Don't Drop The Mic with Reverend Dr. Frank A. Thomas - Part One

[Music] so we're here to have a conversation with dr frank thomas and myself and i'm gonna turn it over to you and you lead out and we'll see where we go well bishop first of all we want to thank you for uh just this opportunity both you and your team to to do this very very important work this is very important work and as i've said to you um many times that you know the analogy that we used is that um you know grandmama was in the kitchen cooking and so she'd do a pinch of this and a pinch of that and a pinch of this and a pinch of that and you'd watch grandmama and you would have the opportunity to lick the bowl right right so you were close to grandmama so grandma didn't necessarily have to write the recipe down you're right right because you were close and you had seen a pinch of this a pinch of that so i think in your preaching sometimes people take a pinch of this and a pinch of that and you're a massive preacher and so part of what we're trying to do is to get a recipe because everybody's not close to you and you you're doing tremendous preaching and you have an organized system but it's a recipe that you use to produce the preaching and many people take a picture that's a picture to add a pinch of this and they don't see the recipe right so what we're trying to do is give some sense of a recipe because you know you're doing powerful and tremendous preaching and if we don't leave a recipe for the next generation so i'll say this you know i try not to be long is that particularly in african-american preaching so much of our genius has gone to the grave because it wasn't written down right or there are people who can preach and can do it but cannot say to other people what they're doing in a coherent system or a recipe so that somebody could pick it up and make it their own not just copy it but really make it their own you know when you and i first started talking about this it was very intimidating for me because to describe what goes on between me and the text is so intimate and and so hard to articulate and put into a formula that i just thought oh that's that's going to be really hard for me to describe but i'm going to let you worry about describing it i'm just going to explain what it looks like to me you know that that's what that's what i was trained to do i'm supposed to be a homiletician so i said to my father i was a pastor and i left pastoring after 31 years of in the past and said my father i said dad i'm getting ready to uh to be a homeless and he said well what's a homiletician i said homeleticians are people who you know uh preaching who teach preaching well i said why don't i just call it teach preaching i said because we have to invent big words for stuff so we can look intelligent so bishop let me ask a few questions that that i would i think our audience and i would like to know um i want to talk about the the nature of oratory today so uh what do you believe um is the nature of oratory uh in our world today you know uh one of the reasons that i broach this subject is because i think that preaching is a dying art and not just preaching but throughout the span of communication i'm seeing the dumbing down of america on camera in a way that advertises ignorance as opposed to contemplative reflective thought it is important to me to say something that matters and and to dress it out appropriately that it is presented in a way that is palatable for a diverse audience of people i think one of the contributing factors is we have so much technology that we have reduced our thought down to 143 characters and when we do that we minimize uh the whole creative process the the depth to which we ought to think and it's not just us i mean we have a government now that's being run by tweets very serious uh difficult political decisions are being described in a in a loose haphazard way and it lends itself to an increasing inability to communicate effectively in a way that people can follow your lead understand your trend of thought and thereby be able to grow from the experience of you and so uh it is my hope that as we pass the mantle to the next generation that the mantle is not fabric it is it is far more uh contemplative than it is far more uh responsible that we understand the power of the mic what it does and whoever welds it has a lot to do with the destiny of whoever listens so talk to me about some of your oratorical mentors that is interesting i grew up in the hills of west virginia uh we weren't exposed to a lot of uh big speakers big time speakers so i think the lack of access created the depth of of appreciation so whenever i got an opportunity to hear anybody speak whether it was uh a gardener taylor or a seal franklin uh i was like a sponge quite frankly whether it was a richard pryor or or some other comedian of that era when it comes to public speaking every orator teaches you something you have to have timing to be a great comedian and and if you do an entire set it actually is written out much like a sermon and so whatever the comedian introduces in the embryonic stages of his delivery by the time he reaches his summary he's brought you back to a major theme in the same way that a sermon has done and i think too [Music] when i look at at my heroes uh dr quandar wilson uh who was a trailblazer in the pentecostal church had a great deal of influence on me i think that dr king uh in my early childhood mesmerized me with the power of the mic what could be done with it when you think about the water hoses and you think about the dogs turn loose and you think about the atrocities the girls burned up in church and all of that and against all of that he has no weapon he has no army tank he has no military no arsenal no strong bodyguards all he had was a mic and and turned the country around on its ear with the microphone and those early images and experiences taught me to respect speaking and to respect the power and the influence that it wills and out of that respect comes an approach to public speaking and an approach to interviews and an approach to preaching that is reverent not haphazard not done without uh deep deep contemplation as to you have a concept that is birthed in your head and is delivered out of your mouth and how to not abort the process from its inception to its delivery and to make sure that to me communication is not just great speaking it is also creating great listening because if i say a lot and you don't get it then what good is it and so for me i tried to use every instrument possible to communicate their abstract ideas of of the text but also the feeling that the text creates to articulate feelings um are very challenging and at my core i'm a storyteller and so my mother was a storyteller she was a schoolteacher her mother was a missionary i grew up around people who who had the ability to articulate their feelings in such a way that she never talked to us like children no goo gaga come on she talked to us with thought and she listened at us with thought my mother told me she said uh when a parent listens at a child when he's talking it teaches him to that that his words matter and uh with great skill and and great depth and great strategy she raised us to to be able to articulate our thoughts to translate that into preaching is another dimension because you are measured by a different barometer when it comes to preaching through the lens of uh uh homiletical teachings and trainings and all of that was something i encountered as i went along i started preaching when i was 19. i knew i was called at 17. so i didn't run into this uh this theological reflection until i was out there and so i didn't i didn't know whether i was breaking rules or making rules i was just doing what god gave me right right tell me about the first time that you heard dr king speak i don't think that there will ever be another orator like him there are many imitators but he was in a class all by himself and and what he could do with the microphone and the crowd was just you could quote him but you it was it was his voice it was his tone it was his body language it was the depth of thought it was the conviction from which the words came so we've retained the words but lost the conviction [Music] and and so the words without the conviction just become recitation but but it was the conviction that he had the kind of conviction that that only god can give you uh to withstand the vicissitudes of a society who thinks differently and and to man the microphone against all kinds of pressures and be resourceful enough to change the minds of people paul said pray for us for we wrestle with unreasonable men and and so really speaking is about wrestling with unreasonable minds bringing them to one cohesive thought and that has to be skillfully done right right so tell me about you standing there with your father listening to dr king oh my god he uh my father seldom got to sit down and watch tv and so my early memories are of my dad uh