Tell the story

 Jesus told a lot of stories when He spoke. We call them parables, but they were stories. They were used to help make His teachings better understood. He used common things such as sheep, fig trees, water and more to teach deep theological truths. Sometimes I think we preachers spend too much time explaining what a word meant in the original Greek or Hebrew and not enough time telling stories.

Young people, the ones most churches claim they want to reach, enjoy stories they can relate to. It's why they go to movies and watch their favorite programs on TV. Even much of their music contains a storyline that they can relate to. 

As you might imagine, I include a lot of stories in my messages. I'm convinced that the stories help people better understand the theological truths I'm giving them. Sometimes, these stories are humorous; other times they are serious, but they are always told for the purpose of clarifying a truth.

I tend to be pretty transparent when including myself in a story. I don't want people to think I have everything figured out, and I'm living without any challenges in my life or faith. I've spoken honestly about being diagnosed as clinically depressed back in the 1980s and spending a year on medication and in therapy before escaping from that dark cloud. Every time I've shared that story, people have come to me thanking me, sometimes in a whisper, for sharing that experience. I've talked about financial problems we've had in the past, what it took to get out of that and how we would not have got in that mess if we had been treating our finances according to biblical teaching.

Such stories let people know that their challenges and doubts are experienced by all people, and they are not a lesser Christian for having them. They also let spiritual seekers know that coming to faith in Christ doesn't require that all their questions have to be answered first or they have to get their lives straightened up before becoming a Christian.

Just remember when you are telling stories to tell the one that matters most: Jesus Christ lived, died on the cross and was resurrected so that all who believe in Him could be forgiven of their sins and enjoy the promise of eternal life.

Sermon planning

 When I served as a pastor I began planning my sermons out at least a month in advance. I had a title and a text which I would give our pianist who selected the music for each service. This gave her time to prepare a worship service that complemented the message. I am now serving my third church as the Transitional Pastor, and I have done the same thing in each of these churches. This allows for a better worship service because everything is connected.

Notice I said I have a title and a text. I know where I am going with the message, but I usually don't have the message prepared yet, but I can tell you it's much easier to prepare the actual message when you know what you are going to preach compared to when you get to Saturday night and you still haven't decided on a sermon for the next day. I've preached a few "Saturday night specials," and they aren't fun.

Eventually, I was able to plan out my sermons at least a quarter in advance. Again, this was just with a title and a text, but this helped me be even better prepared. For instance, when I pastored I would preach through a book of the Bible or a major section during the summer months. Knowing in advance which book or section I would cover enabled me to purchase needed commentaries or other Bible helps well in advance. This strategy also gave me an opportunity to explore a section of Scripture in more detail which, in turn, helped the congregation become better informed about what the Bible taught. An additional benefit was that it prevented me from skipping over the "hard" teachings of the Bible. Let's face it, there are some passages many preachers would just as soon avoid, but when you are committed to preaching through a biblical book you can't avoid those passages. (For total transparency, I still have not preached through the Song of Solomon.)

There are still some ministers who insist they never prepare their sermons in advance but depend upon the Holy Spirit to direct their words when they stand to speak. I've heard a few of those sermons, and I would not want to blame the Holy Spirit for them. Listen, He can lead you in preparing your messages a month in advance the same as He can lead you in preparing them on Saturday night or Sunday morning.

While I am a big advocate for planning your preaching in advance, I recognize events may require the minister to change the schedule. For instance, the Sunday after 9/11 I did not preach the message I had planned for that Sunday. Instead, I prepared a new sermon that addressed the events of 9/11 and tried to speak to the fears and concerns many people had at the time. Here is where the Holy Spirit can lead us in a different direction, and it's important that we are sensitive to that leading.

Whether one is a bivocational pastor or a fully-funded pastor, he or she struggles with time constraints. Planning your sermons in advance is a great way to save time in your busy schedule. While it takes time to plan a preaching schedule, you will save much more time by doing so.

Study to show yourself approved

 As most regular readers of this blog know, when I began my pastoral ministry in 1981 I had no education beyond high school. As the bivocational pastor of a small, rural church I frankly did not expect to pursue an education, but over the years I managed to graduate college and earn both a masters and a doctoral degree while continuing to serve in ministry and working full-time jobs. With online classes being offered by many schools today it is far more doable that when I started my educational pursuit. However, not everyone can, or probably should, follow the route I did.

