Preaching to 17 People in a Room Built for 250
One Sunday night when our church was new and very small, I preached one of those messages that was everything I wanted a message to be. And yet I was frustrated. We had seventeen people in a room that seated 250. The room was so big that it felt more like three. I remember driving home that night frustrated that we had brought this amazing message and worship to the table and only seventeen people experienced it.
As I was driving home, I remember saying, “Look God, I get that numbers don’t matter, but really, seventeen?” I didn’t expect anything. I was just venting a bit. But God almost tangibly said, “Pull over. We need to talk.”
“But God almost tangibly said, “Pull over. We need to talk.””
I physically pulled over on the side of the road to wrestle with God on this thought. God was saying to me, “Who are you really doing this for?” Well, that’s obvious. I’m doing this for you, Lord. But I realized God was challenging me. If I’m really doing this for God, then what difference does it make if there are seventeen, seven hundred, or seven thousand people present? I realized then that though I claimed to do these things for God, that wasn’t completely true. The breadth of my preaching influence mattered greatly to me, and I measured whether my effort was worth it or not based on how many people showed up. I sat there on the side of that road and asked God to help me move my focus and the motive for my efforts; I promised God and myself that whether there were two people or one hundred thousand, I would get up and preach with the same vigor and passion, because it would be for Him and Him alone. I did not realize it then, but my understanding of worship, deep, Christ-centered worship, was beginning to form.
That experience has shaped tremendously how I minister. More importantly, it has shaped how I live. It triggered a journey of exploring what it meant to live all of life as worship. I realized that I had separated my life into categories of activity. Some of my life was active work for God, some active worship of God, some common and neutral, and some a struggle. Worship (praying, singing, meditating) was just one category, lumped in with eliminating the worship of other things. In fact, my life paralleled how many churches talk about the worship service. We divide our gatherings into parts: the welcome, the worship, the teaching, the announcements, the closing. Worship is just one component. All of this misses the deep and wonderful reality of what Christ-centered worship really is, individually and corporately. The truth is, every moment is worship.
God’s vision for true worship has been revealed all along in Scripture. In the Old Testament, there is a beautiful word that captures this idea of life being worship so eloquently: avodah. Avodah is a Hebrew word that means “work,” “service,” and “worship.” In Exodus 34:21, Moses is renewing the covenant when God says, “Six days you shall work [avodah].” In Psalm 104:23, we read, “Then man goes out to his work [avodah], and to his labor until evening.” In the Scriptures, avodah describes the backbreaking work of making bricks in Egypt and the craftsmanship of the artists building the Tabernacle.
In other passages, the emphasis is on worship. Joshua 24:15 says, “But as for me and my house, we will serve [avodah] the LORD.” Exodus 8:1 carries the sense of worship: “This is what the LORD says: Let my people go, so that they may worship [avodah] me” (NIV). Avodah describes the work of the Levites and priests leading the people in worship.
This word reminds us that God is an efficient God who does not ask us to work and then worship. Rather, He tells us to do both concurrently and faithfully. God’s plan is for our work and worship to blend seamlessly in our lives. God intends for our work, our vocation, our calling to be an act of God-honoring worship. God never intended for us to compartmentalize our lives into work and worship. Life is the work of worship.
Romans 12 confirms this understanding of worship as the umbrella over all Christian activity. The apostle Paul writes, “Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy [referring to the gospel], to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God” (NIV). This calls us to give our all, our every moment, our whole life. Then Paul adds something absolutely exceptional: “This is your true and proper worship.” This single statement changes everything about the way we should understand worship.
Building on the Old Testament concept of avodah, Paul affirms that worship is an everyday, moment-by-moment, all-encompassing way in which we live our lives. My worship is what I’m doing right now. When I drive home. When I respond to my kids. When I don’t respond well and have to repent. Worship is my continual, constant, nonstop desire to have everything I do show the gospel to be beautiful and bring honor to Christ. When it’s my obsession to reflect Jesus in every circumstance, that becomes Christ-centered worship. This is the worship Paul is guiding us to live out. Christ-centered worship is the deliberate process of directing my thinking and asking regularly, in every moment, what is my opportunity to glorify God?
