Putting in a Good Word for Online Sermons

Happy are those
who do not follow the advice of the wicked,
or take the path that sinners tread,
or sit in the seat of scoffers;
but their delight is in the law of the Lord,
and on his law they meditate day and night.

They are like trees
planted by streams of water,
which yield their fruit in its season,
and their leaves do not wither.
In all that they do, they prosper. Psalm 1: 1-3, NRSV

A sermon should edify, encourage, energize, enthuse, exhort, inspire, and uplift the congregation. The liturgy is not the place for a lecture on the Bible, a lecture that is dull and which drags on and on, a lecture that dwells on irrelevant facts and unimportant details. If I want to learn more about a particular passage or chapter of the Bible, I read one of the better commentaries but only after I have done an exhaustive study of the passage or chapter myself from scratch. I have no interest in hearing a pastor regurgitate what he may have read or offer pointless speculations about a passage and then dismiss these speculations. He is wasting my time and the time of the rest of the congregation.

If the pastor is a supply for the pulpit and the communion table and is receiving an honorarium, my thought is that the church should hire someone else next time. A congregation should not be forced to sit through a long, boring sermon in order to receive the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. Boredom is, after all, a form of anger. By the time the preacher has finished, the congregation may no longer be in a fit state to receive the sacrament, being no longer in love and charity with their neighbor, i.e., the pastor.

Pastors should keep their sermons short and to the point. They should not wander all over the place or chase rabbits, going completely off track and talking about random unrelated topics before coming back to their original point, if they come back to it at all. The congregation does not need to hear everything that they have read on the subject, only what is salient to the point that they are seeking to make, presuming that they have a point.

A wise investment on a part of a bishop would be to sponsor quarterly preaching clinics for pastors and lay preachers. These clinics can be conducted online, using Zoom or another video conferencing platform.

What some pastors claim are sermons are talks or lectures that after careful editing of their content and further polishing properly belong in the classroom, not a service of public worship. The purpose of a sermon is not to show the congregation how erudite or well-read the pastor is, but to affect a transformation in the lives of the congregation. It meant to be means through which God works in us, a channel of God’s grace through which God influences our lives.

The poor quality of their sermons may explain why some pastors have been reluctant to take their sermons online. When a pastor preaches a sermon online, whether live-streamed or pre-recorded and then streamed, he no longer has a captive audience. If his sermon does not grab the attention of online viewers and hold their attention, they will be gone with the click of a mouse. They will not stick around to hear the entire sermon.

In service of public worship where a pastor has a captive audience, he does not have as much incentive to improve his preaching than he does when he takes his sermons online. While we might like to believe that all pastors desire to see the spiritual growth of the flock in their care, some pastors may be less attentive to their flock’s spiritual growth than others. They may have erroneous views of their role as a pastor. For example, they may primarily see themselves as a dispenser of sacramental grace. They may have grown lazy and careless. They may have lost their first love. They are no longer responsive to the nudging of the Holy Spirit and worldly preoccupations have taken Jesus’ place in their lives.

Members of a congregation will tolerate poor quality sermons because they may have not experienced good preaching. When it comes to a pastor to serve as a supply for the pulpit and the communion table, they may have little choice. They must take whoever is available. Despite the poor quality of his sermons, they or other members of the congregation may think highly of the pastor for a variety of reasons, reasons that may have little to do with his qualifications as a pastor: He is local. He shares their political views. He enjoys the same hobbies and pastimes. He is amiable. And so forth. Their primary reason for attending the service may be to participate in what is for them a familiar Sunday morning ritual, to receive communion and to socialize after the service. Listening to a sermon is simply a part of the ritual.

Going online forces a pastor to take more trouble in preparing his sermons. He is more likely to keep his sermon short and to stick to the point. If he pre-records his sermons before streaming them, he has an opportunity to hear and see himself and redo the sermon before airing it. Unless the pastor is doing online communion, the sermon will be the primary reason, viewers will be visiting the church’s website or Facebook page. Viewers will also be comparing his sermons with those of other pastors.

Going online has other benefits. A pastor can create a library of his sermons, which members of his congregation and other visitors to the church website can access at any time of the day. If regular attendees of the church miss a service, they can hear the sermon at a later time. Churchgoers looking for a new church home can get a foretaste of the pastor’s preaching.

Millennials will visit a church website, listen to audios of sermons, and watch videos of services as many as six times before deciding to visit a church in person. In this day and age few people visit a church without checking out the church beforehand. They want to know what they can expect to find when if they visit the church. They want to know what the church has to offer them and their children. In these days of the CVID-19 pandemic they want to know what precautionary measures, if any, the church takes to protect visitors. They do not want to visit a church blind.

With the decline in churchgoing in the United States and Canada, pastors and lay preachers need to take their preaching more seriously. While how their sermons ultimately affect their listeners is God’s doing, this does not excuse them from putting their best effort into each sermon that they preach. To do otherwise is not to be faithful to the calling that God has entrusted to them. A sermon that transforms the lives of those who hear it can affect the lives of those whose lives intersect with theirs. It can affect the life of a whole community. 

Wind and water can reduce a boulder to a tiny pebble. They can reduce to a range of tall mountains to a series of low hills. God’s Word, faithfully preached, is far more powerful than wind and water.

Preachers must also practice what they preach. “Practice what you preach” has become an axiom that is honored more by its neglect than by its observance. Preachers themselves are a part of their own message. 

I do not see how preachers, ordained or lay, can preach to a congregation seeking to live Jesus’ teaching and to follow Jesus’ example in their lives, if they do not themselves believe and practice what Jesus taught and exemplified. Whatever message they are preaching, they are not preaching Jesus. 

One of the reasons that Christians are exercising less influence in the United States and Canada is that their lives no longer reflect the One that they call Lord. When Christians live no differently from their non-Christian neighbors, when they go on social media, spread untruths, and lash out at other people, they are doing untold harm to the Jesus' church on earth. They are undoing the faithful witness of previous generations who took Jesus' words and example to heart. The task of the God-fearing, God-honoring preacher is to call them back to the way of Jesus and not to egg them on in the ways of the world.