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Stuart Revercomb

Stuart Revercomb is a marketing consultant and joyously married father of four children. He seems to remember someone once telling him he ought to be a writer. "The Unseen Here and Now" -- Thursdays.

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"Thursday's Fare"

I must be crazy.

When asked to join a minister friend of mine at a Preachers conference in the mountains of North Carolina recently, I said yes.

Preachers conference? What in the heck goes on at a preachers conference?

Well, a lot of preaching, for one thing. But it's preaching on some next generational level delivered by men and women who train and teach preachers. In short, they make their living by preaching the sort of sermons that ministers themselves tend to find enlightening.

You might call it "super preaching."

In college I had a French teacher by the name of Dr. Ferrell. Dr. Ferrell knew how to kill you 127 different ways. He could perform all of them, quietly, in under three seconds. Dr. Ferrell, you see, was not a Green Beret. Rather, he TRAINED Green Berets. A couple of guys I knew who went on to wear such caps could sometimes be found standing around at parties with their chests puffed out, telling stories about slogging through the Amazon in Peru or jumping out of airplanes in the darkness that is 8,000 feet over the sandy Piedmont of North Carolina at 3:00 a.m.

They were proud of their accomplishments and rightfully so.

But as soon as I mentioned Dr. Ferrell's name and asked about what sort of guys trained them, their stomachs would begin to release and their chest would recede just a bit. By the time I finished my question the heretofore invincible demeanor had faded completely away and the inevitable response would come:

"Don't even THINK about messing with those guys," they would say, eyes narrowing seriously. "They are at a level few can contemplate -- much less attain. They are the masters -- uncompromising, unequaled and untouchable by all in comparison. They stand completely alone."

The same goes for the "super preachers" I beheld this past week. Their students are the wisest of over a thousand congregations and they behold their teachers with the same sort of awe and wonder. These modern day prophets are few and far between, so when several gather in one location such as Montreat, anticipation and expectation runs high.

I am here to say they did not disappoint.

The first such individual I encountered was a man by the name of Dr. Walter Brueggermann of Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur Ga. Brugerman before the masses is a swirling and boiling and reeling tempest of a man -- exegeting and exploring the text of the Gospel in front of his already learned students like some kind of mad and irascible cook, who, having spread it out on the table before in innumerable published books and articles, doesn't quite understand why he's up there having to do it all again.

He is Gen. George S. Patton reincarnate, with the balding head, stocky build and throaty confidence that George C. Scott portrayed so well on the screen. When Walter Brugerman stares you down out of the crowd and looks you in the eye and bellows like the good general to his troops, "NO HOMILETICAL SKILLS OR THEOLOGICAL KNOWLEDGE OR STAIN GLASS DETAILS CAN EVER TAKE THE PLACE OF THE PREACHER OR POET WHO HAS HIMSELF EXPERIENCED THE CLAIMS OF THE GOSPEL!" you are inclined to believe it.

If Brugerman is the modern day field commander of reformed theology, then Barbara Brown Taylor is the quiet, thinking and resourceful strategist who speaks so eloquently yet simply of the mysterious and subtle movements of the Holy Spirit in our lives. One is left hanging on every nuance and word and whisper from her lips. Her book, "The Preaching Life," while focused towards the clergy and those considering becoming such, speaks supremely to those considering their own service within the greater bounds of their faith. Taylor's gifts are unique and the aforementioned book may well be the best $12.95 you ever spend on Amazon.com

I listened intently over the course of five days to the likes of such speakers, feeling sometimes overwhelmed by their capacity to contemplate the most complex theological questions. But I was always inspired by the ultimate simplicity and beauty by which they imparted their knowledge to those who would take it in a myriad of forms back to people like me and you.

I was not the only lay person to attend, but I was certainly in the minority, and it afforded an opportunity to view the world of the ministry in way a most of us never see. While at Montreat I called a friend to check on the progress of renting a boat for an upcoming fishing trip along the Outer Banks. When I told him where I was he said, "Better you than me!"

I know he was mostly kidding, but in many ways I don't think he was entirely. Most of us suspect that anything having to do with the church or a minister or Christ himself is going to be old and stale and shopworn. Somehow we paste some puritanical and straight-back image upon such people and things, and we fail to open our hearts and minds to the possibility that something new and different and miraculously real might happen among us or within us.

We seem to prefer the truly worn-out worlds that are the "givens" of our lives and fail to open ourselves to the possibilities of something "otherwise".

If that sounds somehow true and has the ring of wisdom in your seeking ears, thank Gen. Walter P. Brugerman.

He taught me all about it this week.