“Every preacher has a different routine for preparing a sermon. My own begins with a long sitting spell with an open Bible on my lap, as I read and read and read the text. What I am hunting for is the God in it, God for me and for my congregation at this particular moment in time. I am waiting to be addressed by the text by my own name, to be called out by it so that I look back at my human situation and see it from a new perspective, one that is more like God’s. I am hoping for a moment of revelation I can share with those who will listen to me and I am jittery, because I never know what it may show me. I am not in control of the process. It is a process of discovery, in which I run the charged rod of God’s word over the body of my own experience and wait to see where the sparks will fly. Sometimes the live current is harder to find than others but I keep at it, knowing that if there is no electricity for me, there will be none for the congregation either.”
(Barbara Brown Taylor, The Preaching Life, p. 80)
That is a great quote. Especially the two lines, ‘I am not in control of the process’ and ‘if there is no electriciy for me, there will be none for the congregation either.’ Good stuff, and so true. Preaching is so much more that hermeneutics and homoletics. It is the stuff of incarnation and heavenly application.
One of my favourite quotes in dealing with the process of sermon preparation and preparing the preacher is from Alistair Begg: ‘Think yourself dry, read yourself full, write yourself clear, and pray yourself hot.’
Very similar process for me too Mike. I liken it to sitting by a busy freeway watching the cars go by and I’m looking for that “one” car. That car is God’s word for us (my flock and myself) at this particular time. You never know what car it will be but when you see it, you know it.
I love your thoughts about owning the text (electricity for me) and I love the quote that Lawrence shared above too.
A quote that I’ve been coming back to over and over again (and I think I’ll blog on in a moment…) is from St. Francis de Sales, a seventeenth century saint and the patron saint of authors, who said, “The test of a preacher is that his congregation goes away saying not, ‘What a lovely sermon,’ but, ‘I will do something!’”
May we (you and I, Mike) be the first ones to do something!
Mike, great thoughts on sermon prep. Sometimes we rush to find our words instead of listening for what God is saying. If we hear his words more clearly that should define and shape the sermon. Listening should be a prerequisite for speaking.
Lawrence, I like the Begg quote. Jerry Jones always taught us, “study yourself full, pray yourself hot, and then let it go!”
And thus we should always pray for those who help to shepherd us…
I just found this quote in one of my old Bible’s (pasted in the cover) by C.H. Spurgeon, “the Holy Spirit will move them by first moving you. If you can rest without their being saved, they will rest too. But if you are filled with an agony for them, if you cannot bear that they be lost, you will find that they are uneasy too. I hope you get into such a state that you will dream about your child or hearer perishing for lack of Christ, and start at once and begin to cry, ‘O God, give me converts, or I die.’ Then you will have converts.”
The point is…the Spirit will move you first.
Also true is: “If there is a mist in the pulpit, there will be a fog in the pews?
I have found that if I force my sermon into the mix and don’t allow the Spirit his way (otherwise know as putting out the Spirit’s fire), I suffer in the pulpit and so does my audience.
I have never wrestled so much as in sermon preparation. Some of our office staff say they here “strange tongues” coming from my office as Friday gets nearer.
Peace.
I suppose “hear” was the word I was looking for.
Peace.
The testimony/confession/challenge from Dr. Jim Morrison today was life-altering. We cannot be the same church after hearing that. Just can’t. A clear call to follow the Way of Jesus.
Wow..Jim Morrison..I told him afterwards that I had so much to say but that there were a million people waiting behind me…all I could say was, “thanks.”
Yes, so powerful..a wake-up call to a sleepy nation..
Mike, thanks for encouraging him to share with us. I was sitting back with the high school boys and they were listening…
Jim..if you are reading this..I consider myself blessed to be kin to ya in Christ..love ya, brother.
Did anyone else notice the irony to day?
What a great way to begin. Someday when I get to deliver a sermon, I hope that it is with this same God-centered approach that I begin the process.
I like this quote not only because it was good but because it was from a woman on preaching; posted on a church of christ preacher’s blog.
I saw 4 horsemen and heard Johnny Cash singing on my way to church this morning, now I know what it was about.
Clint..have anything to do with The Doors..?
I’m always amazed by the things I learn on this blog. I learned today that my wife, Tracy, aspires to preach.
Great, now somebody else gunning for my job. I look forward to the day I get to hear her preach.
Tracy, just let me know where and when!
