With some frequency, people will approach me after a Sunday at Good Shepherd and say, "that was just like a therapy session in a room with hundreds of other people." And I think to myself, "And thank God for that."  See, much of preaching (not all of it, mind you, but much of it) involves helping people rebuild areas of their lives that have become broken.  A good sermon -- or, better yet, a good series of sermons -- gives people both information and inspiration as they journey from rubble into redemption.  Here are five areas in particular that I have noticed and we at Good Shepherd have addressed. 1. Marriages & Households.  What ministry is more important in the 21st Century that keeping marriages healthy and households together?  None.  That's why we at Good Shepherd schedule at least two series a year that focus on the nooks and crannies (Hey!  That phrase will be a series one day!) of daily interactions between spouses, parents, siblings, and . . . wait for it . . . in laws.  Among the most memorable was Home which had the tagline:  Healing our homes while building a home that heals.   2.  Faith.  Whether it's the professor who seems so much smarter than you in your first semester of college or simply the fact that the loved one over whom you prayed healing still died, it's easy these days to lose faith.  Some people stop believing that God exists; others admit that he may still be great but seriously doubt whether or not he is good; and still others doubt whether Jesus is really any different from any other great religious leader or not.  That's why our 2014 series The Shadow Of A Doubt asked, "what would happen if instead of hiding in the shadow of our doubt, we exposed them to light?"  Abingdon Press agreed with the premise!   3.  Identity.  In my experience, many people slowly but surely equate who they are with what they've done.  So they become:  addict, adulterer, failure.  Or on the other end of the spectrum:  champion, boss, millionaire.  Well, well your identity is confused with your performance, you're in need of some serious rebuilding.  That's why Only Human dug into Psalm 8 and celebrated the beauty of its central question:  "What is man, that you are mindful of him?"   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6LFnIi09ps   4.  Hope.  Face it: when the majority of people who vote in November of 2016 will vote against someone far more then they will vote for someone, we live in a cynical world.  Hope is elusive at best, misplaced at worst.  So people gather together, Sunday after Sunday, in search of some hope.  And with series such as The Storm Before The Calm, we have tried to provide just that.   5.  Habits.  What's the saying?  It takes only a minute to start a bad habit (smoking, excessive drinking) but 30 days to start a good one.  People in the 21st Century allow life to crowd good habits out, making it easy for bad habits to sneak in.  That's why a good chunk of 2016 has been devoted to helping people develop those daily habits of reading, prayer, and reflection.  And our two guidebooks, PrayFast and Preventology, have been enormously popular.  Who knows?  I might even have a series called Creature Of Habit later this year.     So rebuilding the broken places in our lives is a recurring theme of preaching and ministry at Good Shepherd.  It's also behind the recently released book Solve, in which I take a look at Nehemiah and how he is able to steer the remarkable rebuilding of the Jerusalem wall in 445 BC.  You can pick up your own copy of Solve -- ideal for personal study, small group use, or an all church project -- here.  

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I remember exactly where I was when I first had the idea for the sermon series that formed the basis for the book Solve.

At Good Shepherd Church we support a lot of recovery programs, which hold their meetings at our Zoar Road campus. Many of these meetings are open to the public, so that you can attend them even if you are not a participant. I drop by periodically just to show those communities how much Good Shepherd loves what they are about.

Anyway, a while back I was in an open meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous, with probably forty people there, and as usual I was awestruck by the raw spirituality of the environment. During the sharing time a man said the following words that still stick with me: “We don’t have a drinking problem. We have a drinking solution. We’ve got all kinds of problems—marriage, parents, self-esteem, money—and what we all have in common in this room is that our solution to those problems has been to drink them away!”

I heard that and immediately I thought, “I may have just heard the single most brilliant insight into anything, anywhere in my life.” So I ran out to the car, wrote it down, and six months later I was preaching the first sermon in a series about our solutions and our problems.

That’s why the first chapter in Solve is called “Problemists.” As we jump from this insight from Alcoholics Anonymous into Scripture and back into our lives, it fascinates me how much we confuse our problems and our solutions. I think you’ll see, as I have found, that often our so-called solutions often end up being the sources of problems. And what’s needed in those situations is for us to turn away from our false solutions to true ones.

I see the same thing in myself. I had a sick day awhile back and was just feeling rotten about myself, as if getting sick meant that I was somehow failing at my ministry. Makes total sense, right? Sickness equals failure or poor job performance! Of course that’s not true at all, but such was my thinking. Anyway, at the end of the day I binged on a bag of Gluten Free Sweet Potato chips. But now I realize: I didn’t have a chip problem.  I had a chip solution. Chips were my solution to my larger problem of irrational insecurity!

 Many of us, if we are being honest with ourselves, will recognize that we do the same thing all too often.  Some of us bounce relationship to relationship to relationship, looking for something in a significant other that’s always elusive. We always think that the next relationship will give us the fulfillment that we feel we lack. If that’s you, I want you to realize now that you don’t have a relationship problem. You have a relationship solution! For others, perhaps it’s gone to the next level and involves jumping from one spouse to the next, hoping the next one will be “right.” Friends, that’s not a marriage problem; it’s a marriage solution. The same can be said for those who spend too much time on the internet, looking at certain websites. It’s not a pornography problem, but a pornography solution. Some of us, perhaps, shop compulsively, chasing satisfaction through acquiring possessions. But again, that is not a shopping problem; it’s a shopping solution. There are many, many situations to which we could apply this same logic.

