You’ve gotta go through hell. Yeah baby. We kicked off our first ever money series today at Elevation. I don’t remember ever being this tired after a worship service, even during my extended fast our first few weeks.

I think I know why.

See, I said some crazy things from the pulpit this morning (actually, it’s a bright green podium that says Freakonomics on the front. Can you call that a pulpit?)

I told the people that if they were Christians and our church was just one church on their rotation, to please take us off their rotation and just download the podcasts and listen to the worship CD and go to a church where they can settle in and be generous. You know how some people do. They go to one church for the music, one for the preaching, one for their kids and one because their friends go there.

This is non sense. Jesus didn’t die so we could treat His local church like different kinds of restaurants. “I’m in the mood for Mexican tonight. Next week we’ll eat Italian. Then maybe a steakhouse the week after that.”

I said all of this today from the stage. And more.

Attendance might be down next week.

This is just one of about a dozen statements I made this morning that would get most pastors fired.

Now here’s the thing most preachers won’t tell you.

When you say stuff like this, you really mean it. And you know you’re saying what you feel like God wants you to say. And you say it like: I don’t care if this ticks some of you off.

But you do care.

It’s a heavy spiritual burden to carry to preach the truth even when you know you’re going to offend some people.

And you go home with a headache. Nobody likes to make people mad. You want to help people. You want to see people set free from the death grip of materialism.

I’m realizing that being a preacher of the gospel is hard. Imagine that! Jesus got crucified for it. So did Peter. Paul got beat and imprisoned for it. So did John.

If you want to be on fire as a preacher, you have to go through hell.

You may be misunderstood.
You may have some people walk away angry.
You may wonder “Should I have said that?”, replaying over and over again every statement you made in your sermon and hoping people heard it the right way.

But God is good and His Word is true.
So you can rest well at night and trust God with the results.

Enough fire for one day.

I’m going to take a nap.