sitting down watching the six o'clock news and dr king is on speaking and i don't know who i was the most mesmerized at the speaking of the orator or the look in my father's eye it was then that i learned what could be done with the microphone and the fact that my father valued it my father was my hero the fact that my father was impressed and i'm looking you know every boy wants to impress his father and my father was impressed i think those early impressions taught me the respect for the art of speaking uh i've never mastered it but i love the challenge of trying i get knocked down and jump back up and try again sometimes i'm not sometimes i think i'm locked down and other people don't think that i'm knocked down but my my standards are so high for myself when it comes to speaking and and there is a place there is a place in the spirit that i need to feel when i walk away as if i had done what i was called to do and without without that feeling i wrestle through the night because it is not just the reaction of the crowd that is my gauge if i don't hear that inner sense of completion then i go home to a night of frustration yeah so what makes for good oratory as opposed to oratory that's not very good synchronization to me is very important i don't think that you ought to raise up anything in your introduction that doesn't come through to your conclusion i think that every message should have a dna and that dna code regardless of how you describe it should be consistent throughout the message though different illustrations and terms are used to depict various aspects of the message we shouldn't have a foreign dna at the end that it's different from what we started with you know how did this offspring happen and it doesn't doesn't even look like what's going on and i see a lot of people who uh deliver discombobulated messages that have no synergism and it's difficult to follow them they might be excited about it they might be right it might be true but if it's not harmonious if it's not cohesive if it's not uh strategic then it's disoriented and and it and it comes up in a in a way of a spasmodic truth that is not connected loses its power because of its presentation and i don't think that people today put enough significance into the the artistry of preaching i think they're fascinated by the fact that they're up there without understanding that their preaching is a calling and an art form it is absolutely an art form it is such an art form that a true master or raider in in in two minutes of listening at them i can tell you right now for two minutes and i can tell you the depth of the preacher because because the artistry with which you you paint this picture uh in front of an audience it causes them to see the abstract idea that was born in your head or out of your prayer life or out of your consecration it is in your responsibility to paint it until i see it without contamination or pollution or dilution and i don't see as much of that today as i would like to it's there but it's not there in the quantities that i would like to see it left so do you believe that great orators and preachers are born or are they made ah that's a tough question that's a tough question because when it comes to preaching there is a god factor that i don't think can be produced by men uh they're i think if you have all of the training and you don't have the calling it will inevitably show conversely if you have all of the calling and get none of the training it will limit your reach yeah yeah so so so you don't want to become so engrossed with the fact that god called you that you don't prepare yourself to answer him and so that preparation is respect for the one that called you and so i think they are both born from a god perspective before i formed thee in earth i knew the i ordained thee and i sanctified thee but they are also made because you take what was born and you wrap it around what is made and then it is presented to the king yes thank you totally 100 agree with you one thousand percent you call me with this um titled don't drop the mic so um the mic the symbol of the mic uh what does you know because you called me with it so you were feeling it deeply so tell me about what's the importance of the you've already said it but just again the mic well first of all we are facing a very unique time in our lives we are facing the changing of the guard we're facing the transition of an era we are in many ways passing the torch we are seeing the next generation of orators be born and and when i say don't drop the mic i'm saying don't lower the standard you know some of what i see happening today is a string of things that people got off of instagram and they get the phrase but they don't get the place that it came from because they don't do the work and they don't do the research they just say oh that's good i'm gonna preach that next sunday wait wait you know hold up a minute you you can't preach a tweet you know you have to go back and dissect the text and you you have to do you you have to do the work you have to do the work and i think in this instant age where everything is moving so quickly that that we take shortcuts but shortcuts will never lead to greatness you know because you can't have the conviction that produced the statement if you extrapolate the statement and isolate it from the from the experience of digging out the truth that birthed the statement right so so you can say what i said but it won't have the impact that it did because you're just repeating it you you have no depth you're not familiar with the character you don't understand the times you have more information when i speak i have more information than i use but that information creates a bid for what i use to lie in and whether i use it or not it gives me a confidence because i know my perspective because i have done the research around it to understand why this is important and what was going on in the time and and then most importantly how is it applicable today if if you are scholarly enough to understand exactly it's the original intent of the text but it is not relevant to the audience that you're speaking to then then i don't think that you can have the full power just stringing together statements that sound good because it's saturday night and you're a hard-pressed fourth sermon i think we today a lot of our orators love crowds more than they love people that they love the stage more than they love the word for me the i'm allowing the audience to watch my relationship with the text i'm not allowing the text to watch my relationship with the audience and there's a distinct difference between the two if everybody got up and walked out the room once i'm in my zone it wouldn't make any difference because because my statements are not predicated on the reaction of the crowd i'm not relating to them i'm relating to the text and i'm letting you watch that's what intimidated me about talking to you because the intimacy with which i approached the text is so sacred so intimate that that the most i could do was would would be to allow you to watch it it is intimidating to explain it because out of the body of the things i prepared to say i'm not a manuscript preacher okay so out of the body of the things i prepared to say i have a frame i have a structure i have an order i have an outline even if i don't use it on stage i have it in my head but the outline also has the elasticity to allow spontaneous combustion on the stage and and what works in this room might not work in that room having traveled all over the world i i have noticed that both the speaker and the listener brings the body of their experiences into the room and so when i go to uh zimbabwe or uh or i go to london the room responds differently to the same truth because they brought different experiences into that room they hear differently and when you when you speak across cultures what is a powerful point in this setting is not a powerful point in that setting because the body of their experiences don't create a bed for the text to lay in yeah yeah and if you're going to be ambidextrous enough to pre to preach in a lot of diverse settings you have to be instinctive enough to sense uh the room and to understand the audience it would be like me telling you to write a letter and not telling you who you're writing it to yeah who you're writing it to has a lot to do with how the letter is crafted and how you you you speak in different languages i i think that when when we look at acts 2 and we talk about each man heard him speaking his own language we're not only talking about the majesty and the power of the day of pentecost we're also talking about that the the propagation of the gospel is is only it only occurs when each person in the room can hear you speak in their language so so that language is affected by race by gender by age by intellectualism by what's going on in my life at that moment uh you don't want to use uh a carpenter's illustration in a baker's meeting you know so so