There's a shark in the pulpit...

I was setting up our church's stage for a Carol Service recently and came across an interesting sight: a big stuffed toy in the shape of a shark was lying on top of the crate with electrical extension cables we store in the pulpit. "There is a shark in the pulpit," I thought. That's a phrase you don't hear very often...

And so it got me thinking about pulpits and how different people value them. How important are they really? Some may argue that they are very important and that they should be treated with far more respect and reverence than to let them become a storage space for stuffed animals and extension cables. I can understand that. The pulpit is, historically, where the good news of hope and salvation in Christ was preached from.

Now, for those reading this that do not know what a pulpit is, a pulpit is a raised, enclosed platform from which sermons are (were in our case) preached (like the one in the picture, which is not ours). Most pulpits I've come across are elaborately decorated with beautiful and intricate patterns and symbols, because of the importance of the message being preached from there.

So a stuffed shark on top of some electrical cables isn't what you'd expect to find in a pulpit. And I guess it shows that we (our church) don't use our pulpit that often, because we preach the gospel from a different place in our current setup. And that doesn't bother me at all. Here's why: We don't need a pulpit to share the gospel of hope and salvation in Christ. I'll go even further: If we're leaving the good news of Christ to be preached by one specific person on one specific pulpit for one specific hour on any given Sunday morning, we're missing a whole lot of opportunities to share the hope and joy that live in us elsewhere.

Don't get me wrong: I have nothing against using a pulpit to share the message of hope and redemption. Jesus did that in the equivalent setting of His time. He preached and taught and read in various synagogues during His ministry on earth (Luke 4:17-20; Luke 2:46-47). I'm all for that.

However, I'm also all for taking that good message outside of the pulpit and the church building, and taking it into our streets, into our communities, into our homes. Just like Jesus did. He visited the homes of sinners and bad men (Matthew 9:10-13). He healed people on the streets (Matthew 8). He taught in the countryside (Matthew 5-7). If anything, Jesus showed us that we don't need a pulpit to bring good news and hope for all mankind. And we shouldn't confine the message to a select few standing on pulpits. We who call ourselves Christ-followers are tasked with sharing hope wherever we are (Matthew 10:7-8), whatever we're doing (Matthew 4:19-20), every day (Psalm 96:2-4).

So whether you use a pulpit, a soapbox, an office chair, a park bench, a kitchen table or a coffeeshop to share your hope, I wish you all the courage and wisdom and love to do so faithfully; both in word and in deed. With or without stuffed sharks.

Selah.