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How Long Does it Take to Write a Sermon – According to Jerry Seinfeld

Dan Sullivan · October 27, 2018 ·

I’ve been listening to interviews of Jerry Seinfeld in the background at work lately, and he said something that is about the best description of writing a sermon that I’ve ever heard. He was asked how long it takes to write a 75-minute show.

“That’s like asking God how time goes into making an oak tree? I don’t know, I do it every day, I do it all day, I don’t know, it’s a tree. I plant it, it grows, eventually, it’s an oak tree, who the hell cares? It’s all I can do. I don’t know…”

I think that’s how was able to survive working at the Rescue mission for 2 years when I might have to preach a sermon any night that my volunteer for chapel didn’t show up. I think that is how I’m able to be a bi-vocational pastor now. Yes, there is some needed sermon prep time to get ready for the sermon, and YES there is some rest time after the sermon to chill and relax, but otherwise, all of my time, all of life, is sermon prep time.

Which also reminds me of 1 Peter 3:15. Some apologists have stolen that verse to mean that you should always be ready to argue about Jesus, but that’s not what it means. It means always be ready to explain what you are doing from the perspective of Jesus. Let everything you do be an outpouring of your faith in Christ, so that you are always ready to explain that Christ is the fuel of your life.

but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect, — 1 Pe 3:15

1 Peter 3:15 graphic



 

Short Quotes comedy, homiletics, preaching, quotes

Goal of Life vs. Goal of Our Vacation Quote

Dan Sullivan · January 6, 2014 ·

If we would only give, just once, the same amount of reflection to what we want to get out of life that we give to the question of what to do with a two weeks’ vacation, we would be startled at our false standards and the aimless procession of our busy days.

– Dorothy Canfield Fisher, as quoted in Michael Hyatt’s Creating Your Personal Life Plan which you can learn more about here.

I’m working through this to see how it would apply to the guys at the mission.

At the Mission, Bookstore, Short Quotes books, distraction, goals, life planning, mission, quotes, vision

Antagonists, stories, and humble destinies

Dan Sullivan · June 30, 2013 ·

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Bookstore, Family Life, Handwritten Blog books, calling, life, maturity, quotes

Two Excerpts I Want You To Read

Dan Sullivan · May 16, 2013 ·

Here are two excerpts from “The Forgotten Ways” by Alan Hirsch

A Note to Leaders and Introduction: http://www.cmaresources.org/files/ForgottenWaysHandbook-excerpt.pdf

and

Introduction and Chapter 1 – Confessions of a Frustrated Missionary: http://assets.bakerpublishinggroup.com/processed/book-resources/files/Hirsch.pdf?1362591025

I’m not sure if I’m allowed to link to these or not, which is why I am not hosting them on my own pages but leading you back to their original sites.

Here is a good overview of the whole book, but I’m not sure I’m allowed to link to it either.

This book is really good and has a ton of thought-provoke for Christians in churches, especially you mega-church folks.

The real thing I was looking for was the addendum at the end. I’ve quoted A Crash Course in Chaos before here, but I came across some of it again today and I just had to promote it again. Check it out, you won’t be sorry.


“The Forgotten Ways: Reactivating the Missional Church” (Alan Hirsch)

Bookstore, Urbia Alan Hirsch, books, Bookstore, church, culture, exponential13, missional, quotes, Reading, theology, Urbia, Verge13

Verge13 Notes via Evernote

Dan Sullivan · March 3, 2013 ·

Here are my notes from the Verge13 conference. I took copious hand-written notes and then captured them with the notebook feature on Evernote for the iPad. If you scroll to the end, you can save them to your own Evernote account.

Some of it is more detailed than other parts, so fire away if you have any questions.

[Edit: Evernote is secure only, so even though this used to be an iframe, it is now a link to the Evernote bits.]

Bible Study, Featured, Handwritten Blog apostasy, church, discipleship, grace, Jesus, notes, quotes, religion, Urbia

"You're not carrying it right!"

Dan Sullivan · February 10, 2013 ·

This week we took the final pieces of the old Evansville Rescue Mission down and prepared for our grand opening of our new building at 500 E. Walnut st. One of the last things to do was to take down the cross in our old chapel and bring it over to the new chapel. Who would have thought such a thing would happen in the process.

Billy is one of our maintenance men. He couldn’t get at the bolts that held the cross on the wall, so he cut off the brackets with a hack saw and began to carry the old cross out of the building. I’m not sure how he was carrying it, but there began some commentary from the other guys that were around. They told him he was carrying it wrong. The way he was carrying it wasn’t the right way to carry a cross, the peanut gallery protested.