Some churches will not consider calling a pastor without a formal degree while others, especially in smaller, rural churches, may look upon formal education as a hindrance. My life-long work with bivocational churches and pastors has convinced me that the need for such ministers will continue to grow, and many of these individuals will lack a formal seminary education. However, this should not negate God's call on their lives nor should it excuse any unwillingness on their part to learn and preach sound doctrine to their congregations.

Much of my early preaching came from what I had learned from pastors I had sat under from my childhood up. While much of it was sound, in some cases I was passing on the traditions long believed within my tribe that were not necessarily biblical. As a denominational minister for 14 years who visited in different churches almost every Sunday I heard my share of similar sermons. 

Paul challenged Timothy to study to show himself approved. This is sound advice for all of us called into ministry. That does not mean that all must get a formal seminary education, but there are other ways to study the Word before we preach it.

My library has a large collection of commentaries and Bible study help books written by respected Bible scholars and theologians. It also includes several books on apologetics and systematic theology. I have a Bible study software program on my computer that gives me access to far more material. These help me prepare sermons and Bible studies that are doctrinally sound. Another section of my library includes large numbers of books related to pastoral and church ministry and leadership. A third section contains books that focus on the Christian lifestyle. These books have been collected over 40+ years and have helped me develop into the minister I am today. I have never looked at these books as a cost but rather as an investment to help me fulfill the calling God placed on my life.

Some pastors use their lack of formal education as an excuse to let the Holy Spirit lead them in what they will preach each week. I'm not sure I would want to blame God for some of the sermons I've heard! Saturday night specials can be dangerous. The fact is that in the times in which we live we have an abundance of material to help us prepare biblically sound messages that will enrich the lives of our congregations and teach them what the Bible says. It only requires that we spend the time in study and preparation.

Church hoppers

 Every pastor dreads to hear a member of the congregation say, "We're not getting fed here and we've decided to leave for another church." This is seldom true. There are those occasions when a pastor is not preaching biblical truth, and people do need to leave a church, but this is not usually the case when people say these words. The reality is that many of them are "church hoppers," people who move from church to church attempting to find a place that will cater to their preferences and desires.

In my 35+ years of ministry most of the people I've seen leave a church did so because they were angry because they didn't get their way. Some were controllers who had perhaps ran the church for years before someone finally said no to them. When they couldn't threaten and bully to get their way they left to take their dysfunction to another church. Some had a different vision for the church and its ministry, a vision most of the church didn't share, so they left. They weren't angry; they just needed to find a church whose vision for ministry more closely matched their own. This is different than the ones who leave because they didn't get their way.

Some have a "What have you done for me lately?" attitude. I learned the hard way that no matter how much you help some people, they always demand more. When the help begins to slow down, they move on to greener pastures.

Church hoppers can have a fear of commitment. They are afraid if they stay too long in a church they will be expected to become involved. The only involvement they want is to attend a worship service when it's convenient. They don't want any responsibility, and they certainly don't want to be held accountable. The pastor of one church told me that their church was large enough that people could hide out there. That can't happen in a smaller church. Eventually, in a smaller church people are going to be invited to serve in some capacity, and that invitation is enough to cause some church hoppers to leave.

They may also have a fear of the shallowness of their faith being exposed if they stay too long. While the excuse may be that they are not being fed, the reality may be that they don't want to be fed. Often, they are not feeding themselves. Their faith might be described as a mile wide and an inch deep. There is no depth to their faith, no roots, and this shallowness will eventually be seen if they stay in a church long enough for people to get to know them well.

 When people complain about not being fed, pastors should take a look at their sermons to see if there is any truth in the complaint. It might be that some adjustments may be needed in the messages, but often pastors will find that there is no basis for the complaint. In that case, wish the people well as they continue their spiritual journey and bless them as they continue their church hopping.

Influence from afar

Some of the people who have a great impact on our lives can be people we never meet. Such a person for me is Ravi Zacharias. I've never met the man. Many of his book sit on the bookshelves in my study. When I traveled a lot I downloaded his podcasts to listen to when I was on the road. Zacharias is a Christian apologist who has debated some of the leading atheists in the world, written numerous books, spoken to national leaders all over the world and has spoken on many university campuses. It was recently announced he has cancer, and the head of his ministry reported last week that the cancer has advanced to the point that there is nothing else medicine can do for him.

