In the church world, anonymous notes are far too common. And they’re usually mean. It’s the avenue that cowardly people use to make themselves feel better as they trash the beliefs, ideas, education, looks, family, and anything else about a pastor or church that you can imagine!

Over the years I’ve seen some nasty ones. I’ve seen a pastor told that he was the reason his wife had a miscarriage. I’ve seen a pastor threatened to have lawyers come remove him from his church. Personally, I’ve been called uneducated and told I didn’t know what I was talking about in certain theological or scientific areas. Our church has been classified as a cult. It’s always interesting, and always by people who are too scared to put their name to their empty threats and hateful claims.

Because these notes hold as much value as a stale biscuit, our staff knows that if one surfaces in the offering, an email inbox, or our post office box, that it immediately gets thrown into the trash. If you don’t care enough to put your name on it, we don’t care enough to read it. But I guess there can always be exceptions.

I accidentally ran across one that got put in my mail tray in the office because it was a letter addressed to me and had not yet been opened. As I read it, I didn’t realize it was anonymous because something was different about this letter. It was nice. It was respectful. It addressed a legitimate concern about something that happened on a Sunday I was absent. It was short and to the point. It didn’t slam me or our church but built me and our church up in encouragement. And to be honest, I was glad I read it! I got to the end and was surprised to see that it wasn’t signed. But for a change, that was ok.

This person was apparently new to our church and didn’t realize that we have an honest, open, and transparent culture at OneLife. If they had signed this letter, I would have responded with such gratitude and appreciation because it helped us fix a problem and because it was done with love and respect.

That’s how you write an anonymous note…as if you aren’t anonymous! Otherwise, you’re just a coward saying things you would never say in “real life” and your opinion holds no value.

This week I heard about Bill Maher’s closing monologue from a couple months ago and had to look it up. In between expletives, crass comments, and his political rhetoric came (drumroll please) – truth.

At the very end of his four-minute tirade about the hypocrisy of Christians he makes two comments that hit me like a ton of bricks. First was…

“I’m just saying logically: if you ignore every single thing that Jesus commanded you to do, you’re not Christian!…You’re not Christ’s followers, you’re just fans.”

Woah! That last part was a zinger and it…well…it kind of hurt! I began to think about my own life. Do I follow Jesus? Do I really do everything that he commanded me to do? Or am I just a fan? Am I someone that just goes to church and claims to be a Christian because I don’t want to go to hell? And then came my big question: what about our church? Are we followers or merely fans?

A follower will leave everything to follow. A fan will stay at home, leave nothing, and just stay in touch about what goes on.
A follower will get uncomfortable and go wherever it is that is needed to go. A fan will watch on TV from the comfort of a lazy-boy.
A follower will stick by through the thick and thin. A fan will run at the first sign of difficulty.
A follower will sacrifice everything. A fan will sacrifice nothing.

Then he threw in one other zinger that made me remember why OneLife Church exists.

“I’m a non-Christian. Just like most Christians!”

Such is the state of American Christianity. A lot of people who go to church but ignore what Jesus commanded. A lot of fans who aren’t true followers. And a lot of “Christians” who aren’t, well, Christians.

A few days ago I shared the three things I strive for in each sermon. It must be biblical, memorable (one point!), and have a clear next step. Sometimes we hit a homerun on this and other times we evaluate and realize it could have been better. Oftentimes these evaluations carry over into what we should fix in the process. So what’s the process?

Glad you asked!

Series ideas come out of lots of prayer and God revealing what our church needs to focus on next. I usually plan sermon series six months at a time so we always know what is coming ahead. We then have an incredible creative process led by our Creative Director Tyler Goode. I give him my my rough ideas, bottom line for the series, and individual sermon points. He then takes a team through the process of coming up with series titles, stage designs, creative elements, sermon titles, song ideas, and anything else that could come from the series.

