The pressure to Perform
The toughest thing about being a success is that you've got to keep on being a success.
Irving Berlin
If you compare yourself with others, you may be bitter or vain, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
Max Ehrman
Preaching is not the art of making a sermon and delivering it. Preaching is the art of making a preacher and delivering him.
Bishop Quayle I like to think of myself as a fairly effective public speaker, but I'm absolutely amazed when I hear one of my sermons on tape after it's been professionally edited. I can't believe I sound so good! My live sermons contain the typical hems and haws and unplanned pauses and occasional malaprops. But when the editor is done with it, those things are all gone. I can't help thinking that when people hear me speak in person after they've heard me on tape, they're bound to be a little disappointed. I would be! Modern technology and the mass communications media, especially television, have created a type of pressure on pastors and other communicators that didn't exist a few years ago. It's the pressure to perform, to be compared not just with the pastor across town, but with the nationally known speakers. That pressure can create tremendous anxiety. Part of the pressure comes just from the fact of how widespread is the media's reach. Almost every Christian, it seems, has a favorite television or radio preacher or listens to sermon tapes from some well-known speaker. That can be very threatening. As one pastor says, "Knowing that many in the congregation have already watched a TV evangelist that Sunday morning makes me nervous. I say to myself, If they have just heard a great message from Robert Schuller, Jimmy Swaggart, or James Robison, what do they expect ...
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