jesus had this amazing ability he was a storyteller and and the parables are jesus telling stories i think in the 21st century jesus would have made movies because he told stories that produced truth and those words were the were the paintbrushes the words were the conduit for us to have an experience with truth that we would not have otherwise been able to do and he does it in a language that that the audience understands he knows that they understand the complexities of uh the good samaritan he understands how they feel about the samaritans he uses the very person that would be least likely in their era to be of assistance to them as a symbolism that god often uses people that that your culture your environment your society would not embrace and he is warning us not to limit our neighbors to a zip code because our neighbor may not always look like us and it may not always come in the form that we anticipated but my point is that jesus conveyed this truth understanding how to get that truth to his audience because he knew if he used a samaritan that there is a backstory to the story that never comes up in the story but it explains why the samaritan is used similarly when you go when you're in ghana there's a back story and you have to understand that words are fortified by the backstory that supports them and if you don't understand the people and the text you won't be as effective as you ought to be communicating in each man's language i want to shift a bit and i want to ask you about if there is powerful preaching and powerful oratory it comes out of a context shaped in a specific culture so what was the culture that shaped your preaching and your oratory oh i i come from a lineage of storytellers as an as an a person of african descent uh i learned who my ancestors were through the passing down of stories in my family so later henry lewis gates would do a dna test but all it did was validate the tradition of stories that were passed down through my family so i knew that my people were from nigeria my ancestors that got off the boat were from nigeria i knew that my ancestry embraced uh the perpetuation of an african perspective of storytelling and the appreciation for it before there were pens and pencils or pads or computers there were stories by the fire and i came from a generation that we didn't have a lot of money so we had a lot of stories i came from a generation where my my mother would sit around and quote uh paul lawrence dunbar and and james weldon johnson and and all of those sorts of things to us she was uh graduated from tuskegee so she had a rich heritage of of the african-american tradition and so we could afford to go to broadway place we couldn't afford to go on vacations so we would do talent shows and we would sit around the house and we would we would just start telling stories and my mother would quote poetry and all of that because she was an educator you are not an educator because you punched a clock you can't punch out of being an educator if you're an educator it's just your point of view i'm not a pastor because i have a congregation i would be a pastor if there were no congregation it's not a it's not a doing it's a being it's a point of view and so all of those things help to inform um the intimacy with which i speak i i speak to my congregation like i'm talking to my family and and like we're we're having an experience of intimacy and i speak to them in the tradition of my ancestors i speak to them from the perspective of being a father so there's a gender dynamic to it i i see the text the way a father would see a text i see the congregation from the from the way father would so you bring your gender you bring your ethnicity you bring your own story your personal experiences your childhood pains what worked what didn't work all of that helps to to create the weight to the to the way that you deliver the text the text belongs to god but the delivery is up to you so in our conversations uh i said to you that uh zero neil hurston has something that she calls characteristics of negro expression you know she was a folklorist anthropologist she through the south studied black orator and she has an image that i think you just backed up where in african culture um it's oral in western culture it's text or she called texture wall and so she would say that um in um western culture you read a text and african culture is like hieroglyphics you you describe the picture that you see right so it's like i'm reminded of what you know so very well where you know you'll be preaching in the african-american tradition and they'll say paint the picture doc paint the picture yeah well what they're saying is the the preacher sees the picture of what and they're describing what and that's very different than textual right right a textual description so the orality that you know you're talking about and she came up with some characteristics of negro expression that i think that you exhibit i think you bring forth masterfully and so i i want to we've got a couple clips okay so i want to to show a clip and then i want to well let me i guess i should describe the clip first okay so if western culture does text and african culture does pictures like hieroglyphics and we describe one of the ways that we describe is through being a master of illustration right that it's easier um to illustrate than it is to explain so i can tell you what i see i can illustrate it that's easier so we have a clip of you doing a masterful job of illustration so we want to watch that clip and then then we'll get your comment how are we doing so far [Applause] we're just warming up so you all see what i mean by to systematize the person has it in their head yeah here we go and so there was a game we would play called hide and go seek and i grew up in west virginia where we had big trees you would go and somebody would stand over by the tree and put their face up against the tree and start counting one two and they count and while they count it everybody would run and hide and when they got to a certain number they would turn around and start seeking that which was hidden you might hide up under a rock you might hide up under a bush you might hide in the basement or behind a rock somewhere a closed door anywhere you could get covering because you didn't want to be discovered you wanted to hide yourself in our text today it is almost as if god is playing hide and go seek with adam when the bible talks about that they they saw that they were naked they hid themselves they hid themselves they they saw that they were naked they hid themselves but when god got ready to talk he didn't talk today [Applause] he talked to the men he talked to the man he he said he said adam where where are you you must understand that the voice of the lord walked through the cool of the garden god broke his sabbath day rest it was broken by the weekend sins of of mankind the voice of the father struck terror in the sun it struck terror in the sun and made him go into hiding and when he went into hiding he he hid himself from god without that happening there's a there's a there's an ache in the heart of a man a voice of leadership a voice of discipline a voice of authority is important in the life of even a young man somebody whose voice gets a different response now first we know that there was a father's day message right the first thing and the illustration of hide-and-go-seek that is an innate part of african-american preaching and a part of your preaching and so tell me what you think yes well i i try to start away from but in sync with where i'm going with the text so to to put the audience within the frame of an idea i use this metaphorical introduction to emphasize hiding and seeking right and and i bring it down to something that almost every child can relate to and and i'm appealing to the dynamics of of the search right here in the church yeah yeah and and i'm using something so that the person who has no biblical background at all who has come to my church can still connect with the text through the vehicle of the metaphor if not the text itself had i went immediately into the text without the preface of of setting the tone and the stage for the text to restaurant i would have appealed to the to the biblically literate but i may have lost someone who who's never been exposed to church before and in a church of our magnitude and considering our physical church and our streaming audience i have a lot of people who are listening to me who have not heard that story and and so i have to approach the story with what you can relate to much to explain what you could not relate to uh much much like uh god uses things you can relate to to explain things that you can't relate to and so in the same similitude i approached this text using something familiar and then the other thing you have to remember when you first get up to speak people are settling into listening at you yeah and so you don't put your substance up front right because they're not really