Zacharias was the person who introduced me to apologetics and helped me understand how important it is to be able to defend the faith against the popular beliefs held by many in the world today. Since I began reading his books and listening to his podcasts I have added a number of books to my library from some of the leading Christian thinkers today. People such as J. P. Moreland, Alvin Plantinga, Norman Geisler, William Lane Craig, Dallas Willard and a number of others have helped me grow deeper in the faith and caused me to think deeper about God and my relationship to Him. But it all began with Ravi Zacharias.

During a recent stint as the Transitional Pastor of a church that was seeking a new pastor I shared with them a number of sermons based on sound apologetics. We had a series of why if God exists is there evil in the world, and a few weeks later another series of why suffering exists. We looked at some of the apologetic arguments for the existence of God such as the Moral Argument and the Fine-Tuning Argument. One Sunday we examined Paschal's Wager. There is not enough of this type of preaching in many of our churches, and our people reflect that by the shallow Christian lives many of them live. They've never been challenged to go deeper than the standard Sunday school lesson plan.

If I was pastored a church again I would probably have a couple of sermon series each year that addressed issues and questions from the perspective of an apologist. I would also determine if a small group or class could be formed around a study of apologetics. William Lane Craig actually teaches a class in his home church called the Defender's class. The lessons are available to be used in churches so the class could have the benefit of being taught by one of the leading Christian apologists and theologians in the nation.

We must find ways to deepen the faith of our fellow believers as well as deepen our own faith. One way to do that is to expose ourselves to some of the best Christian thinkers. We need to let them help us drink deeply from the well of Scripture. This will not only help us grow but also give us the tools we need to share our faith with others. Ravi Zacharias helped me understand this, and I am eternally grateful for it. Please keep him and his family in your prayers.

Prepared for Sunday's sermon

Most church attenders expect their pastors to be prepared to preach on Sunday morning. They expect the pastor will have studied the Scriptures, prayed over them and crafted a message that will speak to their spiritual and physical needs. These expectations are valid, but how many of them will have prepared themselves to hear the message? While some might complain that a minister does not know how to preach, how many of our church members know how to hear? If people rush around getting ready to go to a worship service, come in at the last minute, frustrated with one another, how much value will they receive from the worship service or the message? The same is true with the person who constantly glances at his or her watch wondering how much longer the service will last.

It's important that people come with hearts prepared to worship and to hear the message that will be preached. You are there to encounter God, not to check off a box on your weekly spiritual to-do list, and it's important that each of us are prepared for that encounter. The Puritans understood this and one of their preachers, Richard Baxter, explained how one should receive the message. He wrote

Come not to hear with a careless heart, as if you were to hear a matter that little concerned you, but come with a sense of the unspeakable weight, necessity, and consequence of the holy word which you are to hear; and when you understand how much you are concerned in it, it will greatly help your understanding of every particular truth....

Make it your work with diligence to apply the word as you are hearing it....Cast not all upon the minister, as those that will go no further than they are carried as by force....You have work to do as well as the preacher, and should all the time be as busy as he...you must open your mouths, and digest it, for another cannot digest it for you...therefore be all the while at work, and abhor an idle heart in hearing, as well as an idle minister.

Chew the cud, and call up all when you come home in secret, and by meditation preach it over to yourselves. If it were coldly delivered by the preacher, do you...preach it more earnestly over to your own hearts....

I have often joked that Sunday dinner in many Christians' homes is roast preacher. How much better would it be if that dinner time was used as an opportunity to reflect upon and discuss as a family what God might be saying in the message just heard? Could we not benefit from spending time after the service meditating on the message to learn what God is saying to us personally? Where do I find myself in the message, and how should I respond to that?

Several years ago, before I went into the ministry, I heard a preacher share the story of the Good Samaritan, a text I had heard preached many times. The thing that caught my attention was that he said that, at different times in our lives, we all are each of the characters in the story. Sometimes we are the robbers, sometimes we are the one beaten up, sometimes we are the ones who pass by without offering help, sometimes we are the good Samaritan and sometimes we are the innkeeper. I have thought about that message many times since then, and at different times in my life I have found myself playing one of those roles. For over 40 years that sermon still speaks to me and challenges me.