So then, what does this mean when we preach to a gathering of seventeen in a room built for 250? Instead of showing up for them, we show up for God. Our motivating factor is that this is precisely what we were made for. Every action has the same goal: worship Christ. Worshiping on Sunday is now in essence no different than walking down the road on a Tuesday or enjoying a quiet moment of reflection or talking to my teenager about homework or wrestling through a tense moment with my spouse. Every opportunity is an equal opportunity to engage in active worship.
So if worship is our response to God’s mercy, and if it is the work (avodah) of our whole life, then what exactly is our life’s work? Is it ministry? Is it vocation? Is it family? Yes, yes, and yes. Our life’s work, our worship, our avodah, is from sunup to sundown. It is the keeping of your children, your spouse, the ministry you are privileged to lead. It encompasses your soul, your body, your mind, your friendships. It covers your calendar, your grocery shopping, your naps. What would it look like if, at the moment we open our eyes each morning, we chose the mindset that everything we are about to do is an act of worship? The reality is, if we aren’t worshiping Christ in everything we do, we are robbing not only God of glory but ourselves of the story God has for us. Our active practice of spiritual worship is giving ourselves to the greater story of God.
Living a life centered on Christ is a biblical mandate, and this is certainly enough reason to do it. However, in God’s kindness, it has tremendous benefits for how we lead and shepherd.
To begin with, the greatest freedom in preaching the Word of God comes when what you preach is what you live. If I’m living my life in pursuit of knowing God, if I am studying Scripture as much for personal edification as for the Sunday sermon, if I share my life with my neighbors, if I live in the local and global community – then my preaching will be born out of my life. My preaching is an outcome of living my life before an audience of one. It becomes that simple. That is such a tremendous freedom. It eliminates hiddenness and creates vulnerability, which is so very helpful to our people.
“My preaching is an outcome of living my life before an audience of one. It becomes that simple. ”
Secondly, you get to lead how the Bible calls you to lead. You are no longer a detached leader trying to bring others where you have not gone. Now you are a leader being led, one who says, “I am following Jesus, and I’m sharing my journey so you can follow Him as I follow Him.” With this conviction, your significance and success have little to do with whether you are growing a church and keeping people. You are living life with eyes fixed on Jesus and sharing with people so they can follow Him with you. Whether they follow you as you follow Jesus or not, you still live out your God-given purpose to know Him and make Him known.
Finally, while all Christ followers have the benefit of living an authentic, vulnerable life following Jesus, we leaders get the added benefit of bringing our whole lives to the frontstage so people who see us experience His Word in our life. Some people see this in negative terms: living in a fishbowl. I do not. Light and vulnerability is our friend, and everyone seeing our lives in all of their beauty and brutality is a gift. For one, it creates a tremendous connection between us and God and sparks a desire from others to follow Jesus as well. Second, it helps us experience freedom and transformation.
For the church leader, worship is critical. Christ-centered worship keeps the soul well. It protects our soul from the erosion of idolatry and hypocrisy. It allows us to behave and speak and authentically believe in the gospel—in all of the gospel. This is how we are to live.
Excerpted from What Great Ministry Leaders Get Right: Six Core Competencies You Need to Succeed in Your Calling by Jimmy Dodd & Renaut van der Riet (© 2021). Published by Moody Publishers. Used by permission.
Jimmy Dodd is the founder and CEO of PastorServe. This organization works across denominational lines to strengthen the church by serving pastors. He is the author of Survive or Thrive, 6 Relationships Every Pastor Needs, and Pastors Are People Too, co-authored with Larry Magnuson. Jimmy and his wife Sally have five children and three grandchildren.
Renaut Van Der Riet is a husband to his wife, Brooke, and father to their eight children, four of whom are adopted from Ethiopia. In 2002, he and Brooke founded Mosaic Church in Winter Garden, Florida.