until recently with his retirement my dad was a salesman. ironically the “hobby” that he has developed over the past few years to keep him busy during his retirement is selling used cars. like i said he is a salesman. though i never heard my dad say the title of the post i still learned it from him through being aroudn his business. by watching him i learned that the purpose of a sales person is to sale a product. you do it ethically. you do it because you believe in the product. you do it because you believe that your product really is better for your customer than someone else’s product. still though your purpose is to sale the product. if you can’t sale the product because you’re too worried about your image or too worried about what you might have to do to sale the product (i.e. go out and do a demonstration of the product at 10 p.m. or show the maintence personnel how to use the product, etc.) then you are not going to be a very good sales person.
the reason i say this is because i was dissappointed today. every 4 weeks or so i do the chapel for our preschool. today was one of those days. today i was supposed to talk about how GOD knows and loves us for who we really are. the problem as that i was speaking to 150 4-5 year olds. 4 & 5 year olds are not kown for their ability to understand and remember tough messages. still i figure the purpose of a preacher is to CONVEY truth, not just say true things. i’m supposed to help other people understand the good news of JESUS. if i simply speak the gospel and the people i am speaking with don’t understand what i am saying then i have failed. so if i don’t convey the truth in a manner that those listening can understand then then i have not preformed a very good job. so i decided to use the fact that most of these kids will be wearing costumes tonight to help them to understand that GOD knows who they really are on the inside. so i purchased an elvis halloween costume and did my message in it while slowing removing parts of it to show who i really am. the kids loved it. the teachers loved it. some of the leadership said it was the best chapel they had ever had.
now i will be the first to admit that having the costume was fun. it was fun to see people thrown off and confused when i walked down the hall. it was fun to see my fellow ministers laugh. when i was talking with one of my fellow ministers about the costume they said “i could never do that, i’m afraid no one would ever take me seriously anymore.” of course, this is also why the 4 & 5 year olds squirm and never remember anything when he does their chapel.
the purpose of a preacher is to convey the truth of the good news of JESUS CHRIST. nothing else matters compared to that.
Sometimes… you are Jesus to me.
Miss you, bro.