By DAVID EPPS
Pastor

Several years ago, I attended a week-long spiritual and teaching retreat known as "Camp Farthest Out," or CFO, in Toccoa, Ga. Reverend David Cooper, who would eventually go on to be senior pastor at Atlanta's Mount Paran Church of God, was also in attendance.

During a break, he and I were sharing pastoral war stories and it came time for me to do my storytelling part. About a minute into the story, Cooper interrupted me and said, "Now is that the truth? Or are you just preaching?" He grinned, I grinned back, and I assured him that the story was, indeed, the truth.

I was so amused by the questions that, to this day, I use a form of his statement in sermons. When I want the people to "listen up" and pay attention, I'll often say, "Now, listen. I'm not just preaching here this is the truth!"

Over the years I have learned that not everything preached from the pulpit is the truth. One summer, when I was a guest workshop leader at a convention, I told a story that had happened to me years earlier. It really, really had happened to me personally and I thought that it would ably illustrate the point that I was making in the seminar.

A couple of years later, I heard a minister (who had been in my workshop) tell the same exact story in a sermon. The only problem was that he told it as HIS story. Evidently, he had forgotten where he had heard the story since I'm certain he would not have told it as his own with my sitting right there in the service. I was likely the only one in the congregation that knew he was lying and I was too polite to say anything. Ah, the missed opportunities we suffer.

I have been guilty myself of misstatements in sermons. Once I had Noah leading the Israelites into the Promised Land and another time I told the inspirational story of Moses and the Ark (the big boat, not the Ark of the Covenant).

I have told a story or two about my family only to have the family say after the service, "That's not how it happened at all!" So, it may not be out of line to ask, "Is that the truth... or are you just preaching?"

Sometimes, however, I fear that preachers sometimes preach things that they themselves do not even believe. After the terrible disasters of September 11, one television minister told his congregation something like this:

"I'm telling you that we are about to see the Battle of Armageddon. We are about to see the end of all things. Folks, the end is so close that this will very possibly be the last sermon I'll ever preach. The last song we sing here today will likely be the last song we ever sing. The coming of the Lord is so close that I don't expect any of us to be here next Sunday."

Of course, at the end of the telecast, the minister spoke to the viewers and urged them to send in a special love offering so that he could stay on the air. And, of course, the imminent return of Christ before next week did not deter the reverend from receiving an offering during the church service. Was what he shared the truth? Or was he just preaching?

A friend of mine who serves as a pastor shared that, on the way to visit relatives in another state (a Southern state, I'm sorry to report), he stopped to telephone them and give them the time of his arrival. His cell phone was in a dead area so he looked for a high point in the community where he was driving.

He determined that the local cemetery offered such a vantage point and drove up the hill to telephone his relatives from the graveyard. When they learned he was calling from a cemetery they became horrified and urged him to leave that place immediately.

Curious about their reaction, upon his arrival at their home a few hours later, he quizzed them about he urgency of their strange request. They explained that, if he were standing on the grave of a Christian, and Jesus returned at that moment, he might be guilty of impeding the dead as they were resurrected to meet Christ in the air. Since the "dead in Christ will rise first," the good folk asserted, my friend would be in their way and might even prevent the person in the grave from going up in the "Rapture." This, they allowed, would be a serious sin. My minister friend might even go to hell if he was guilty of "obstruction of the resurrection." I said, "Were they serious?" "Dead serious," he replied, if you'll excuse the pun.

"Well, is 'obstruction of the resurrection' a celestial misdemeanor or a celestial felony?" I inquired. "I suppose that since you could go to hell, it's a felony!" he said. Where did they get the idea that a resurrected body could pass through a steel coffin, a concrete vault, and at least two feet of dirt only to be impeded by a human body that wandered in the way? Where did these people get such an absurd idea? From some preacher who was preaching without telling the truth, no doubt.

Once a minister got carried away in a sermon and told a few blatant exaggerations. Parishioners, knowing that what he said could not possibly be true, reported him to the proper people. A few days later, he was summoned before his denominational official and made to answer for his falsehoods.

After his superior demanded an explanation, the preacher replied, "Well, it's just amazing what a man will say when he's under the anointing of the Holy Ghost."

Most people, I have discovered, don't simply want to listen to good preaching they just want to hear the truth.

[Father David Epps is rector of Christ the King Church in Peachtree City. He may be contacted at FatherDavidEpps@aol.com or at www.ChristTheKingCEC.com.]

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