there yet they're they're just settling in in the congregation where they've moved and they've gotten situated and they're listening at you and and they're settling in and you have to capture the fascination of the audience uh or they're or they're never really with you and and you must understand the first few moments of the message the artist is settling down right and they're and then they're focusing on you and then they they gradually listen right you know and the whole process crescendos between you and them and so it's it's very unwise to get to your most substantive information in the early aspects of your message i'm still building the frame i haven't even started to paint the picture you're gonna see so so so the frame goes out first and i developed the frame and then once i set the mood and the tone you know everything else i'm going to say that day is in that introduction right it it is all about the fear and the running of children's feet to go hide in time right it's it's parallel with the fear of i heard thy voice i was afraid i was naked and i hid myself and then the onus of finding the searching god the lost man all of that i'm setting the stage you know uh it's it's it's it's it's how a narrator introduces what you can expect for the next few moments of my delivery so the point that i'm wanting to push from a technical standpoint as a pinch in the recipe for an audience okay is that you take something very simple as a container to ride divine truth into the hearts of people absolutely right so it's the container now you're setting up the container so you can write the truth so somebody said it this way is that when you do it well you're deep and simple when you do it bad you're shallow and complex i like that i like that so here is is this hide and go seek you know for me for me i didn't start with hide and go seek that's not where my message starts my message starts with the text but i back out of the message completely take a panoramic view of of what the message is to accomplish and then create the narrative to introduce the subject and for me when you read the bible or you read any book and you read it in black and white the type is literally in black and white the orator makes it in color yeah so so the color and the texture of the delivery is left up to the artistry of the person but but but the thing that you cannot change is the literal meaning of the text the black and white truth of the text it is what it is but the color gives you liberty it gives you art form i could i could approach the same text with a completely different introduction and come about it a completely different way because that's all up to the way that you color in what matters about the text right yeah let me go to another characteristic that zoro neil herston says of characteristics of negro expression preachering rapping whatever she would say is the will to adorn she argues that in the soul of the listener it's a desire for beauty and that um the preacher must satisfy the desire for beauty so in our in the african-american preaching tradition it has hyperbole and so we have a clip and we want to watch the clip and after we watch this clip then let me say one thing just for you before you go to the clip so we have a family text line we were texting last night and uh my wife on the family text line said i told them i was going to be talking to you today and my wife says what is black preaching she says is it is it the style of the preacher is it the race of the preacher is it the demographics of the congregation and and i said uh what is great black preaching uh it's very difficult to define because it has different iterations of itself from generation to generation and from person to person it's nebulous it's it's abstract it's unique it's it's fresh every time uh it it is neither gartner taylor nor seal franklin it is both okay so there's a wide array a range of what i think could be considered great preaching whether it's like preaching or not and and and then then we went deeper she said so what distinguishes uh black preaching if it's not the style and it's not the ethnicity of the person and it's not the complexity of the crowd i said it is it is not the style or the complexity of the crowd it is in fact the place that the preaching comes from it is not how it is said it is where it comes from it comes from the soul it comes from the struggle it comes from the strife of life and and and it comes from an ability to take what is unique about us is that we have mastered the art of turning pain into power of being able to get our heart to come out of our mouth and to make sense out of the the nonsensical history we have endured and to to to demystify it in such a way that it that it makes sense in that creative moment it is it is if until you have had a soul that has groaned in the night you you can you can you will never master the art of preaching because preaching takes that groaning and that moaning and that disorientation and that doubt and that fear and it takes the nonsensical issues of life and lays it out in some sort of order structure that says that you find vindication in the message and you can't find vindication in the message if you haven't been accused in the world you you understand what i'm saying so so so i said if you seek to be a great preacher it's about it's not about whether you hoop or not it's not about whether you teach or not it's not about whether you're loud or not it's not any of those things it is the soul it it it is the guts and the tissue and the fiber of of your story and bringing it up out of your mouth and making it become gasoline gasoline when it's properly used you shouldn't smell it but you can feel the impact of it in the in the roaring of the engine so so i don't want you to smell gas i don't want you to feel pain when i'm preaching i want to take that pain and combust it into that message in such a way that it becomes the engine that drives the intensity and the urgency and we we as a people have have given that as a gift to the world and not to say that that white people or brown people or any other people couldn't do it but it is our gift to you and and then you can take it and emulate it if you have some pain if you have enough pain if you've cried long enough if you suffered long enough if you've done without long enough black preaching is not about style or hooping or changing keys it it is about being able to get excited i said the art of turning ashes into beauty it it it is the art of of preaching with stripes on your back it is it is the art of of of of getting a message out of raising your children alone it it is it is being abandoned it is being divorced it is being raped it's being ostracized and still i rise you know and steal our eyes you know that you know see you you you cannot you cannot say and still arise if you haven't faced opposition and and we had to learn how to turn our ashes into beauty our mourning into joy we had no choice that was all we had and so all of that comes into the text whether it's a woman or a man or whether you're a liberal or conservative that's irrelevant if if you haven't been broken if you if you haven't been shattered if you if you haven't been able to be broken and be shattered and turn that into something that is usable to catapult you forward that is black preaching that that is like this that was pretty quick [Music] we're not going to the clip yet i want to add a few footnotes to what you just said um i i just want to put it the way that i think i think it's correct it's very hard to define black preaching i did several conferences where i brought 25 pastors together i bought 25 homeleticians together and i said what is black preaching and we couldn't define it now we know what it is when we hear it right but we couldn't we couldn't define it so what i concluded from that is exactly what you said is it is a tradition that comes from the oral traditions of africa mixed with the african-american experience of slavery oppression racism jim crow um you know poverty poverty shootings of young all of this stuff this thing arises called black preaching that has as its essence hope and i also realize i'm going to go back to your comment about dr king as fabulous and as a wonderful as an orator i did my dissertation on the oratory of dr martin luther king my phd dissertation i realized that no preacher is greater than the tradition that they come from because the tradition passes on stuff right the the you know it's like the uh creating out of uh the the theological argument did god create ex nihilo out of nothing was there substance where all of us who claim this african-american preaching tradition have been given this substance this this this this hopeful this orality this master of illustration this ability to see storytelling all of these things and each generation has to add to the tradition right right right so ceo franklin added to the tradition or pray theo hall the gartner taylor adds to the tradition and so let me