Mike, you are so right about Jimmy’s words this morning. Powerful and convicting. Jimmy and I talked the night we viewed The Invisible Children video and were both were moved by the same thoughts…until we are all free, none of us are free. Until my freedom is wrapped up in the world’s freedom…then I don’t really get it. Once we really do get it..then, what do we do? with our money? with our personal lives? with our churches? what does it look like? do we move into smaller houses? do we open our eyes wider to see what and who are around us? do we drop some boundaries that we have put into place? do we stop spending money frivolously? do we put our money where are hearts have moved to? do we move our hearts to the place that God is pushing it? do we believe the Spirit when it is calling us to change? I am sorry…only questions…no answers…maybe I am saying there aren’t answers because I don’t want to hear what the Spirit is saying…no, screaming in my head…okay, I admit, there are answers and I think we all know what they are. My baptism compels me…I signed on…didn’t I?
What will happen in a few years’ time when ‘missional’ is no longer a trendy buzz word or concept, or a different way to spin Jesus’ Great Commission?
And what relevancy does using this term and throwing it around with any authority have with regular, day-to-day folk who do not aspire to be theologians or do not feel the professional call to ministry?
I mean, the call to ministry has become more and more professional, has it not? That is certainly evident in the salaries of those who are in the ‘ministry’ … especially if you compare what an American pastor/minister claims compared with the salaries of those of us working in other countries (and no, we are not ‘missionaries’ in the American sense of the word).
The more I try to relate to people, the more I question how to openly use the language of the methodology. To many, the following terms (not in alphabetical order, and certainly not complete) sound pretentious, ambiguous, scary, alienating, and WAY boring:
* missional
· Hermeneutics
· Apologetics
· Emergent
· Contextualize
· Evangelical
· Pluralism
· Agnostic
· Anabaptist
· Orthodoxy
· Postmodernity
· Transubstantiation
· Apostasy
· Redemptive
· Restorative
· Canonical
· Rubrics
· Doctrine
· Niebuhr
· Reductionism
· Theocentristism
· Vestibule
· Transcendence
· Paradigm (I just got blasted the other day by a friend, and educator here in the UK, who said, ‘O, you Americans!’ when I used that term – I had no idea.)
Some of these terms are thrown around more in one country than the other (US/UK). We can certainly use these terms in within the boundaries of certain circles. But some of these terms do not help us relate to people we want to love on. Even in the books I read, I have to be careful socially in ‘sharing’ the latest great recent read. If I am currently reading Yoder, not many at my church have the faintest inkling who I’m talking about. If I say I’ve just been reading the latest book by NT Wright, no one has a light bulb moment until I say, ‘You know, Bishop Tom’. That is understood much more, because Bishop Tom Wright is frequently and popularly heard presenting the ‘Thought for the Day’ on Radio 4 (BBC).
I am not trying to be unkind here. But the emergent movement has crossed the Pond more recently than when it ‘emerged’ in the US. Church people here are already very sceptical of any new ‘methodology’ or ways to ‘do church’ that come from America, and when I just open my mouth, my accent gives me away. I find it very difficult to serve here as I served in the US. Even the concept of ‘music ministry’ as we know it in the US is different, because it is not even a ministerial concept here. New religious ideas and worship practices have to be introduced softly, softly here. Indeed we are blessed to have theologians like Bishop Tom, but in the UK church people are not quite as exuberant about expressing even a modicum of their religious faith as openly as in the American Bible Belt, where everyone proudly displays religious paraphernalia on their desks and workstations in their places of business. Most people don’t have the luxury of attending their local diocesan cathedral; they are stuck with their parish church. If you leave your parish church, then you have to also leave the people and the community and parish you live in to do so. It makes fellowship/discipleship extremely prohibitive in this culture.
Apologies for this being so long – guess a nerve was struck. Blessings with your church’s growth. You would probably be really depressed if you came to visit my church and probably feel like you couldn’t get back home to America quickly enough.
(You’ve moved on to a new topic, thanks to the time zone!)
More apologies, Mike! I meant for this to be a comment of your Addition/Subtraction post. Boy, am I behind!
Barbara Brown Taylor… an amazing testimony to just how ridiculous it is to keep women out of the pulpit.
Dallas Willard was once asked to give an account of his views on tenure in a secular university. At one point, wrestling with his fellow Baylor students’ search for pulpits to fill, he said the Lord spoke to his heart the following:
“Never try to find a place to speak, try to have something to say.”
qb