I have even seen this type of thing happen in the church, where people confuse the problem for the solution. Some people will hop from church to church, or from leader to leader, or from author to author, always in search of the perfect version. But what’s really going on is that they are trying to find in a person what only a living relationship with Jesus Christ can accomplish. It’s not a church problem; it’s a church solution. And there’s a real, underlying problem that only the Lord of the church can provide. 

(The preceding is an excerpt from Chapter One of Solve, which you can order here.  You can also attend the Book Signing Celebration on Monday, June 20th, 2016, and buy a book at the event.)

Maybe you've seen the recent spate of commercials for Hotels.com featuring Captain Obvious.  Here's one of the best: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DHd4ui_ZWc   I have noticed in the communication field that it is all too easy to succumb to the "Captain Obvious Trap." One of the commentators on the Tennis Channel, for example, is notorious for telling viewers that "Wow, Novak Djokovic is really flexible," or "Man, can John Isner serve," or "Rafael Nadal puts so much topspin on his forehand" . . . all observations that are, well, obvious.  What we'd like to know is how does Djokovic have such superhuman flexibility, what is it like to return Isner's servce, or what about Nadal's grip makes such topspin possible?  Such information would move the commentary from the obvious to the insightful. Preaching is much the same way. In fact, I believe that "The Captain Obvious" trap is one of the church's great sermon killers. Sermons become obvious when they resort to platitudes like these:

• God loves you.  (The only way to make that platitude worse is to say "God love you and I."  He doesn't.  He loves you and me.)
• Serve one another.
• Be kind.
• The Church needs more togetherness and more unity.
• We gotta get more people coming to church.

All those sermonic points are true.  They're just not very interesting. See, moving from obvious to insightful doesn't mean finding new truths.  Lord knows that I am not a fan of that.  We celebrate that we can excavate the old and the unchanging at Good Shepherd. But moving from obvious to insightful does involve both wordsmithing -- a task that takes much time, many failures, and hours of energy -- and observation -- the ability to notice and articulate what is subtly true and yet painfully ignored in many people's lives. Wordsmithing, for example, allows John Mark McMillan to transform the truth of God's love into a scandalously vivid image in his song   How He Loves: "heaven meets earth like a sloppy wet kiss"    I bet your grandmom never used that as an example of God's love for you.  I'll also bet you'll never forget it.  Why?  It's not obvious, but it is insightful. Wordsmithing allowed one of the messages in the recent The Light At The Beginning Of The Tunnel series to describe eternity in this most unexpected way:  "Paradise isn't a place you go.  It's a Person who comes."  Because its description of the hereafter was anything but obvious, that particular message generated as much conversation as any one I can remember at Good Shepherd. Observation allows Andy Stanley to give voice to what most of us might notice but never consider.  Some of his best:

• Wise people know what they don't know.
• We aren't mistakers. We're sinners.
• Good people don't go to heaven.  Forgiven people do.
• Nobody expected no body (an Easter sermon).
• Falling in love is easy.  Staying in love is hard.

Obvious?  Not a one.  Insightful?  Every single time. Among the truths nestled in Solve are these that I pray move well beyond the obvious and into the insightful:

• When you admit that your solutions are your problems, God surrounds you with his promises.
• You only get rid of what you refuse to get used to.
• Move on what you're moved by.
• God sends opposition to grow desperation.
• Leaving your mark isn't about what you accomplish.  It's about who you influence.

You can be part of the first wave of solutionists -- people who opt for the insightful over the obvious -- by purchasing Solve here. Together we can leave Captain Obvious on the television screen and bring biblical insight into the pulpit.    

If you are at all like me, you do more reading during the summer than any other time of the year. The sun on your face, the sand between your toes, the clock permanently set at 5 o'clock somewhere and voila! you get to gorge on some reading. And most of the time, for most of us, what occupies our reading time consists of novels, histories, and biographies. But what about those books that specifically advance your spiritual life?  Or, as we say it at Good Shepherd, your living relationship with Jesus Christ. Can spiritual reading and summer vacation possibly co-exist? Here are five titles that may just allow a "yes" to that question. 1. John Stott, Basic Christianity.  Think of CS Lewis' Mere Christianity, only much more understandable.  Stott is concise yet compelling, deep yet deliberate.  There's enough meet here for the veteran and enough bone for newcomers to chew on for a long, long time. 2. Richard Friedman, Who Wrote The Bible.  Scholarly yet accessible, Friedman's Who Wrote The Bible reads like a detective story and leads to some startling assertions that can never be proven.  Or dis-proven, for that matter.   3.  Andy Stanley, Deep & Wide.  If you want to know what is involved in a church that uses culture without being consumed by it, this is for you.  As with all of Stanley's work, the wordsmithing alone is worth the purchase price. 4.  Tim Tennent, This We Believe.  Tennent, the president of Asbury Seminary, has crafted an exploration of the Apostles' Creed that is thin on pages but thick with meaning.  You'll never stand and declare "I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth . . ." in quite the same way again. 5.  James Bryan Smith, The Good & Beautiful God.  How can a book with that kind of title not be a summer salve to your soul?  It can, and it should.   Speaking of works that are relatively quick reads yet contain spiritual fodder, Solve from Abingdon Press is now available.  Here's what pastor Daniel Wilson has to say about it: "Talbot's books can be picked up and read in manageable chunks without having to devote hours of time to completing one section."     In other words, another of those Christian books and Bible studies for summer that can easily co-exist with your vacation or summer plans. You can order Solve here or on GoodReads.

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