I am in the middle of a preaching class right now and while it is nothing particularly new, it is definitely reminding me that how a message is prepared by a pastor is a mystery to many Christians. In fact, we pastors have shrouded the entire process in mystery, trying to make ourselves look better. So today I want to take a brief moment and talk about what it takes to get a sermon ready, and hopefully dispel a few myths in the process. Consider it a pastor’s confession.
Many Christians seem to have an exaggerated notion of their pastor’s spiritual connection with God and a degraded notion of their own ability to hear from God. These people honestly assume that pastors have a more direct connection with God than the average Christian. This leads these people to assume that pastors either spend most of our time in prayer while creating a sermon, and then directly write it down as God inspired us, or that we spend very little time preparing because God gives it to us. Either way, these well-meaning Christians assume that every word from their pastor is inspired in a way that their words never could be.
I wish I could say that God stirs over my blank notepad like God stirred over the waters of the deep in Genesis and that form divinely comes from the nothingness that is there. But I would be lying if I did. Pastors don’t have a special connection to God. We have simply been asked by God vocationally to be pastors. Our ability to connect with God is the same as everyone else’s. What that means practically is two things. First, please don’t accept everything a pastor says as the perfect word of God. Sometimes we really miss the mark, sometimes we confuse God with us, and sometimes we even forget to listen to God in the first place. Second, it means that the forming of a sermon is not an instant or even fun process. It takes many hours of thought, work, and worry.
Because pastors don’t have a superhuman connection with God it also means we have to spend a great deal of time studying what we do know contains God’s word, the Bible. We spend hours looking at a single passage of scripture, until we feel confident we can see how God is moving through that passage. From there it is fairly easy to compare how God moved in the Bible with our world and find where God is moving, or wants to move, in us today.
I wish I could tell you that every sermon I’ve ever given has been God’s word to the people, but I know that isn’t true. I spend a dozen or more hours researching a passage each week, and I still miss the point sometimes. And just like you pray and seek direction, but don’t always seem to find it, I also try to find how a passage best applies to our church, and yet often get no insight I recognize as divine. The truth is that a sermon is always a starting point, not an ending one. Pastors create it through hours of research, and prayer, but that does not mean it is ready to just believe and apply without thought.
To truly be the word of God to a community, it needs to be thought about, discussed, and digested by that community and not just by one or two people up front. We do most of the research, but the true value of a message comes from the people discussing the passage themselves. Think about it, the services that have mattered to you the most are probably the ones you talked about with other people soon after you heard them. It takes that discussion and thought on your part to absorb the truth and discard the garbage that all pastors bring with them. Because like everyone else, we start out with an empty page on our desk, and work from there. God rarely puts words on the page for us.
Many Christians seem to have an exaggerated notion of their pastor’s spiritual connection with God and a degraded notion of their own ability to hear from God. These people honestly assume that pastors have a more direct connection with God than the average Christian. This leads these people to assume that pastors either spend most of our time in prayer while creating a sermon, and then directly write it down as God inspired us, or that we spend very little time preparing because God gives it to us. Either way, these well-meaning Christians assume that every word from their pastor is inspired in a way that their words never could be.
I wish I could say that God stirs over my blank notepad like God stirred over the waters of the deep in Genesis and that form divinely comes from the nothingness that is there. But I would be lying if I did. Pastors don’t have a special connection to God. We have simply been asked by God vocationally to be pastors. Our ability to connect with God is the same as everyone else’s. What that means practically is two things. First, please don’t accept everything a pastor says as the perfect word of God. Sometimes we really miss the mark, sometimes we confuse God with us, and sometimes we even forget to listen to God in the first place. Second, it means that the forming of a sermon is not an instant or even fun process. It takes many hours of thought, work, and worry.Because pastors don’t have a superhuman connection with God it also means we have to spend a great deal of time studying what we do know contains God’s word, the Bible. We spend hours looking at a single passage of scripture, until we feel confident we can see how God is moving through that passage. From there it is fairly easy to compare how God moved in the Bible with our world and find where God is moving, or wants to move, in us today.
I wish I could tell you that every sermon I’ve ever given has been God’s word to the people, but I know that isn’t true. I spend a dozen or more hours researching a passage each week, and I still miss the point sometimes. And just like you pray and seek direction, but don’t always seem to find it, I also try to find how a passage best applies to our church, and yet often get no insight I recognize as divine. The truth is that a sermon is always a starting point, not an ending one. Pastors create it through hours of research, and prayer, but that does not mean it is ready to just believe and apply without thought.
To truly be the word of God to a community, it needs to be thought about, discussed, and digested by that community and not just by one or two people up front. We do most of the research, but the true value of a message comes from the people discussing the passage themselves. Think about it, the services that have mattered to you the most are probably the ones you talked about with other people soon after you heard them. It takes that discussion and thought on your part to absorb the truth and discard the garbage that all pastors bring with them. Because like everyone else, we start out with an empty page on our desk, and work from there. God rarely puts words on the page for us.
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