Preaching and the Externally-Focused Church: An Interview with Rick Rusaw...Continued from page 5

Rusaw: I would say it’s between frequent and occasional. We don’t use it all the time because we think it would get stale. This will be the first time in nine weeks we’ve done something where we are inviting them to take something home or do something.

We passed out 4,000 jigsaw puzzle pieces one morning. They held the piece the whole service, they had no idea what they were doing with it. I talked about how every one of us has the opportunity to make a difference, and I told a story about how my mom loves doing jigsaw puzzles and my sister and I use to steal pieces from her. We would drive her nuts. The whole picture would be done but missing one piece. But for her, even though she knew what the picture was, it was not complete without that piece. And God’s picture, His story, is not complete without your part of the puzzle.

I did that maybe a year ago and I have people even now, saying they still have the puzzle piece in their pocket or they wrote a scripture on the back of it or it sits on their desk and “it reminds me that I could be doing something.” So it’s those little things.

We did a series on guilt and grace and at the end of that series, we had a number of crosses set up around the room. We had passed out cards and we invited people to write on their card some issue that they didn’t feel they could be forgiven of, or some issue they were hanging onto, or some burden they were keeping, and just take that to the cross. We invited them to nail it onto the cross. That morning, the power of the sound of the hammers nailing . . . I’m always amazed by something that seems so simple to us, yet by the amount of emotion and repentance and things that go on in people’s lives that they were touched. A lot of people carry that stuff and really don’t know how to get rid of it, so the act of doing something, I think, also helps drive the message.

We try to do the stuff that’s actually simpler, not so “techie” and not so far out there that’s it’s out of reach, because if it’s that way, then even people in the church kind of go, “That’s kind of cool but, you know…..”

I think there is power when people can respond to the message. Historically our only response is to come forward to be a member or come forward to rededicate or maybe have prayer ? and there’s a place for that ? but I think people want to do something a lot of times. Sometimes we invite them to go do something this week and then come back and tell us about it next week. We’ll try to make it a little bit more engaging that way.

Preaching: Tell me a little about LifeBridge Church where you serve.

Rusaw: I arrived in 1991 and five weeks after I got here, we celebrated our 100th anniversary.

Preaching: Was this more of a traditional church?