Before this creative meeting takes place I fill out a questionnaire that lets Tyler and his team know what each week of that series will cover, the scriptures we will use, and what I hope to communicate. I then take that information, combine it with the creative elements Tyler’s team comes up with, and turn it in to individual sermons. My process to get there starts with studying the scripture. This includes studying the Greek and Hebrew, reading commentaries, articles, and blogs, and listening to other sermons that deal with the text. That info then gets boiled down to only what will point to the main idea of the sermon, which means a lot of good stuff gets left out! The final step is organizing it in a way that will create tension, tell a story, and apply to every person at OneLife.

So OneLifers, as you can see we love you and what we do so much that by the time you hear a 35 minute sermon, a lot of hard work has gone in to making sure people far from God can discover him and how their one life can make a difference. And unlike a lot of churches, we have a team working to make it happen, not just one guy!

This process has evolved over the past 21 months thanks to the help of lots of other great churches and pastors. We constantly evaluate the process and are always learning, so I’m sure it will look even more different another 21 months from now.

But for now, that’s our process behind the sermons.

This post started radically different and half-way through I realized a change of course was needed. Instead of just doing one blog post about sermons at OneLife, I’m going to make this a little series. Lots of people ask me about how we decide to do certain sermons so I hope this will help answer that. And if nothing else, it will force me to think through what we do to see if we can do it even better!

When we started OneLife 21 months ago, there was key point that was important to me in this department: teach less for more! I’ve sat in literally thousands of church services in my life and can only remember a few sermons. Something’s wrong with that! The ones that I can remember were simple, biblical, and applicable. So here’s what I strive for, and this is what I ask some guys to keep me accountable to doing each week.

1. Stick to the Bible! There’s nothing that I hate worse than to hear some guy go on and on in a sermon about their opinion in an area. I want to know something with authority. So it is important to me that the meat of every sermon be based straight out of the Bible. That’s why 9 times out of 10 we will focus on just one passage of scripture to answer that day’s topic (yes, most sermons are expository because expository does NOT mean exclusively going through an entire book of the Bible at one time! But that’s another soapbox blog post for another day…). We dig deep into that passage to see what God wants us to know from His Word.

2. One point is all they need. I read a book that dramatically changed my view on this called Communicating for Change. In it the author, Andy Stanley, challenges preachers that have multiple points to break those points down into sermons and use what was just one sermon and make it a series. We did that recently with our Unstoppable series. Each sermon was about the importance of sharing your faith with those who don’t yet believe. But instead of throwing four points out at once, we focused each week on a different point and drove down deep. The results were people actually doing what the Bible says to do! PS…this usually means a sermon won’t be more than about 35 minutes long, which is a win-win for everyone! (I’ve never heard someone say “Man, I wish that guy had preached LONGER.” And those nursery volunteers start hating long-winded preachers after a while!) Not to mention, most of Jesus’ sermons were pretty simple and to the point. Again, another blog post for another day!

3. Make it doable. The last two things I always ask myself about a sermon before it gets preached is “So what?” and “Now what?” By asking “so what?” I am making sure that this topic won’t just be intellectual knowledge. The last thing people need is more trivia to remember. They need to know what in the world it has to do with them. Then the “now what?” makes sure there is a clear, next step for people to do something with what they’ve heard.

Improving in the area of sermon preparation and delivery is something I am in the midst of every week. My sermons are evaluated by one of my mentors, I read books about communication, and I listen to lots of other preachers. So I’m sure this will change as I get older. But for now, this is what we strive for at OneLife. And over the next few days, I’ll share how we get there each week with a little behind the scenes look!

I received this incredible email and wanted to share it. God is moving at OneLife despite imperfect leadership and my own mistakes and failures. It’s the most humbling experience of my life! Check this out…

“Dear Rodney,

I am writing this letter to tell you my story. My children and I have been coming to OneLife from the very beginning, the first launch Sunday. Somehow I knew from the very first Sunday that this church was going to be different and that you were different. You take the mystery and confusion out of the Bible and put it on my level so I can understand and relate it to my life and how it applies in today’s world.

