The Boomerang Sermon

In sermon prep, we discover that we need God's message as much as anyone.

Every week pastors around the world set aside time to prepare sermons. We stare at the blank document on our word processor, watching that terrifying cursor blink, almost in unison with the seconds ticking away. It's a stressful time.

Even though I pick out the topics and Scripture for my sermons months in advance, this moment of blank document anxiety begins every week when I sit down to prepare my message. Since I study at home (a place of endless distraction), I find every excuse not to write anything down or read anything from the stack of resources I've pulled from my shelves. Nevertheless, like all pastors, I am fixed to a deadline and must produce something before I can deliver the message.

For many pastors, Saturday night is not a time of fun and entertainment, but of utter madness. Writing is a frustrating process, and I am not sure there is a single person who really enjoys it. Pastors don't write sermons because we want to, we write sermons because we have to. This burden makes preaching energizing, but it makes our study time stressful. We don't always feel like preparing or preaching or writing, but we know we must. Who else will? Writing is a burden.

Recently, one of our pastors asked each preacher on staff how he goes about preparing his sermons. When he came to me, I shared my process in my typical, scattered way. I said my process started by listening to my audience, identifying what I'm hearing from those I speak to each week. This, of course, is essential in preaching. Listening to your community—with its needs and lies bound together—can lead to God's direction. I explained the importance of good resources such as commentaries, and I recommended reading widely outside of the common theological resources as well (fiction, current events magazines, and more).

But as I sat in my office after he left and looked at my "process" outlined on my whiteboard, I reflected on the actual content from my sermon the week before. Listening to my audience was part of it, but it certainly wasn't the genesis of my sermon. The resources I read certainly guided and structured my exegesis. But more than these things, my sermon started with God's activity in my heart, in my daily life. Much of my actual content came from lessons hidden deep within my character, which Christ is forming. I never expected these things to surface until I sat to write. Read more