The preacher stands before the congregation each week and attempts to describe what God is up to in God’s big world. The preacher uses Scripture, humor, philosophy, personal reflection, comparison, more humor, stories–all to help the listener connect with God and neighbor.

Over time, the church begins to believe that the preacher has special access to God. As if God chooses some whom God will reveal deep truth to, and others . . . well . . . they can spiritually live vicariously through the preacher. It’s a bit messianic come to think of it.

The preacher talks about the hard work that marriage requires. The preacher talks about the mystery of death, birth, miracles, and God’s silence. The preacher talks about ethics, and making difficult decisions  in the daily grind of life. The preacher, on the most courageous of days, talks about forgiveness, resurrection, and hope–a few things that seem passe in today’s cut-throat gotta-get-mine-culture ethos.

Sunday after Sunday, the preacher stands up to bear witness that God is not dead. And, miracle of miracles, some leave the sacred gathering actually believing that dead people will live again.

Here’s the secret. Many preacher’s believe The Story. But all of us want to believe. Most of us, regardless of the reasons we entered into the vocation of preaching/teaching, stay in it because we know something others don’t know. It isn’t that we have special revelation or private insight pipe lined to us from Heaven via e-mail (or twitter). We stay in it because we need the stories, the church, the sleepless Saturday nights, the fear, the doubt–we need, more than most, to be so close to The Story that the only place we can really feel alive is to be in the eye of the storm, leading a local congregation in believing ten crazy things before we eat breakfast (to paraphrase Stanley Hauerwas).

Our secret is that we have no secret. We come, every Sunday, with a word. But we also come because we need a word; one that will sustain us for one more week in the life of faith.