I have always believed in God, believed that He sent his Son, Jesus, to die on the cross for our sins and that He rose again so that we could be saved and to know Him. I knew it in my head and my heart but I didn’t feel it in my heart. But I was a good person, right? I believed, so I was okay. Oh, I have done plenty of things through the years that were WRONG, heading down the path to destruction, gotten hurt by people so I put up a wall, marriage fell apart, divorce, etc. But I was still a good person. You made me realize that being a “good person” wasn’t what it was all about. I didn’t have a relationship with Jesus!

One day last year, I don’t even remember when, I asked Jesus to come into my heart. I asked for forgiveness of my sins. I asked Jesus to change my heart and transform my life. Well, I didn’t feel the big “magical moment”, the BAM and my life was changed. But I kept coming to church, listening to your sermons, taking in the teachings, reading the Bible, hoping and praying that “the moment” would come. It just lead to more questions, more doubt in myself. Maybe I wasn’t good enough; maybe Jesus didn’t hear me or accept me. But I kept feeling a “push” inside me to continue, do something, anything but take the next step. I really didn’t know what.

Then Starting Point was mentioned. I signed up, thinking that I would just learn more, learn the “secret”. I dreaded going because I knew it might put me in the spotlight, I just wasn’t the kind of person to put myself out there but it would be okay, it would be a class, lots of other people. I was WRONG! I met Jim and Jenny and Brad (the apprentice) the first day. No other people, none. Where were the other people that were supposed to be in the class? Talk about awkward! My worst nightmare! The doubts in myself rushed in again! They talked with such ease about Jesus, how they lived their lives, their “stories”, their incredible Faith. But I was intrigued, captivated, so I came back, each and every week. I continued to read my Bible, listen to the CD’s from Andy Stanley. Little by little I did begin to understand things more, the teachings and lessons made more sense but I still questioned myself, not God.

Then you started the Unstoppable Series. You kept saying, tell your story, tell your story, everybody has a story. I was screaming on the inside, “I don’t have a story”, “I don’t have a story”. I wondered what was wrong with me. So more questions, more self-doubt, more soul-searching.

Then yesterday, I listened to Andy Stanley speak about the Holy Spirit. He was talking about how some people have that immediate transformation, “the magical moment” and how you meet people that are Christians, such good people and you think, “I can’t be like that, I could never stack up to be that way”. But for some people, it was a more gradual process for “the magical moment”. As I continued to listen, I felt things begin to click in place. Andy was talking about the Holy Spirit guiding you, talking to you, whispering to you, that still small voice… I realized that Jesus, that God, has been with me. He was just waiting for me. He had been talking to me all along the way. The Holy Spirit has been guiding me and my life. Little things, “don’t watch that”, don’t listen to that”, “turn away from this”… I heard, “It’s okay, I’ve got you. I’ve always been here. Don’t worry, I’ve got you!”

At that moment, tears began running down my face, unstoppable. I sobbed. I realized at that moment, I had changed. I was different; I just didn’t recognize it until then. I was making choices and decisions everyday that were Christ centered, not just “me and my” centered. My heart was more sensitive to things and situations, I felt differently about things. Some things didn’t use to bother me, but they bothered me now, sometimes even offended me. I cried off and on all day. I know now that I have the Holy Spirit with me, in me. I have my Counselor, my Guiding Light. I know he, Jesus, is there saying, telling me, “I’ve got you! It’s okay, I’ve got you”!

I now recognize and see the changes God has made in my life, in my children’s lives; how God has made a difference. I can look back at my life now and see how God worked in my life to get me to this point, this place, at this time. He is amazing! I thought I didn’t have a “story”, but I do. I just had to open my heart to Jesus so that he could open my eyes so I could see it and believe it.

So that’s my story!! Thank you so much for One Life, thank you for Starting Point with Jim, Jenny and Brad. Thank you for being part of my story!

I’m not the most outgoing, in your face kind of person. Sometimes I wish I could be but it just isn’t me. I’m the kind of shy, stand against the wall type but I want to “live for the line, not the dot”. I will continue to take one step at a time, and I know Jesus is there, telling me “It’s okay, I’ve got you”.”

OneLifers…that’s what it is all about!!!