“Isn’t that the point?” Billy asked. “Not a one of us could carry it right! It’s not my cross anyway. He carried it right and now it’s done!”

And with that, he brought it to the new building and hung it up.

At the Mission, Featured, Short Quotes cross, discipleship, grace, Jesus, quotes

Judaism at the time of Paul

Dan Sullivan · April 15, 2012 ·

Yesterday I bought Paul by Bornkamm at the library book sale.

I got 5 books and the funniest part was that 3 of them were about the apostle Paul. I guess they have served their time at the public library! Here is an interesting quote from the opening pages:

“Temples were still erected for the old gods, priest continued to serve and sacrifice to be offered, but these were obsolete; and the myths about the gods were a spent force, no longer capable of satisfying the individual’s longing fr protection and blessing, salvation and redemption, in this world and the next. Everywhere a process was afoot of syncretizing the old religions with new ones streaming in especially from the east, and the odder and vaguer these were, the greater their attraction. A whole host of mystery cults and doctrines of salvation poised eternal salvation and deliverance from the powers of fate and death. But this was also te time when there was a radical rationalistic criticism of the various religions, which, in the shape of diverse philosophies reaching even the man in the street, strove fora spiritualization of religion and therefore looked down on the rival miracle-workers and alleged purveyors of salvations bustling about in the market place.

“This is the background against which we have to view Judaism with all its differences and strangeness, its belief in the one, invisible God, Lord of heaven and earth, the rigor of its law, its ethical and ritual commandments (observance of the Sabbath, the dietary laws, etc.), its uniform way of life throughout the whole world, the venerable antiquity of its history, its call to turn away from all idolatry and moral confusion, and its proclamation of the judgment about to overtake the impenitent and of the peace and righteousness which the Messiah, soon to come, would bring in his train.” – p.7

It kind of boggles my mind to realize that people were attracted to the rule of law and the moral standards of Judaism. On the other hand, when I think of the spiritual anarchy that would come from being MUCH more diverse and multi-cultural, I can see the draw of moral standards. We are pretty mono-cultural in the United States, as much as we like to think we are a melting pot. Imagine if every state were a sovereign nation with its own language, laws, customs, and religions? That is more like the world around 20 A.D. Traders would pass through from all different nations because they could all travel by land from one nation to another. You put a 10,000 mile-wide moat around a nation and you really close it off. Considering that the god of the Jews is the one true god who wrote His name on the heart & soul of all mankind, it makes sense that people would be drawn to Him wherever the message went.

The other part that surprised me is that Judaism had been made portable. I didn’t realize this either, but I can’t help but have a little conservative/fundamentalist sadness that Judaism had made this turn:

“To all intents and purposes, the temple had been superseded by the synagogue, sacrifice by the exposition of the Torah, and the priests by the scribes and lawyers.” – p.8

Bible Study Acts, Bible Study, notes, Paul, quotes, religion, Study, Torah

Unrelenting Wisdom Supplier

Dan Sullivan · December 31, 2011 ·

If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you. (James 1:5 NIV)

Yesterday my 9 year old son and I were talking about this verse. I said, “Isn’t it amazing that God says to ask for wisdom and He’ll give it without judgment or discretion?! It’s like He doesn’t even care if you’re a good guy or a bad guy, if you want wisdom, He will give it to you!”

And my son says, “That’s because He knows that all wisdom will help people get closer to Him.”

How great is that!? It’s true. Anyone that wants wisdom in any situation on any topic can ask God for it and He’ll deliver. He doesn’t want anybody to be a fool and perish. He wants everyone to be wise and know that He Himself is the ultimate and true source of all wisdom.

Bible Study Bible Study, forgiveness, generosity, James, NT, quotes, religion, wisdom

Global Leadership Summit 2011, Part 5: Steven Furtick

Dan Sullivan · September 6, 2011 ·

Day one (good grief I’m just now ending day one‽) ended with Steve Furtick. His talk was really good.

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After a day of some religious and worldly wisdom it was really good to focus on the fact that the most important things in this world can only be done by God.

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It’s worth it to read this passage from 2 Kings 3:9-20

The whole bit about Elisha and the harpist was pretty funny. I’m not sure what the point of it was, but the whole bit about background music making us more passionate was pretty funny. I think it had something to do with us keeping our inspiration even after we left the conference. It’s easy to feel called by God when you’re in a crowd full of people with loud music and programmable lights. Not so much when you’re sitting alone in a soup kitchen with more ketchup on their burger than hope in their hearts.

