Every week has a Sunday

One of the pressures of pastoral ministry is the knowledge that every Sunday the minister must be prepared with a sermon.  For those churches that still have Sunday night services and a mid-week service that means the minister is often expected to prepare three messages every week.  Assuming four weeks vacation each year (which many don't get) that is 144 messages a year.  It's no wonder many pastors feel the pressure of message preparation.  I am convinced that one reason many pastors do not remain at one church for more than 3-4 years is that they can take their "sermon barrel" with them to the next church and reduce the stress of sermon preparation.  However, I believe there are better ways to address this.

Sermon planning can help reduce the stress of sermon preparation.  As a bivocational pastor I soon learned that it was time well spent to think ahead about the messages I needed to bring to our congregation.  There are few feelings worse for a minister to arrive at Saturday night and not even know what you are going to preach the next morning.  By planning ahead the minister can use the time he or she has for the actual preparation of the message.  My planning would include both single messages and sermon series.  Each year I would preach through a book of the Bible, so the text gave me the theme of the message.  It was then my job to put meat on that skeleton.  In my book The Healthy Pastor: Easing the Pressures of Ministry I go into detail about how I planned out my sermons in advance.

The actual preparation of the sermon is made easier with a good library and a good filing system.  As I visit with pastors I am often shocked at how bare their libraries are.  I've wondered more than once how they were able to prepare sound messages with the resources they had available to them.  I know books are expensive.  Believe me, I've bought plenty, but it's important to look at them as an investment in your ministry and not just as an expense.  There are now some very good Bible study software programs available with excellent resources that are much less expensive than purchasing books.  For those ministers who are tech savvy this may be a good option.  But, the best library in the world is of little use if you do not have a good filing system so you can find the material you need for a particular sermon.  One of the biggest time wasters in sermon preparation is in trying to find something that you remember reading in some book or publication.  Again, in the book I mentioned above I describe the filing system I began using in the mid-1980s and continue to use today.  It might work for you as well. 

Many churches expect their pastor to deliver all the messages, but that may not be a realistic expectation.  Sometimes the minister puts that expectation on himself or herself.  There are other options that can sometimes be helpful to relieve some of the stress of preparing sermons.  As a pastor I would occasionally show a video on Sunday night.  Twice our church bought a series of videos that focused on some of the significant sites in the Holy Land.  Our people enjoyed viewing these sites and learning more about their importance to the biblical story.

Two of our lay leaders filled the pulpit for me when I was away on vacation.  Later, two other lay leaders accepted the challenge of delivering a sermon.  Each of these individuals did an excellent job, and our people enjoyed their messages.  It was obvious they put a lot of work in their preparation, and it was enjoyable for me to be able to not have to prepare a message that week.

Preaching creates a stress for ministers that will never go away, but here are some simple solutions to help ease some of that stress.  I always found preaching to be one of the most enjoyable aspects of ministry, but it's enjoyable only when you are able to reduce the stress that often comes with it.