Sermons will have their greatest impact on those who have prepared themselves to hear them, are willing to spend time meditating on them and then applying them to their lives. As pastors we need to help teach people how to be prepared each Sunday to worship and to receive the message.

Spiritually immature Christians

This past weekend I had the wonderful opportunity to speak to a gathering of Church of the Nazarene pastors and staff in Indianapolis on bivocational ministry. This was a continuing education event for them, and I was honored to have been invited to be one of the speakers.

Although my focus was on bivocational ministry, during the seminar I veered off into another issue. Those who know me understand that is not unusual! I can chase rabbits with the best of them! I just believe that if something comes into my mind while I'm addressing something it may be that it is a word someone present needs to hear. In this case it was around the issue of spiritually immaturity and the biblical illiteracy that affects so many believers today.

Throughout my ministry I've heard pastors complain about the lack of biblical understanding found in so many of the members of their congregations. What I said to this gathering of pastors is that if they have been in their church for more than three years, and they are complaining about how their people do not know the Scriptures, that is their fault. John Maxwell often says that for the first three years you can blame your predecessor for all the church's problems, but after three years they belong to you. I think there is a lot of truth in that.

As a Resource Minister for 14 years I was in a different church almost every week. My wife and I would leave some services talking about how shallow the message was. There was no meat. There was very little Scripture and even less application to how the Scripture spoke to today's world. The people were being given milk and not meat, and in some cases it was 2% milk, watered down so much that it barely qualified as milk.

Perhaps one reason I spoke about this at the pastor's gathering was because of a book I am reading now, The Pastor as Public Theologian: Reclaiming a Lost Vision by Kevin Vanhoozer and Owen Strachan. The authors point out how in the past the pastor's primary role was to be a theological teacher to the church and community, but now with all the expectations that people place upon the pastor that role has diminished in many churches. Too often, theological depth has been replaced with a feel-good message that may tickle the ears but has no power to change lives. We have given theological teaching over to the academic world and to the "experts" and given pastors the task of doing "practical" ministry. With this kind of separation it is no wonder that many believers are so weak in their faith.

Pastors are to proclaim the "whole counsel of God," and that requires that we take our listeners into the depths of Scripture. Of course, in order to do that we have to set aside time to study the Scriptures ourselves and prepare messages that are theologically sound and address real needs of people. We have to help them develop a Christian worldview, think biblically about the issues and challenges they are facing, and be ready to defend their faith against the critics and unbelievers they will face throughout their lives. We are losing our young people because we have not done that. Multitudes of others see nothing in Christianity that appeals to them because they cannot see any difference in the lives of Christians than what they are experiencing in their own lives.

I'm only half-way through this book so I don't know what advice the authors will offer, but I would encourage pastors to review the past six months of their sermons. Were they messages that challenged your people to go deeper in their faith? Did they challenge your people to think more theologically about some issue? Did they contain the meat necessary to promote genuine growth in the lives of your people? If not, what do you need to do differently in 2020?

Sermon ideas

This past Saturday afternoon a pastor sent me a text asking if I was available to preach for him the next morning. He had the stomach flu and didn't feel like he would be able to preach. I was glad to fill in. My wife asked if I had a sermon I could use. I've been preaching now for 38 years so, yea, I've got a few sermons. However, I also have some new sermons that I've written since finishing as a Transitional Pastor. I explained to her that just because I'm not preaching every week that doesn't mean I'm not preparing sermons. Scripture tells us to be instant in season and out of season. I always want to be ready to share the Word of God when I have opportunity.

As a younger pastor I probably had more sermon ideas than I ever developed. I would read something or hear something and think that would be a great message. But, I wouldn't write anything down and would soon forget the idea. That doesn't happen now. If I'm reading or listening to something and it triggers a sermon idea I immediately write down a note to remind me.

During my devotional reading this past week I ran across a great thought for a sermon. I stopped my reading, pulled out other resources, and in 2-3 hours had a completed sermon. At some point there will be an appropriate time and place to share it, and if not I've still benefited from the study that went into the message.

I've written elsewhere about the time challenges bivocational pastors face. The fact is, most pastors are busy. Many struggle with finding time to prepare good messages. One way to maximize your sermon preparation is to always be on the lookout for sermon ideas, and when you find them make notes that will remind you of your thoughts. In a perfect world you would stop what you are doing and develop the message right then. That may not always be possible, but at least make notes. I've always heard that a dull pencil is more valuable than a sharp mind. The chances are good if you just try to remember your ideas about the message, you'll forget them. Write them down!

