Sound Preaching for Shaky Bridges

Our world is filled with rivers and streams that are crossed regularly because of well-built bridges. These bridges connect one place to another and bring value to often overlooked bodies of water that flow consistently and powerfully beneath them. Some examples include the Brooklyn Bridge in New York that soars over the easy flowing East River while connecting Manhattan to Brooklyn; the Chesapeake Bay Bridge that bends over the cold Chesapeake Bay waters while connecting the Eastern Shore with the Western Shore in Maryland; and the Golden Gate Bridge that spans over the wide and winding Golden Gate Straight while connecting San Francisco and Marin County. These structures are not only connectors for land masses and covers for fast flowing water, but they provide an image of the goal of preaching: to transform and transport. So if the rivers that lie under those bridges represent challenges that separate laity from leadership, and the land masses represent leadership offices on one side and the doors of entry into an organization on the other, then the bridge that provides travel from one side to the next and brings value to laity is preaching. Preaching is a bridge; however, it is not necessarily as steady and secure as the aforementioned structures. Yet, it is still a bridge. With this in mind, I introduce to you “Shaky Bridge Preaching.”

Shaky Bridge Preaching empowers those who have been ostracized while creating awareness for elite groups that are blind to their group’s systems that facilitated this ostracization. Shaky Bridge Preaching can indeed be the catalyst for laity to transform into leaders and for leaders to be proactive about the promotion of laity.

When preaching happens, travel and transformation begin in the sense that they either encourage or deter movement towards the leadership doors of an organization. Ultimately, preaching is the bridge that moves people and brings transformative value to the overlooked laity of any organization--be it a church, community agency, or business.