The pastors sat on cinder blocks in a circle around me as we studied pastoral ministry in 2 Corinthians 2-7. “What are the frustrations you experience as pastors here in Panama?” I asked. It didn’t take long for the answers. “People who say they will do something but never do it,” one man said. “Christians who spend more time criticizing than serving,” said another. A third man chimed in, “I preach my heart out, but nobody seems to listen or care.” I looked around at these men as they shared. Some had traveled eight hours by bus to study God’s Word with me. I said to them, “These are all the same problems we face in our churches in America. People are people and pastoring people is no different in my country than in yours.”

 

We all get frustrated in ministry. When the frustrations build up, we are tempted to use the bully pulpit to scold our people. We deliver a sermon rant, a tirade, a tongue-lashing. We scold about the prayerlessness, the backbiting or the lack of commitment. Our frustrations flow into the sermon. The pulpit becomes a battle tower from which to shoot our arrows. How do we avoid a sermon rant? Here are some suggestions that help me avoid ranting.

We are not to speak out of strife, controversial questions or disputes about words We are not to use abusive language with people (1 Tim. 6:4) for such talk comes from our depraved minds! Pastor A.C. Dixon in 1900 once said at a mission’s conference, “Above all things I love peace, but next to peace I love a fight, and I believe the next best thing to peace is a theological fight.” I love to argue just like Dixon, but I need to fight my temptation to fight because such fighting accomplishes little.

One very good reason for sequential preaching is that it limits the temptation to rant. The next passage is before me. The people know it. I can’t twist it to what I want to say. I have been tempted to scold people at times only to face a passage that scolds me instead! Sequential Bible teaching is a discipline that disciplines the preacher!

We all know the experience of attending a board meeting with a great idea not obvious to other leaders. They disagree. The idea is shot down or tweaked. Our vision gets adjusted. We can walk away from such a meeting frustrated. We are the experts. Why don’t they do what we want to do? Church leadership teams have many goal blockers. Don’t let the goal blockers infiltrate your sermon prep.

It is amazing how easily we can begin to see our critics in every passage we study. We can think, “This verse applies to John. I hope he is in church on Sunday to hear it.” If we succumb to that thought, we will usually find John missing on Sunday. The people who most need the message aren’t there! The truth is that I allowed the critics into my prep closet. I forgot that God wants to talk to me first. It is His message that matters not answering my critics.

I know that I tend to exaggerate church problems. Little problems grow into giant messes in our heads. The disagreement at the Music Committee meeting turns into a church split in our minds.  Call it negative inflation, our tendency to inflate the negative and minimize the positive. We think the worst. We need to ask, “Is this a guppy problem or a shark problem?” Shark problems must be addressed quickly. Guppies are harmless.

I attended a conference for pastors once where the speaker would use the phrase “and then go to bed” as a refrain to each segment of his talk about ministry. His point was that you should go to bed and start the next day anew. Getting away from the study is helpful. Take a walk or run. Enjoy a hobby. Do whatever it takes to refresh ourselves so we can start fresh with our people.

 

The word “rant” comes from the obsolete Dutch word “ranten” in the 1600s. It meant to “talk foolishly.” Whenever we rant in a sermon, we talk foolishly. As the saying goes, “It is better to remain silent and have people think you are a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt!