy fueled more by my desire to have the adoration of the congregation then my desire to serve God and His people.  At other times it felt more like God had released me from the calling, no longer desired my service in that way.  But every once in a while, the whisper was there, the still small voice, “It’s not over yet.  I am not finished with you.  Why are you being disobedient to My will?”

The mission of the church I linked with was to turn people to whom God was irrelevant into fully devoted and equipped followers of Christ.  To remain useless and in the back was an affront to its ideals as well as the ideals that I was brought up with.  Over and over the pastors and speakers would repeat the message of Reach, Grow, Trust, Investigate, Seek, Pursue.  I would leave church with that Sunday Morning Buzz (actually Wednesday Night) then go happily back into hiding. 

In the mean time, God kept pointing out to me areas where the bigness of the church could be a flaw instead of a blessing.  The thought kept coming to me “You should do something about it!”  The most vivid of these experiences was during a Christmas Eve Service at what was then our new building.  I came across a young girl crouched in the corner crying.  People were busily moving about with their “Mall Stares” blinding them to this child and her needs.  But to me, she became reality and the crowd became faceless blurs.  I asked what her name was and what was wrong.  She had become separated from the family that brought her as a guest in the press of the crowd. 

What was I to do?  This was the sort of thing I’d normally leave to my wife to handle.  But she wasn’t around.  At first I made myself a barrier between the girl and the crowd to ensure she would not be trampled, and then I shouted, “We have a problem here!”  Which stopped a few more people and from those people I was able to pick-out some of the leaders in our Christian Ed and Childcare Program.  They were able to make all the connections that lead to reuniting the girl with the family and life continued on.  The thought that occurred to me that night was “How many adults are there in that place suffer from the same feelings of being overwhelmed and lost in the crowd while there, only to lack the courage to be open with the tears in order to maintain an image of maturity?”  I kept thinking, “Somebody should do something about this.”  The word “somebody” linked to the famous Jesse Jackson quote, “YOU are SOMEBODY!”

Finally (in the fullness of time?) they (God?) removed the final barrier to my participation in the life and ministry of the church.  It had begun to conduct Saturday Evening services to help alleviate the over crowding at their three Sunday services.  I worked on Sunday Mornings.  I couldn’t make commitments I couldn’t reasonably expect to keep, could I?  This created an opportunity and in preparation for the additional service one of the pastors during his message issued and invitation/challenge to become more involved or to leave and seek a place where I could grow.  To move up or move out.  In a way, I kind of did both.  At the church I started to become involved with the information table where I could meet and greet people and help them learn to navigate the ins and outs of the church, both its physical plant and its web of ministries and programs.  Simultaneously, I also made a couple of forays into helping to plant new churches.

Unfortunately, neither church plant took root.  But it was in the context of those smaller ministries where it began to feel safe to reveal portions of my heart and my history.  The pastor of one of those church plants allowed me to produce the small group Bible Study we had before each service.  From the material I produced (Philemon’s Response to Paul was originally a part of those studies.) the suggestion came that I produce a regular article or newsletter of some sort where I could present my ideas.  From that suggestion, The Shy Preacher was born.

I considered it a chance to redeem my faithless past.  It was a chance to develop the skills and grow the dreams that the Lord had planted within me.  Then after a few simple articles, it became another unfinished project to nag the back of my head.

This year, my church participated in the “40 Days of Purpose” study based on The Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren.  The premise of the book and the study was to contentment comes from submitting to God’s Will and letting him direct you to the purpose he has planned for your life.  As a result of the discussions in my small group for the study, I allowed myself to be transparent enough to remove, however briefly, the “Guy Who Sits in the Back” Mask and admit my former plans and passions.  The thought of restarting The Shy Preacher toyed in the back of my mind.  At the same time another fascinating thing happened.

In the nearly two years since I founded The Shy Preacher it hadn’t generated even one unsolicited response.  Suddenly, out of nowhere, someone who had stumbled across my site asked a question.  A response!  A real response!  Mind you, the question was along the lines of “Do we know what really happened to Joseph, Mary’s husband?” and the response was a studious and detailed analysis of direct and indirect references to Joseph in the New Testament that started and ended with a “No, we really don’t know what happened to him.”  But it was a start!

It was time to try another leap of faith and trust The Lord’s presence in my life if not in my ministry.  At times it feels like I am building a boat in the middle of the desert.  But what do I have to lose?  A little more dignity?  There isn’t much dignity in being stuck anyway.

It’s Not About Me!

If I treat The Shy Preacher as a blog for my thoughts and ideas it’s going to quickly get old and boring.  If this site remains about me it will once again become a victim of my ego.  The true author of this site has to be the author and finisher of my faith, The Lord Jesus Christ.  In my opinion the best way to surrender The Shy Preacher to Christ is to increase my efforts to invite other people to create articles and messages for it.

On the original site I had included an invitation to other authors as a throw away item tossed in at the last minute.  In this version, however, the invitation is the focus.  To create a virtual community of people who will support each other in learning how to present and express the Gospel.  In that community we are all going to be one-another’s students, we are all going to be one-another’s teachers.  We will share ideas and inspirations.  We will share Bible verses and resource materials.  We will become that unbreakable three-stranded cord where Christ is the third strand!

The people that will contribute to this site won’t need to be perfect.  The standard of the site will be Constant Improvement; hopefully, we will all be inspired to pursue perfection by the Holy Spirit.  Each article will be followed by opportunities for the readers to discuss and review what we have written.  These comments will assist us in producing material of increasingly higher quality.  My position won’t be so much that of the wise and trained trail guide, but that of a fellow traveler taking his turn with the compass and map. 

In some ways there is a risk that The Shy Preacher’s new emphasis on the writer may create a less reader/seeker friendly environment.  Just like a student driver won’t have the skills of a NASCAR Professional, not everything we write will come out as we intend.  We’re going to experiment with new ideas and approaches that won’t always work on the road to discovering what will.  Ironically, however, I suspect that the reader will end up well served with a much better product.  Because of the interactive nature of the Internet, the reader will have a better opportunity to ask questions and express their own ideas than is permitted during and after a typical sermon/message/lecture.  In addition the more permanent nature of the written word will allow the reader to go back and reread and review what was written, where spoken details tend to get lost to distractions.

Where will you fit in?  For some, you will click around for a few minutes and then surf on to other activities that will prove to be more interesting.  Others will lurk around in the background read things as they are added and absorb what they can.  Still others will become active participants in the discussion and commentary as new articles are added and features are produced.  A few, perhaps you, will feel inspired to take a few baby steps off the boat and try writing something for the others to share.  Whatever your position, I am blessed that you chose to stop by and spend a few minutes here today.

Welcome to The Shy Preacher, ya’ll come back now! Hear?

The Vision Statement

Discussion Questions