After I read the scripture from the pulpit, I pray this prayer. It’s a declaration and a request: “Lord, I pray that you’ll just dismiss me and you’d preach to us today. Move me out of the way.” It’s not liturgy. It’s not a pleasant proverb of false humility. We’ve got to realize that the best thing we can do to maximize the Word is the minimize ourselves as preachers. God has a Word for everybody listening. We are all in different places. As I scan the auditorium where I preach, I realize that there are a thousand backstories, failures, questions, doubt, hurts, and fears behind the faces of the people staring back at me. There’s more than a chance that, somebody in your worship center (or church’s stream) is at a breaking point. 

• There’s a husband that is struggling with internet pornography all the while wondering if his marriage will survive.
• There’s a child who is so beaten down by bullying and depression that he wonders if he can go back to school tomorrow. 
• There’s a single mom who is doing everything she can to just put one foot in front of the other.
• There’s a legalist who believes that he can make it to Heaven on the coattails of his own religious resume. 
• There’s a teenager who has been fed a pack of lies by a science teacher and is wondering if there is even a God out there. 
• There’s a man who desperately turns to alcohol as a pain killer, but is slowly discovering the pain killer is a man killer.

These people, whether they realize it consciously or not, are looking for a Word from Almighty God. This is the place we’re in right now. People are desperate for a Word.  “We would see Jesus.”  (John 12:21) They aren’t interested in what Roc Collins has to say. They’re interested in what God has to say! If we want to see God knock the doors down and rescue the weary, hopeless, wandering, questioning and spiritually hungry congregation bound by the chains of their own sin and uncertainty, we have to maximize the message.