give an example and i'll stop because you excite me to you know i'm supposed to be a reasoned academic [Laughter] um when this stuff comes to you that's exactly what you said you have to to to live it so for example see y'all frank let me go back now that's uh see y'all franklin there is you know his most famous sermon is the equal stir at the nest in in 1889 the story of the eagles stirring the nether is floating er stirring the nest is floating in the black church preaching tradition preachers are preaching not the same sermon but but the sermon right so c.l franklin got this sermon through the tradition now what he does with it is genius right and not many people can do what he did with it which is his contribution to it but neither can you deny the substance that's been passed on and the genius that takes the substance and works it right into a presentation that uh c.l franklin and i argue you know before the uh the advent of internet and the uh and your ability to beam yourself across the world was probably the most imitated preacher in the history of black people right okay so even though we're imitating it's our job to take the substance and what which is what you've done take the substance of the tradition that's been passed to you add your flow your rhythm your cadence your genius your creativity to it so i i think what i want always you know to say it is the genius you add but it's also the tradition from which you cometh oh absolutely absolutely you you gotta be started one more thing we we have to go when you look at the narrative of the gospel message and you look at the history of a suffering people and and to to be redeemed by a suffering savior yes when you look at a people who have literally been beaten right and you look at a god who has been laid on a whipping post yes when you look at the people who have been unjustly arrested yes and you look at it jesus said they found no faulting and yet crucified yes he is kin to my history exactly you see so so so so he fits well at the family table you see this this notion of a suffering savior yes fits well with a suffering people of any group of people a suffering woman a suffering gender a suffering generation the suffering savior reflects us in such a way that we can be kin to him though he's 2 000 years away from me we are kin to the story right we are akin to the story and and to hear that he is hidden and then risen right gives me hope right that it may be friday yeah it may be it may be friday but if i can if i can withstand the turbulence of friday exactly that sunday's coming exactly you you see and so so how we approach our faith we meet at the cross with our own pain when i was in south africa i told them that we came through slavery and you came through the apartheid and i'll meet you at the cross you see so so so your history is different than mine your pain is different than mine but in the cross we find a commonality of situation that we can be redeemed because he has proven to be kin to me not by his skin to me but his story is dear to me because it is a reflection of me you see you you see what i'm saying so then it because so so i'm already at an advantage because his stripes are not strange to me his stripes are not strange to me his injustice is not strange to me the fact that he could be arrested wrongfully it's not strange to me the fact that the trial could be adjudicated and he could be executed and be innocent it's not strange to me the fact that he would rise again is not strange to me because every day i have to have a resurrection yes yes because every night before it i've had a crucifixion and and and so this whole thing that weeping man do for a night and joy coming through in the morning all the the the whole story the the 400 years of of israel being enslaved and then breaking free and wandering i've been in my wilderness i've been a slave i've been broken all of that is synergistically companionable to my own identity so i identify with the christ story i identify with the bible story i find my face in its pages and so when i look into the text i see me i see me i see me and then you got me started we're not gonna be able to do this when when all of that collides together it doesn't collide on the stage it collides in my study it collides in my study it collides in my study and then the challenge is to get what combusted in my study to then explode on my stage if it doesn't combust in your study it won't explode on your stage you can't just love the text when you get in front of people you you you you have to come into the text ready to detonate because it exploded in your house you know you get me fired up now i just want to you know i'm trying to hold myself i just want to add a footnote to what you just said you remember i sent you uh gardner calvin taylor's yes his own clothes yes this is a sermon about where dr taylor describes the suffering of jesus being beaten and whipped exactly what you just said beaten and whipped and some of my analysis is that um he starts with the african-american tradition of the big lips and the the um the and you know all of that those negative stereotypes how we were ridiculing um and he says in essence uh ushered out of the human family you know and uh then he switches to jesus you know and talks about jesus being beaten and whipped and almost ushered out of the human family and where i'm going is we identify with the suffering and then you know the texas of course he crucified in his own clothes the part first part they stripped him out of his clothes now and they put him back in his own clothes and that he's coming back in his own clothes come on the second coming but when jesus rides to victory we ride the victory right we're so identified that's my main point i mean i messed that up no no no no but but our main point is the identification is so created so deeply and profoundly he was beaten we would be you know he had trumped up charges we got trumped up charges you know he had a kangaroo court sometimes we get a kangaroo court right right so when he rides he comes up out of that grave we come out of that grave and we ride to victory and we have hope and that's the genius of african-american preaching that was just a little freak i think that that what we are talking about you know when you start talking about substitution and and and things like substitution and identification when you start talking about baptism the whole purpose of baptism is to identify with the death burial and resurrection of the lord and that identification for us is in our own story it's in our it's in the story of our ancestry but it is also in our own personal story and i suspect that it is in the story of all people i agree with you i don't think that you can live in this world no matter your color and and not have some synergism with crucifixion yes what makes us unique is that we have we have we have hung out there so long you know we have hung so long from the cross that we we have become masterful at at getting beauty out of agony yes okay in the absence of generational wealth in the in in the absence of uh strategic cultural advantage in the absence of of of the things of this world we have instead been awarded with a glory that is unique to anybody that has been denied yes okay so so so so i think wherever i have ever been where there were people of color there was always great churches from the deepest parts of africa where there is no running water and they have no building with with with fabric flapping in the wind up under sticks thousands and thousands sometimes a million people will be gathered together to to worship god in some way or form or other and and whether you go through the caribbean or you go to the aborigines or whether you go throughout america or whether you go to east africa west africa uh south africa it doesn't matter there's something that we have mastered about church because it has helped to anesthetize our pain uh and and it has become the substratum of the fact that we are not forgotten that that that that that redemption is not that that we can't escape that we can endure that we can go forward and in some way or another like like noah who preached the same message for 120 years in some way or another every sunday we preach the same message the title changes the scripture changes but the story is still the same you know and won't be unto us if we find another story because this is my story this is my song you know praising my savior all the day long there is nothing else to preach 120 years no it says the same thing and every sunday morning you find a different way to say the same thing and everybody hears it based on where they are at the time that you spoke it and people often ask me what is the best message you ever heard and i said the one i needed the most at the time i heard it you know because what makes a message great is when it's relevant and and if you cannot relate to the audience i've seen i've seen great preachers get thrown by the crowd i've seen