If you regularly preach you should always be looking for sermon ideas or illustrations everywhere. Those ideas do not have to come out of your Bible reading. Some of the best messages I've developed have come from common life events. After all, didn't Jesus often teach some of his best lessons from events that were going on around Him? Of course, you'll want to make sure your thoughts are supported by Scripture and use your study resources to properly prepare your message, but the germ of the idea can come from common, ordinary events that happen to everyone.

 By always looking for sermon ideas and developing those ideas whether or not you need a sermon for the next week, you'll always be ready to preach. You never know when you'll get a text on a Saturday evening asking if you can fill in for a sick pastor or when you'll have an unusually busy week that interferes with your study time.

Planning your preaching for the new year

During my pastorate this was the time of year I spent time thinking about my sermons for the new year. I would often begin with a theme for the year or a primary focus our church needed to have as we began a new year of ministry. That didn't mean the entire year would be given over to that focus, but it would be the one we would begin with. My goal was to have at least the first three months of sermons planned with at least a title and the text. If I began the year with the first quarter planned it was much easier to stay prepared 2-3 months in advance.

This allowed me to do several things. One, I didn't have to begin each week trying to decide what to preach. I could spend that time actually preparing the message. This also enabled me to be looking for illustrations and stories that could be included in the message to help bring it alive.

It also made it easier to have the resources I needed to prepare the messages. For instance, each year after Father's Day I would do a series of messages on a book or major section of the Bible. Once I decided what book I would cover, I could order commentaries and other helps  to assist me in preparing the messages. When it came time to prepare the sermons I had the resource material I needed.

Planning my sermons this way helped me offer more balanced preaching. Every pastor has his or her favorite topics. Our people need to hear more than that. We need to provide them with a well-rounded study of what the Scriptures have to teach us.

In addition to preaching through a book of the Bible each year I also did a shorter series between Mother's Day and Father's Day that focused on various aspects of family life. Families in America need a lot of help, and the Bible has much to say about the family. If I returned to the pulpit today I would also offer a series of messages each year focusing on apologetics to help people be better able to defend their faith.

I found that planning my sermons well in advance made me a better preacher and helped me better manage my time as a bivocational pastor. I quickly got tired of not knowing until Friday or Saturday what I was going to preach the next Sunday. Saturday night specials are not helpful to anyone. Planning my messages at least three months in advance did much to relieve that stress.

As important as sermon planning is, your schedule cannot be written in stone. In fact, I wrote my sermon's title and text in pencil. You always want the flexibility to change your message if circumstances dictate. For instance, I know one pastor who preached the sermon he had planned a year before the Sunday after 9/11. The church was full that Sunday of people who wanted to know what God had to say about such events, but they left after hearing a message that said nothing about the event. It was a great opportunity that was missed because the pastor would not deviate from his plan. If you feel God leading you in another direction be willing to change your sermon plans.

Sometimes people will push back on the idea of planning their sermons in advance by saying they want to allow the Holy Spirit to lead them. I've heard some of their sermons, and I don't think I would want to blame the Holy Spirit for what I heard! I've always thought God can lead us three months in advance just as well as He can lead us from week to week.

If you have not made it a practice to plan your sermons in advance I encourage you to try it in 2019. If it doesn't work for you feel free to go back to whatever you were doing. My guess is once you do it for awhile you'll continue doing it.

Plan your preaching in advance

Each year about this time I post an article recommending that ministers need to plan their preaching in advance. This is especially true for bivocational ministers. It's another way of controlling your time, a topic I covered in yesterday's post.

When I was a pastor I began my preparations in the fall of the year for the next year. The process I used was very simple. I took a legal pad and wrote down every Sunday's date. Because we had evening services each date had two lines, one for the AM service and one for the PM service.Using two lines allowed me to have enough room to record the Sermon title and text for one quarter of the year for each message. I would then go through the calendar and note any special days such as Mother's Day or Easter.

