The power of the pulpit in the small church

As a judicatory leader I get to visit a lot of churches.  This past Sunday I visited a small church that had about 35 people in the service.  The pastor preached from the book of Philemon and delivered a message I had never heard anyone preach from that book.  I thought the message was very well done and applicable to people's lives.  He had obviously spent time in preparing his message.  The only problem was that more people were not there to hear it.

Contrast that to other churches I have visited.  Obviously, the bar for excellent preaching has been set very low in those churches, and their pastors only sometimes hit that bar.  I have left many of those churches wondering why anyone attends there.  It certainly is not for the sermons.  Those pastors seemed bored in the pulpit, and too many of the messages felt like something that was put together quickly on a Saturday night perhaps from something they found on the Internet.  The message certainly did not seem to have inspired the preacher so it should not be a surprise if it doesn't inspire the listeners either.  I always leave those churches sad at the missed opportunities the pastor had to speak words of life to the congregation.

In larger churches there are usually many opportunities to speak to the membership.  Those churches have something going on five or six nights a week.  In the smaller church the best opportunity for the pastor to speak to the membership is on Sunday morning.  For many of the congregation, that is the only time they will be at the church all week.  This is the time for the pastor to speak words of encouragement and challenge to those he or she has been called to lead.  This is also the time to cast vision and speak of what God wants to do in and through that church.  It is critical that the small church pastor make the best use of his or her pulpit ministry.

This demands that sermon preparation remains a priority.  Sometimes, this can be challenging especially for the bivocational pastor who is trying to squeeze many activities into a limited number of hours.  During my pastorate I fired a few  "Saturday night specials" into the congregation, and most of them were instantly forgettable.  The messages that spoke to the congregation were usually the ones I had invested time in preparing.

A minister can block off time for various ministry activities, but that will usually last only until the telephone rings.  The pastor who can set aside Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday mornings for sermon preparation is usually one who has staff available to run to the hospital when a member goes in and other people to handle various other responsibilities. That will not describe most bivocational ministers.  We may want to do sermon preparation at certain times during the week, but we also know that will only happen if an emergency doesn't occur that requires our attention elsewhere.  At the same time we cannot neglect sermon preparation by using those emergencies as an excuse.  Sermon preparation must be a priority which means we simply have to spend time working on our sermons.

One of the things that helped me as a pastor is when I began to plan out a preaching schedule three months in advance.  I would take a couple of sheets of paper in the fall of the year, write out the dates for each Sunday in the upcoming year in the margin, make note of any special days such as Easter, and then begin praying about what I needed to preach each Sunday.  I would often preach series of sermons so my planning had some continuity.  In the summer I would often preach through a book of the Bible so I would write down a possible title based on the various texts found in that particular book.  By knowing what I was going to preach in advance, when that week came I could focus on preparing that message.  I didn't have to spend half the week trying to decide what to preach.  It was also a big help to those who planned our worship services knowing three months out what my sermon topics would be.  I felt it made our worship services better as the entire service was built around the sermon for that day.

I encourage pastors to make their preaching a priority.  Invest in good books to help you research your sermons.  Invest enough time to do quality study, and spend the time necessary to create a good flow to your sermon.  I hear too many pastors who don't seem to know how to end their sermon.  They keep flying around and around repeating themselves over and over, and I want to scream, "Just land the plane!"  To me it just shows they did not spend sufficient time in preparing their sermon.

One last thing I'll address: please make your sermons apply to the real lives of people.  Too many sermons may be theologically sound, but they have no application to anyone's life.  People want to know how the Bible speaks to the situations they face in life, and if you cannot show any application they just have to assume it is irrelevant to modern society.  Of course, the Bible does speak to today's world, but it is up to us in the pulpit to help others see that.