great preachers maybe uh a black person in front of an all-white crowd or a white preacher in front of all uh black crowd can easily be thrown by the crowd because you like you let what's different about us uh blind you from what's a lack about us there's actually more to unite us than there is to divide us and you can you can be much more broad with your ministry if you don't walk up on the stage uh blinded by the glare of what's different about the audience and find something that's common amongst us that that common thing of all men is the bridge that i walk across when i'm off in australia so i'm not an australian but and and i don't speak with it with the dialect of the australian people but the bridge that i walk across is that they are people yeah there are people like me when i'm out in africa in the rural parts of africa preaching with the translator to to a person who's never lived in a house with electricity uh somewhere in the rural parts because in the cities their cities are like our cities but in the rural areas you run into that i don't let what's different about us stop me from connecting with you i let what's common about us hope affirmation love of family questions about self the uncertainty of youth trying to figure out who am i and where do i fit uh the gruppling with the changes of age nobody escapes that nobody and and so if you're gonna be an orator that can speak outside of your tribe you you have to find the common threads that are common to all men and tie them into the common threads that are in scripture and thereby you unite us rather than divide us i'm going to say this last piece and then we're going to try to get to this clip and go on to the next section um is that you know what you're saying and what i think i'm saying is that we're not saying that african-american preaching or preachers are better than anybody over in a corner so we preach better than anybody else in the whole world what we're saying is that god is given gifts by virtue of our experience that we offer to the entire human family so du bois said this is the gift of black folk to the new world you know that black people bring gifts to the new world and uh he you know the free spirit of the ministering hand of joy and music is what he offered as a gift and one of the gifts that we give is this gift of preaching and i think that we by virtue of our experience we got there sooner but it is human and it is universal and it is on every continent in every place because all of us suffer and i mean all of us suffer deeply by the way right the particular form of the depth of the you know of the pain might look different but all of us and i think that's also part of why you're preaching is is reaching so many people on so many different continents because you understand that and that there's something universal about human experience i just came from a cruise and um i was hosting the cruise we had about 2 000 people on the boat and i always like to go out in a reasonable about a crowd when it's real big i don't try to do it but in a reasonable crowd to see when i called who answered thereby i measure who was effective who was affected enough to respond and it was just utterly amazing from the very aged to to very young there were ladies there from new zealand who flew to america to get on a boat with me to sail the caribbean quite a few from new zealand quite a few from australia quite a few from london quite a few from nigeria quite a few from accra in ghana and and then out of the american order there were intellects and professors there were business people and elderly people there were grandmas in wheelchairs and and people who were coming up on the boat with walkers okay who said i've been following you since you were in west virginia i was i was on every cruise you ever had i've been waiting on you to have your next cruise you're measuring impact by response right okay so you make out a cry and then to me effort means nothing without impact so i know the effort has gone out there but when i walked the floor and shook hands and met the people i measured impact well who are you where did you come from you know where what did you hear i'm an e-member i follow you on the e-church and i decided i was going on the cruise and everybody had a story that brought them there everybody had a story that brought them there and on the boat we became family i sat down with this this one lady uh i think she was from germany and and she was sitting at the table by herself and i came over where she was and said you're sitting by yourself and i won't have that and i came and sat down with her and started talking to her for a little bit it just took on her to death uh just just then i came and sat down and talked to her we're we are not just living together we are dying together and when you get old enough to understand that we're not just living that we are in fact dying together and that you get to choose as you are dying who you are dying with you know and and and i came to this church a young man 38 years old i wasn't even 40 yet and now i'm 62 and i've watched my audience marry give birth i've watched those kids graduate from college i've watched hair turn gray i've watched george swell up i've watched us all dying together while we were living together and and as as we die on the cross of life together uh we we we seek some myrrh some some some some vinegar some anesthesia that that helps us to confront the fact that today she buries her mother and tomorrow i bury my father and and last week he buried his child and we choose to congregate together because there's strength in numbers like like like uh different animals that penguins come together uh in in the north pole they find warmth in in their ability to survive the cold by huddling together and for me the church is a huddling place where where the winds can't break into our ranks because we connect together and we laugh together and we cry together when you understand the church to be that then you feed that you protect that you revive that you defend that because if you destroy that where where will we gather where where will we gather if we if we lose that and we face the wind each one alone then what do we have and so the preservation of the the whole notion of the church is built on the strength of the preacher to see the bigger point so that you don't get you cannot be a great preacher and be petty yes because you you get stuck in the minutia of little things that little-minded people let stop them from bigger ideas you know you you have to be broad enough in your thinking that you sit there the shepherd to keep the flock together and as much as you can you don't let the small things stop you from doing that and and preaching is uh this i'm probably getting too comfortable now but sometimes when i'm sometimes when i'm standing on the on the stage i feel like uh captain kirk yeah uh and star trek because from from that point from that post from that position there's all of these people out there and i'm trying to get us to land safely you understand to sit down in that captain's chair or man the pulpit is a huge responsibility i mean just a massive responsibility and and whoever heralds that pulpit has to be able to compartmentalize what was going on in your life and set that aside for the betterment of the whole you have to be able to step over who hurt your feelings and who didn't like you and who left your church and and not be petty enough to to dilute the milk of the word down to the water of your own ego uh your egocentric ideologies and and to rise above all of that and preach when you're wounded and preached when you're happy and preached when you're sad and not allow that to be a deterrent where you are jerking the congregation around based on what kind of day you had you see so there's a discipline to it and there's a commitment to it i'm gonna stop there let's we'll never play the clippers we're gonna hold the clip one more time [Laughter] um i think uh deep and simple versus shallow and complex reaches all kinds of people i think the testimony in a boat is about being deep and simple you're tremendously deep but tremendously simple the second piece i want to add to that is you know something that i said to you um many people some i don't know how many but there is the celebrity bishop t.d jakes and then there's the pastor who on sunday morning he's trying to feed the flock and monday through and people don't often get to see which is why i was part of why i was so excited about doing an interview because as i i was a pastor and a pastor i knew a pastor's heart and it starts with feeding the flock caring for the flock just trying to minister to people now what god does with that is truly amazing in in this in these kind of places and spaces that you're operating in global you know every continent you know but what people miss um if you get wrapped in into the celebrity bishop t.d jakes and missed the sunday morning pastor who probably when he had 12 members