I Out Preached Rob Bell !!!

This past week, I was part of the WV CE convention and I had the opportunity to preach. The convention was four nights long and they (we) had a different preacher each night. My wife and a few others who are all prejudiced towards me said that I was the best preacher there this week and really had a message that touched their hearts and spoke to the matter at hand and challenged them to do something.

My message was on Lifting Jesus Up Through Our Actions. This is something that I am very passionate about and thus when passion comes through, I believe that it makes the message so much better.

This past message, I changed my "delivery" method.

After reading Andy Stanley's book, I decided to give it a whirl. The concept is very simple. You have one point and you keep delivering that point and yo channel it through 5 aspects. The five aspects are the following: me, we, God, you, and we. If you need to have that flushed out; let me know. I will explain.

So, I picked my "one statement" and nailed it home within each section and transition. I think that it worked very well and will continue to work on that process.

Now, I am sure you are wondering why I picked the name for my title. It was not because I shared the stage with Rob. The reason that I chose the title was that the night before I spoke ..... the young gentlemen preached Rob Bell's Luggage message.

I think that I was the only one in the audience (100) that had any idea that he was "ripping" the message. There were a couple of things that I found amusing about this:

- no reference to Rob Bell
- he even used the same illustrations
- I was going to use luggage (rob bell nooma video) the following day for a class with his (rob bell's) teaching guide

I did not show the video but we did discuss it in class. The class did a great job with the questions and they really wrestled with the topic of revenge.

So, if I out preached him, I out preached Rob; right ?

I am only kidding.

I have to tell you .. I do love the NOOMA videos. Matter of fact, we Will be using the NOOMA video for our community groups at ZION.

Which btw, I need to get working on !!!!!!!