One very embarrassing fact about myself is that when I was a teenager I wanted a ventriloquist’s dummy for Christmas.  You don’t see too many people doing ventriloquism these days but when I was younger it was done a lot and people were really entertained by it.  When I woke up that Christmas, I discovered a Charlie McCarthy doll and I immediately started to play with it.

The goal of ventriloquism is to make an audience think that this inanimate object is really alive and responsive.  Techniques would need to be learned that manipulated the doll’s hands, eyes, head, and of course its speech.  In studying these techniques I learned that there were special ways to make certain sounds with my mouth in a way that lessened the amount of my lip movement.  Perhaps the most common factor in determining whether a ventriloquist is good or not is whether or not you can see their lips move.

This week I have had a couple of occasions to make me think about my ventriloquism days.  I was listening to a lady describing what she was looking for in a “good sermon”.  She was especially appreciative when the preacher would openly express his lack of sermon preparation but instead relied upon the Holy Spirit to give him the right words at that moment.  She thought any preacher who thought and planned for weeks about what they might present to the congregation was trusting in themselves and not relying upon God.  When I pressed the issue a bit, I discovered her struggle was more with what I call “canned sermons”.  A “canned sermon” is one perhaps preached months or years before and brought out, dusted off and delivered.  Like bread, sometimes preaching that isn’t freshly prepared is stale.

Her comments prompted me to think about a bigger, more fundamental question:  Am I a Partner or a Puppet?  As a preacher or even as every Christian, does my life reflect a partnership where we are working together or am I simply the means to accomplish His work?

Like with most areas of life where people disagree, there is a sense in which a person with one perspective parodies the view of the other person, making it look ridiculous while defending the reasonableness of their view.  As you drill down into the issues involved you often discover that neither extreme is correct but truth is found somewhere in the middle.  Paul, the Apostle, had a keen sense of balance regarding this subject.  The Holy Spirit inspired him to write on several occasions about the nature of Christian’s (the Church’s) working relationship with God.  Perhaps one of the clearest statements of this view is found in 1 Corinthians 3:5-8.

“What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants, through whom you came to believe—as the Lord has assigned to each his task. ⁶ I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow. ⁷ So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow. ⁸ The one who plants and the one who waters have one purpose, and they will each be rewarded according to their own labor. ⁹ For we are co-workers in God’s service; you are God’s field, God’s building.” (NIV)

I understand this passage to mean that all Christians share in partnership with God and one another to accomplish the work of God.  God, since the creation of mankind, has the desire of sharing His work with humans.  This idea carries through until the final scene of the Bible where Christians are reigning and working in partnership with God.  Whether we completely understand it or not, God desires to do His work in partnership with humans.  This means that we are neither puppets who simply mouth the words like a ventriloquist’s dummy nor that we are to move forward or speak on our own authority.  We can also see where sometimes Christians can get out of balance by devaluing the contributions of other Christians whose service is different than ours.  The bottom line is that any increase produced by our efforts will be God’s contribution.

My hope is that preachers and every other Christian will give their best effort in the work that they do for the King.  If it is done in partnership with Him, its impact will be eternal.  If it isn’t, its really is a waste of time.