I would then prayerfully consider what needed to be addressed in the upcoming year. On the Sundays between Mother's Day and Father's Day I would normally do a series of sermons on family life. During the summer I would do a series through a book of the Bible or a major section of the Bible such as the Sermon on the Mount. By planning in the fall of the year this gave me a lot of time to get any research material or books I might need for my sermon preparation. Once I filled in major blocks I could begin to look for opportunities for shorter sermon series or individual sermons. Possible titles and text would be written on my sheet of paper in pencil. I always wanted to be able to make a change if circumstances required. My goal was always to prepare at least one quarter in advance.

There are so many advantages to planning your preaching schedule.

1. When you plan ahead you can focus on sermon preparation instead of trying to decide what you are going to preach on the next Sunday.
2. You avoid the "Saturday night specials" which usually are not that special.
3. You allow your worship teams to also plan in advance. During a recent stint as a Transitional Pastor the worship leaders in both services voiced their appreciation for knowing my sermons a month in advance so they could develop a worship service that flowed around the message.
4. You are prepared for those times when you have an extremely busy week with people in the hospital, funerals, and other situations that would make preparing your sermon difficult.
5. You will have a more balanced approach to your preaching because you will have more time to prepare messages on the more challenging topics that require more study.

I always began this preparation in the fall because I found that time was a little slower for me, especially the weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas when many families were involved in their own activities.

Some question whether such preparation takes away the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. I've always believed the Holy Spirit can lead us in preparing a quarter in advance just as well as He can lead our preparation a week at a time. That's not to say that I never changed my message from what I had scheduled. Certainly, the Sunday after 9/11 I did not preach the message I had prepared for that Sunday but preached one more pertinent to that event. There were other times I switched messages around, but these were few and far between.

If you have not prepared your messages in advance I encourage you to try it in 2019. I think you'll be happy with the results.

Preparing for 2018

As we near the end of 2017 and prepare to welcome 2018 it's important to make sure we do certain things. If you are a pastor I hope you have already begun sermon planning for the new year. When I was a bivocational pastor I tried to have my sermons planned out three months in advance. It's much easier to prepare sermons if, on Saturday night, you're not still trying to figure out what you are going to preach the next morning!

New Year's resolutions seldom accomplish much past January 3rd. Setting goals is far more helpful if you are serious about enjoying success in any area of your life. When you have written goals you have direction in your life. Like the old saying goes, if you aim at nothing you'll hit it every time. Productive, successful people have goals they work on every day.

In yesterday's post I mentioned one goal I have every year: to read 50 books that year. This year part of that goal includes re-reading some of the books that have had the greatest impact on my life. I have a bad habit of reading a book and never taking it back out of the shelf unless I'm using it for research for a sermon or a book I'm writing. If a book impacted my life once chances are it will again, so I plan to re-read some of them this year.

One other goal I encourage you to set is to schedule time with your family. If you are in a leadership position, or just busy like most people, it's very easy to try to work in some family time. That seldom happens. Set a goal for how many vacations you are going to take, how long each of them will be, and when you are taking them. Write those in your calendar now so those times are already scheduled.

I also want to encourage you to be intentional about your own spiritual growth in 2018. Persons in ministry often seem to think that their work will automatically cause them to grow spiritually, but that is not always the case. If you want a congregation of people growing in their faith, you also need to be growing in your own faith. Set aside time for regular devotions. Study material that will stretch your faith and increase your knowledge of God.

Some other practical things you should do includes checking your driver's license for the expiration date. In November of this year I began wondering when my license expired. It expired in August. The next day I made a quick trip to the license branch to get that little problem corrected.

The start of the new year is also a good time to clean up old records. Even though many of our records are now on computer, chances are you have some paper ones as well. Pitch the ones you do not need to keep and file the others. If you'll do that early in the new year it will make filing your taxes much easier later.

Sermon planning for 2018

Every year about this time I post an article about the importance of using the fall to think about your sermons for the upcoming year. Well, it's fall, and it's time to start that planning.

Some pastors are able to plan their entire preaching schedule for a year. I was not that good. I tried to plan at least three months worth, and I could often get six months of planning done before the new year started.

I always began by taking a yellow legal pad and writing down the dates for each Sunday in the left hand column. (Yes, you can use your computer. I'm old, and I like paper!) To the left of that I would write out if that Sunday had a special emphasis such as Mother's Day or the first Sunday of Advent. If you have to preach both on Sunday morning and Sunday night you will find that a legal pad will give you enough lines for one quarter of sermons. If you only preach on Sunday morning, just skip a line between each date.