pastored as hard or harder absolutely than now and so there's a sense in which people look at the the the the the broadcasts the the places the people you meet the places you go the all of that celebrity stuff that is important and is okay but that's not at the heart of this thing so am i you know i i think i got that you're absolutely right they're they're they're if you played my old tapes in the storefront there's no difference in the intensity where there was no camera the person who was holding the camera was shot [Laughter] you know uh i i this whole notion of celebrity is is a side effect of effectiveness you know every drug you take has side effects and and if you're effective at anything long enough and deep enough and wide enough you're going to run into the side effects of how people perceive you and it doesn't matter if people see you as a celebrity as long as you don't see yourself as one you know when you were small in your own eyes god blessed you and and uh i think that that you you can easily lose your equilibrium by reading your own press and your press fluctuates from person to person uh years and years ago i was walking down the street with another well-known preacher and and and somebody said uh oh my god these men are men of god i was in prison and i heard them preaching and they blessed my life and oh he was just ready just you know hosanna you know and we kept on walking went on down the street and there was a street preacher woman preaching on the corner and she appeared i see you big time preachers over there your devils in your big churches and i thought to myself in the space of one block i went from from being an angel to being a devil and to both of them i kept on walking if you can keep on walking regardless to how people define you you can really get something done because i never in my wildest dreams thought i would end up here and had i known it i would have run harder the other way that was a side effect and you learn to live with the side effects of people of of how people describe you and how they see you what you're anointing though is predicated upon how you see yourself your anointing doesn't flow to the whims of how people describe you your anointing comes when you can keep your feet on the ground and keep your head on straight and people ask me sometimes who really get to know me they said uh you're so humble i can't believe you're so down to earth and and i think that's really funny because i i don't know whether i'm humble or not but they they they asked me how do i do that i said because i know me see you have an idea of me i i don't have any trouble keeping my feet around because i know me you know how little kids hear you preach and say there goes jesus i know i'm not jesus i'm very clear on that okay so when you when you when you have not lost recognition that the master is working with dirt then whatever you become it's only because he graced you to become it because you never lose sight of the fact that that you were dirt when he found you and he put you up on a wheel and started working on you and made you appear different things to different people based on the light they see you in but but this whole notion of celebrity status celebrities are lost too and and they need christ too one of the things about christianity that is disturbing to me is that it is only marketed to the poor as as if i if i am successful or educated i don't need redemption and and yet if if it were properly applied jesus ministered to all types of people the upper echelon as well as the downtrodden with the same effectiveness he he he calls the tax collector down out of the tree he does the same type of work with him that he does the woman caught in the act of adultery he deals with everybody because he recognizes it is not status or stuff or cameras that that is the impetus that inspired me to minister you have to realize sir i came from west virginia i had never seen a mega church i didn't know to want it because i had never seen it hardly any big preachers came to charleston so this whole dazzling glimmering shimmering side effect was not why i took the pill i've learned to live with it i've learned to understand it i've learned how to protect myself in it but it was never my attraction to it it still isn't to this day i like ordinary things and ordinary people i describe myself as a person who likes to pick out his own chicken wings you you you it it it is that about me i believe that causes ordinary people to be drawn to me that i can walk in and out of of hollywood and then go into a homeless shelter and find the same synergism that i know how to base and abound and i think the broader you you you you build yourself where you don't get caught up in the headlines of you you angels you great men of god you're a wonderful person and then somebody you're a devil you can't read either headline you have to keep on walking and not lose your pace although you were criticized one day and exalted the next day that can't be the wine you drink because if you do it will intoxicate you and once you are intoxicated you are your power is gone your power is gone and i think that god gives notoriety to people who don't need it because the people who really need it and want it the most i noticed they never get it because their motives are not right i never i never wanted i still don't like that i just endure that and i've learned to live with that and i have i have decided that i was strong enough inside to withstand whatever you think and that inner strength has to adorn you so that you can preach strength to struggling people if you don't if if you don't go through that that decision to withstand opposing ideas inside it's not important to me that i argue with you outside it's important to me that i don't let the waves of your opinion wet the deck of my ship so as long as i can keep it out there and not let it get in and i use a lot of different modalities to do that sometimes it's not reading it sometimes it's not responding to it sometimes it is responding to it because i have a right to have a voice too it depends on what it is what i do and do not respond to but that was never the thing that drew me and so what you describe about celebrity status is is a picture and what i'm talking about is an ultrasound so from the outside if you're seen with certain people they then say you're a celebrity pastor that's a picture that's a photo but if if you did uh an ultrasound i'm looking at that person and i think that's a person you know puffy is a person kanye is a person you know what i'm talking to denzel washington is a person you know will smith is a person he's he's not the character you saw on tv he's that's somebody's child that was somebody's baby you know and if you see souls as souls because if you don't see them like that you you won't be able to minister to them and and you're building an identity around something that's fickle success is fickle you people could say hosanna today i can remember when people revered bill cosby he's in jail today you things can turn on a dime and so if you build yourself on how people perceive you you have built your castle on sand but if you build yourself on how god sees you that that's going to remain the same because there's nothing about us that surprises god there's nothing there's nothing past present or future about us that surprises god so i tried to i try to keep my feet pretty flat on the floor and i try what they see as as celebrity status i see a stress and responsibility you know to him who much is given much is required so you're talking about what's given and i can't see what's given for paying what's required that that's true and and all of that for me when it comes to my preaching as my world view has changed and i have got to see the penthouse suite and i've gotten to sit with presidents and kings it it grew me as a preacher a little quick quick example i used to hear preachers say you know god is going to bless you until all your bills are gonna be deleted out the computer and he's gonna do some supernatural and i thought that that's a great perspective if you're the person who owes the money but if you're the person to whom the money is owed what you just shouted about is your blessing but my curse but the preacher who was preaching didn't think from the other side of it because he is the ower and not the owie you know i've been both you'd be surprised how that changes how you see justice because to the person that you owe deleting the debt is not justice because it's a legitimate debt to the person who owes the debt your description of justice is is is a curse to the person who's older because if the people who owe you don't pay you you can't go forward either so my point is this your discernment of the text is a reflection of the of the position what in in in television it's pov it's your point of view we got we got three cameras in this shoot each one of them is given a different point of view none of them are lying one camera's on me one