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This part is great, but if you read the section yourself, you can ask God for your own application. It is a good point that God didn’t lay out the entire plan to these guys. SO MANY places in the scriptures God just gives us 1 or 2 of the next steps, not the whole plan in detail.

Philip in Acts 8 only got two bits of direction and the rest he had to fill in on his own. Go to this road and go over by that chariot. Beyond that Philip had to wing it! We look at other peoples’ success and wonder why it doesn’t work out for us. We wonder why things are so hard or misleading or unclear, but most of the time we’re comparing our behind the scenes with other peoples’ highlight reel.

This whole event from 2 Kings is even a bigger deal if you read through the whole chapter. Read it and you’ll see that God provides a lot more than just the thing we ask for and He fights our fights for us in ways that we would have never even imagined!

Bible Study, Handwritten Blog 2 Kings, Bible Study, faith, OT, Prophets, quotes, sermons, teaching, WCAGLS

Global Leadership Summit 2011, Part 2: Leonard A. Schlesinger

Dan Sullivan · August 21, 2011 ·

This is a little ironic for me. I went into the GLS a little skeptical about how much the Church should be learning from the business world. After all, haven’t we established that the Church IS NOT an American business‽ And here it is, ONE OF MY FAVORITE TALKS OF THE SUMMIT and it’s all business related!

(Might have something to do with the fact that I’ve become an entrepreneur in the last year and a lot of what he said was really promising and exciting, vs. the usual song you hear when you are starting your own business that has a repeating chorus singing “you will fail, you will fail, you will fail.”)

He started out repeating some simple questions he asked years ago at the GLS.
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In this section he was talking about making change. You have to establish that HERE is unacceptable and THERE is the desired place to be. Then you get more and more people with you and you move.

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Entrepreneurship can change the future because it can help find new ways to help people. It is more flexible, agile, and aware than humongous capitalist corporations.

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This was a quote “We are all entrepreneurs but too few practice it. Think about where you work. Aren’t there all kinds of creative and gifted people that could solve all kinds of problems and do all kinds of good if they buoyed out from under an oppressive or limiting corporate structure?

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This was a great image. He talked about Indiana Jones falling into a dark hole. When Indy is in there, does he take an inventory of his assets or project his 1, 5, and 10 year goals? NO! He takes action! Nobody knows how this or that is going to turn out, so take action and test it. Either you’ll step on a torch and light up the whole room or you’ll fall into a pit of crocodiles and get eaten. Either way you just increased your knowledge.

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Look around and start doing something with whatever you have. Build on what knowledge you gain from that and continue. Indiana Jones takes a step, finds out he’s walking through a tunnel, and takes another step. Each step helps you iterate and adjust your plan. (This sounds like Google and 37 Signals practice of “Launch early and iterate” as if those two companies know anything.)

Notes_Page_17.png

This is basically a call to GO FOR IT! And it really is true. I had no idea that the company I worked for would get bought and everyone with marketing in their job title, regardless of skills, experience, or value, would be let go. Why waste time in a job you don’t like or a job that doesn’t fit right in with your calling?

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This part is especially significant because it came up so many more times at the summit. Many times we get paralyzed trying to figure out the entire process or plan from beginning to end. Schlesinger said the thing to focus on is what to do next. Later Furtick (I think) would talk about God giving us the very next instruction, not the whole revealed process. Mama Maggie would talk about how when she first was called to serve the poor, she had not idea how it would go, how long she would work, or how amazing the whole thing would turn out to be.

I remember so many people stuck in college and just out of college, almost unable to act because they all wanted to know what God’s will for their life was. I think they would have benefited a lot from just focusing on the next month rather than thinking they had to discover their lifelong vocation at 22.

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When you fail at something, like say, running a coffee filled backpack business, you learn something that nobody else knows. Honestly, there are probably 100 things I know about selling coffee out of a backpack that nobody else in my entire city knows! (I tried to start a business last year where I had a 3 gallon backpack full of hot water and a fishing vest full of hot cocoa, Starbucks Via, and all the condiments. It was awesome, but like I said, not quite a success.)

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And then the end, which is basically to say, the more action you have, the more “at bats” so the more likely you are to hit a ball.

 

Bible Study, Handwritten Blog, Short Quotes books, bu, quotes, thoughts

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