DRIVE-BY GUILTINGS
and OTHER HAZARDS OF OVERZEALOUS PREACHING
Dr. Larry Osborne
North Coast Church
Vista, CA

A SEASONED PASTOR ONCE TOLD ME to keep my foot squarely placed on the accelerator whenever it came to preaching. He felt it was the only way to overcome human nature and most people’s natural tendency toward laziness.

His motto was, “If you want people to move a couple of feet, preach as if God wants them to move a couple of yards.”

He was a master at it. Every time I heard him, I’d walk away motivated and convinced that I needed to do more – much more. I’d go home and notch up my prayer life, make a commitment to deeper study, talk to my coworkers about Jesus, write a bigger check for missions or whatever else it was that he so powerfully exhorted us to do that day.

I must admit, it worked for me. I was stretched, motivated and pushed to new heights. I was driven to know and serve God better in the fear that if I wasn’t moving forward and deeper in my relationship with God, I was sliding backward.

But it wasn’t long before I noticed that his pedal-to-the-metal intensity didn’t work for everybody. Those of us who were moving up the leadership ladder ate it up, but others felt beat up. When presented with a standard they had little hope of living up to, they didn’t grow up. They just gave up.

While my pastor friend’s intentions were all the best, his drive-by guiltings and enough-is-never-enough approach to spirituality produced some unfortunate, unintended consequences. Instead of a church full of mature Christians reaching out, he ended up with a large contingent of high-drive-on-fire-leader-types who liked to hang around with other leaders and looked down on everyone else. Sounds a lot like the guys Jesus didn’t get along with, doesn’t it?

Now, obviously it’s important to raise up leaders. Without them the church has no future. But leadership is not spirituality. And that was his big mistake... and mine for awhile. A high intensity approach to life (and spirituality) says much more about our personality and temperament than the quality of our relationship with God.

THE PROBLEM OF PRIDE

Perhaps the worst thing an overzealous raise-the-bar-higher approach to preaching does is that it fosters a spirit of pride and spiritual arrogance. Those who are able to keep up (and especially those at the front of the pack) tend to assume that their zeal, strong intellect and Type A self-discipline are self-produced by-products of their deeper commitment to God than anyone else’s.

On the other hand, those born with a low drive to excel, a trace of ADD, average or below intelligence, poor reading skills or a strong case of shyness are written off as second-class Christians, primarily because of personality traits that have nothing to do with their spirituality or commitment to God.

It took me a while, but I eventually came to realize that God hasn’t called everyone to scale a spiritual Mt. Everest. Some are called to stay behind. Some are called to set up and maintain Base Camp. They aren’t losers or second class. They’re essential to the kingdom. Without them, no one ever reaches the summit.

There’s an interesting passage in 1 Thessalonians 4:11-12 where the Apostle Paul tells his congregation to “Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business and to work with your hands, just as we told you, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody.”

Wow.

My pastor friend never preached on that passage.

But it’s a message that many in our congregations need to hear. In our zeal to help people fly higher and go deeper in their walk with God, we need to make sure that we don’t send a subtle message that confuses the traits of leadership with spirituality. We need to find ways to honor the quiet life as much as the high-impact life.

That’s why in every sermon I preach, I try to make sure that I have something to stretch our leaders and potential leaders – but also, something that provides comfort and instruction for those called to maintain Base Camp.

BEST PRACTICES OVERLOAD

Another problem with drive-by guiltings and overzealous preaching is that it doesn’t produce better Christians as much as it produces frustrated Christians. It weighs people down with what I’ve come to call Best Practices Overload: the spiritually exhausting condition that occurs whenever we try to emulate all the best practices of all the best Christians.

The term “best practices” comes from the world of commerce where businesses track and follow the most successful ideas of their closest competitors, learning from their “best practices.” They search far and wide for anyone anywhere who has a better way of doing something that might give them an edge over their competitors.

If someone owns a business, the study and adoption of best practices is a great way to ensure constant improvement and lasting success. But when it comes to improving our walk with God, it’s a path I don’t want my congregation to take. Trying to follow all the best practices of the all best Christians won’t make them better Christians. But it might make them a nervous wreck.

That’s because God hasn’t called any of us to be world-class – or even very good – at everything. Instead, he’s given each of us a unique calling together with the necessary gifting to pull it off. Nowhere are we given the responsibility to become proficient in all the strengths and skills he’s granted to others.

Imagine a professional golfer all worked up over his inability to consistently kick field goals. Now imagine him spending hours trying to perfect the difficult skill of accurately kicking a football instead of spending hours on the driving range. We’d write him off as a fool for wasting his time trying to master a useless skill.

Yet that’s pretty close to what I ask my people to do when my sermons lift up all the best practices of all the great saints in both Scripture and modern history. Unwittingly, my illustrations and exhortations can leave people feeling guilty for not being something God hasn’t called them to be.

To use the biblical metaphor of the body of Christ, it can leave the eyes in our body feeling badly about their inability to speak and our ears desperately trying to see more clearly.

We tend to forget that many of the strengths we so admire in one person are often incompatible with the strengths we admire in another. The grace of a figure skater is useless to a Sumo wrestler. The diligent research and study of my favorite theologian doesn’t leave much time for the globetrotting compassion of my favorite missionary.

Remember the bizarre story of Michael Jordan, arguably the greatest basketball player of all time, setting it all aside mid-career to seek his destiny on the baseball diamond? It made no sense. Yet there he was toiling in the minor leagues, desperately trying to learn how to hit a curve ball while the spoils and rewards of NBA championships that were his for the taking went to others.

I wonder if, in God’s sight, our exhortations for people to measure up to everyone else’s best traits don’t look just as ridiculous.

Getting off the Best Practices Overload treadmill doesn’t mean no longer learning from others or ceasing to stretch our congregation. There’ll always be plenty of areas for growth and change. The mirror of Scripture, wise counsel, and the prompting of the Holy Spirit will see to that. But these God-inspired areas of growth and change should line up with who people are and what they’re called to do and become rather than some idealistic spiritual super-hero.

Calling people to fly higher and go deeper in their walk with God is core to our calling as preachers. But it must be done in a way that neither violates nor undercuts what God so clearly lays out about the body of Christ in 1 Corinthians 12. It’s the ultimate warning against Best Practices Overload, Drive-By Guiltings and Over Zealous Preaching.

Now the body is not made up of one part but of many. If the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body. And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? But in fact God has arranged the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be.

For more from Larry Osborne and his thoughts on ministry and the spiritual journey, get a copy of CONTRARIAN’S GUIDE TO KNOWING GOD: SPIRITUALITY FOR THE REST OF US (Multnomah Books). Or check out the website at North Coast Church.