Skip to main content

An Experiment in Preaching

A friend who in his late fifties took a new pastorate said that he had written the last sermon he ever intended to write, meaning that he planned to use the vast collection of sermons that he had built up over his career and produce nothing new.

I have in my paper and electronic files every sermon I have ever written; I even have the outlines, some of which were lifted straight out of the back of my trusty Thompson Chain Reference Bible, from my first halting efforts, which were quite different than my later halting efforts.

I have at times “re-preached” some of my “greatest hits”; in so doing I heeded the wise words of my wise father who once told me, “If it was worth preaching once it’s worth preaching twice.” And if it’s worth preaching twice maybe it’s worth preaching thrice or more!

Over the last twenty-five years I have written full manuscripts for 99% of the sermons that I’ve preached and 90% of the time I’ve taken that manuscript into the pulpit with me.

Last Sunday I began an experiment that consists of the following elements:

1. I am studying for and thinking about the sermon as always.

2. I am writing down the one main point that I want to get across.

3. I am seeking one good story, biblical or not, that will make the one main point.

4. I am writing down an introduction.

5. I am writing down a concluding sentence.

6. I am taking no notes with me into the pulpit.

7. I am trusting the Spirit and my experience; after all these years I should know both pretty well.

The thing about experiments is that sometimes they lead to helpful discoveries and sometimes they blow up in your face…

Comments

  1. As with most things in the universe, preaching works by different strokes for different folks in different yokes. I had my first manuscript-ectomy by force after 4 years of comfortable reliance. After a while, I learned to like the freedom and even manage to trust the spontaneous part of the Spirit occasionally. What I don't like is the pew-sitters who equate scriptlessness with Godliness, thereby rejecting the notion that the Spirit can also hang around the keyboard on Thursday morning. I also appreciate the power of a well-crafted phrase, for which your plan leaves room. Enjoy!

    ReplyDelete
  2. As a fairly new preacher, I've had to wean myself away from using the manuscript. I like to take my Kindle up to the pulpit, loaded with my outline and the verses that I will be using. It's worked so far, but we all know what happens to technology from time to time.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I am also a fairly new preacher. I have tried with manuscript and with outlines and I prefer the manuscript. I found I look at my papers a lot less with a manuscript than with outlines. The thoughts have to process from my mind through my lips past my hands and by that time they are more firmly lodged in my memory. There have been Sundays where I have walked to the pulpit carrying a 15 page grammatically correct, accurately spelt, immaculately formated sermon--and not looked at it once.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Jesus Was a Refugee

(A sermon based on Matthew 2:13-23 for the First Sunday after Christmas) I have never been a refugee and you probably haven’t either. There have been times for many of us when we “had” to leave home but we did so because we chose to get an education or to take a job or because our parents told us it was time. Oh, there is a sense in which many of us feel a restlessness and rootlessness and feel like we are on a constant quest for home. But the facts remain that we have never been driven from our home or from our hometown or from our homeland because of warfare or famine. We have never been driven away because of our ethnicity or our politics or our religion; we have never been forced out or forced underground because we are a threat to those in power. Millions of people are refugees, though. According to the United Nations Refugee Agency, there were at the end of 2012 15.4 million refugees—people who have fled their country for another because of war or persecution—in the world....

People Get Ready

(A sermon based on 2 Peter 3:8-15a for the 2nd Sunday of Advent 2014) Given the myriad problems faced by those of us living here on Earth, it is only natural that we who are looking for the return of Jesus Christ wonder why God is taking so long to send him back. After all, it’s been 2000 years now since he was here the first time. Would it make you feel any better to know that people were already wondering about that just a few decades after the crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus? Well, they were. Why? I can think of at least three reasons. First, the memory of the Church was that Jesus had seemed to imply that he would come back soon, maybe even within a generation. Second, people are by nature impatient. Third, people have a misconception of what time is and especially of how God relates to time. The truth about time, according to the science of physics, is that it’s relative. Einstein theorized and all physicists now agree that time is relative to how fast ...

When You Pass Through the Waters

(A sermon based on Isaiah 43:1-7 & Luke 3:15-17, 21-22 for the Baptism of the Lord) The images are ones we still use. “I feel like I’m going under.” “I really got burned.” Water and fire have long been images of trial, testing, and suffering. We experience events and situations that either are life-threatening, such as a serious illness or accident, or feel like they are life-threatening, like a divorce or job loss or serious problems with a family member. We feel like we’re going under. We feel like we’re getting burned. Sometimes, we don’t just find ourselves in such a situation; we rather put ourselves there. So the prophet speaking in Isaiah 43 spoke his words to guilty people, to people who had sinned and who either knew they had sinned or needed to admit their sins. Their nation had been devastated by the Babylonians and they had been transported into exile hundreds of miles away and it was all because, the true prophets had told them, they had sinned against ...