camera's on you one camera's on both of us all of them are showing different perspectives of the same incident when you preach if you take a camera and aim it at all the different characters you get a different view of the story if you take one camera and put it on the elder brother and take another camera and put it on the younger brother and take another camera and put it on the father now you've got a view of everything okay so so when we start talking about what informs our preaching is the amount of cameras in the chute and your cameras grow as your life's experience grows and what i have been blessed with is a panoramic view i am living my father's dreams and my mother's nightmares i i am living where my father could never imagine me going and my mother died telling me be careful baby don't let him kill you so my mother's nightmares is that's my baby on the cross you know and i've i've gone as far as i can go with you mama can't go any further and and don't don't let them kill you and yet my father would be saying that's my son up there look at that boy i can't believe tommy did that and both of them are telling the truth it is as gratifying as it is horrifying and you have to live within the tension of both polarities without succumbing to either horror or gratification you have to be leveled in the middle or you won't be able to do this on the scale you need to do it on i don't know for that i'll ask you to follow up on that so um how do you see yourself oh oh that's complicated oh that's complicated my wife's not joking teeth because i was born in june and you know the astrology would say i'm in gemini and i always tell her two of us she said no it's 10. [Laughter] she says at least 10 of y'all up in there that's scary ending which one is talking about uh i see myself most easily in my simplicity i think i was 50 before i could look at my notoriety i couldn't look at it i could look at it because i couldn't look at it like a window washer can't look down if i allowed myself to see where i was it would scare me to death at that height i would be paralyzed and i couldn't look at it till i was about 50. a willful blindness stop me from seeing it because i i would have stopped my job because of my height so i looked at the window and i didn't look at at how far i was from the ground and it took me being around 50 to get the courage to look at the sum total of who i am and even now i sip it real slow i don't let it go to my head not in the sense of arrogance but the height of it is horrifying the weight of it the responsibility of it is makes my life so small notoriety makes your life so small that you you crave simple things like um my brother had opened up the door of his garage and had a couple of friends over and they were playing music in the garage and and and eating barbecue and and just the freedom to do simple things like that to to go through i have never been to the state fair because i could never go to the fair and and not be bombarded so what people call success makes your life small because you lose normalcy the loss of normalcy is a poverty that i can't even describe uh just just ordinary average simple things uh have to be sometimes you have to pay twice as much for a hamburger just so that the people in the room will leave you alone to eat it so you end up paying 20 for whataburger you know or or fifty dollars to get a whataburger basically that you could have drove by and got for half as much but if you went to whataburger and ate it you couldn't eat it in peace so what you're paying for is not the burger you're paying for the peace so so so things when when you when you see people no matter what their profession is that are that are well known uh i immediately inherit whatever you read or whatever you thought about me without ever even getting to know me and and so to avoid all of that it took me being 50 before i had the courage to look at it i denied it until i was 50. that's how it's not i'm just ordinary because denying it was my way of coping with it at 50 i was courageous enough to say it is what it is and and and life begins when you accept the side effect so what what looks glamorous is it took me a while to not see it as crucifixion with a different kind of nail it's just a different kind of nail yeah you know i was crucified impoverished church seven members in it that was one kind of nail now 30 000 members is just a different kind of nail but it still crucifies your flesh god lets no one escape their cross the nails change and the wood changes but the crucifixion in spirit is the criteria for being a disciple and nobody rich or poor well-known or obscure gets away without a cross and so when i call it a side effect that's because that's what it is that wasn't the shiny thing that drew me and if anybody who thinks that has to ignore the first 20 years of my preaching to get to the glamour of of of camera lights so if if it was the lights that did it explain the first 20 years preaching on welfare uh preaching with my lights off and my water off pastoring a church and didn't have gas to get to the church i was pastoring explain those 20 years i see myself from there and that's my strength to survive here my strength is in my story and my struggle and my agony my strength is in the fact that i dug ditches till my hands were bleeding to buy diapers from my voice and i remind the devil when i'm in a fight with him that i'm i'm that guy i'm i'm that guy with bloody hands and a full heart and preached faith with no lights on and preaching god would bless his people even though i had the thumb to get to the bible class i'm that guy tenacious tenacious and relentless that adornment has nothing to do with money or people or degrees that has something to do with the stuff that your parents put in you every day i could go to my mother and father's grave and kiss their headstones for how they taught us to be self-reliant and gave us the inner strip to withstand public opinion and world view if they had not raised me the way they raised me my life would have crushed me i am so grateful i am spoofed i am so grateful for how they raised me i would have never been able to withstand this without that my mother was tough and she didn't allow you to fall apart and if you fell apart she'd slap you and say get yourself together i mean she was she was she was tough there was no room for for losing it and and in the storm i can see why he gave me that kind of mother and that kind of father so that i could withstand because when you are leading people who are wounded they often attack the people the person who is leading them and you have to be a strong enough lifeguard to jump into the pool to save somebody who's kicking you while you're trying to pull them out and if you're if you're not willing to be kicked don't be a lifeguard because in their panic to get up we often see our saviors as assailants and we think that their success is at our expense and so success however you define it breeds contempt but all of that all of that everything the lights off the raggedy 1967 valiant that i drove up the road till it fell apart and had to thumb all of that to speaking at the white house and then and the national cathedral all of that to speaking to millions of people in africa all of that comes to the text all of that crescendo's in the text all of that gives you the breath to go in and out of audiences see your your education came through a university mine was the world was my school so i i stuck my fingers in the bullet holes of winnie mandela's headboard on her bed and understood her pain by by the feeling of my fingers in those bullet holes i i i went down and and stuck my fingernails in the scratchings where the slaves waited in el mina to for the slave ships to come and connect it that way and so i i got to do it and see it and if you if you never put away your pencil and and never stop being a student you'll never stop learning all of your life and don't lock yourself into the idea that the classroom ends at the door because every encounter good or bad right or wrong mistakes made business life relationships all of it is coming to educate you in some way you never graduate from god's university you never graduate if you are smart enough to perceive every new person that comes into your life came to teach you something every person who broke your heart came to teach you something and if you take the class and get the lesson rather than the bitterness you you become wiser every day you

Channel: T.D. Jakes

Views: 62,419

Keywords: td jakes, faith, potters house, bishop jakes, The Potter's House of Dallas, TPH Dallas, td jakes sermons, bishop td jakes, inspiration, td jakes motivation, motivation, sermons, td jakes ministries, motivational speaker, motivational speech, gospel, motivational, td jakes sunday, td jakes 2021, td jakes sermons 2021, Don’t drop the mic, frank thomas dr. frank thomas

Id: US2_FMgBwHI

Length: 92min 43sec (5563 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 06 2021