The next thing I would do is pray about what I wanted to accomplish. Your church's vision should inform much of what you are wanting to do. I would then begin to think about themes. Soon these would lead to sermon titles with a text. That's what I would write down. The special emphasis Sundays would have their own special theme. (It really wasn't too hard to know what my topic would be on the Sunday before Thanksgiving!)

One thing I often did was plan a series of sermons on the family between Mother's Day and Father's Day. That was often one of the most popular sermon series I did each year.

The Sunday after Father's Day I would often begin a lengthy sermon series through a book of the Bible or a major portion of Scripture such as the Sermon on the Mount. This series would normally run through the entire summer and sometimes into the fall. This helped make sure I wasn't avoiding difficult passages, and it deepened our congregation's understanding about what the Bible teaches.

There are several advantages to planning your sermons months in advance.

• It allows you more time to actually prepare your messages. Too often, pastors who go Sunday-to-Sunday in their sermon preparation actually spend more time trying to decide what to preach than they spend in the preparation.
• It enables your worship planners to know in advance what your messages will be so they will be better able to plan the music and other elements of worship to coordinate with the message. This provides a better flow to your worship service.
• It lets you have a good overview of your sermons. One year as I was looking back at my messages for that year I realized that I had become rather negative in my preaching. God convicted me of that in such a way I apologized to the congregation the following Sunday and made a shift in my sermons.
• It makes sure you will have the necessary resources to prepare your sermons. For example, one year I decided to preach through the book of Romans for my summer series. At that time I did not have a lot of commentaries and other sermon helps on Romans. I made sure that problem was corrected before it was time to begin preparing those messages. 
• It helps ensure you are not just preaching on your current interests. Right now, I am very interested in reading on apologetics. I have shared some of my learning with my current congregation, but it would be unfair to do that every Sunday. By planning my preaching I am more likely to offer them more balanced messages that includes more than just apologetics.
• It also gives the speaker an opportunity to keep the church's vision before them. We are told that a congregation needs to be reminded at least once a month of its vision for ministry. Planning your messages in advance can help make that happen.

It does take time to plan a preaching scheduled, but after doing this for years I can tell you that the time you spend on the front end will be made up on the back end. It's a great feeling to sit down on Monday and know what your sermon text and theme is for the next week. You can go straight to preparing your message and not spend days trying to decide what to preach. Try it. Just plan one quarter and see how that goes.

Should you preach your old sermons again in the same church?

A few years ago when I was serving as a Resource Minister in our Region I was asked to fill the pulpit in one of my churches for a couple of weeks. I used to joke that I really only needed five sermons as a Resource Minister since I was usually in a different church every week. Since I would be in a different place the people there would not have heard the sermon I did the previous week in a different church.

On the second Sunday I was scheduled to preach in that church I decided to preach one of my favorite sermons even though I had preached it in that church seven years earlier. Few people remember a sermon more than a few weeks at the most so I wasn't worried. After the second service in that church a teen came up and asked, "Didn't you preach that message here before?" Busted! All I could do was smile and admit that I had.

There's nothing wrong with preaching a sermon over again in the same church. After all, the church sings the same hymns and songs over again. If a sermon is worth preaching once it's probably worth preaching again. Sometimes.

When I began my current ministry as the Transitional Pastor in a church I was convinced that sermon preparation would be the least of my concerns. After all, I had been a pastor for twenty years and had a file drawer full of sermons I had preached in my previous church. However, as I've gone through them I've discovered some problems with most of those sermons.

One, many of them are outdated with illustrations that have no relevance to our culture today. Two, most of them no longer reflect my preaching style today. Three, the majority of them lack the scholarship I now want in my messages. Fourth, few of them are pertinent to the church I'm currently serving. They were addressed to another church for another time. Almost none of them are suitable to preach in my current church.

Occasionally, I'm able to use one for inspiration and can sometimes use bits and pieces from it as I prepare a new sermon on the same topic. That's what I would suggest you do with your old sermons. A sermon that is not culturally relevant is of little value and will lack the impact on the congregation that you want.

There's nothing wrong with preaching a sermon over, but before you do check it over and make sure it will still communicate the message you want today's audience to hear.

Every week has a Sunday

In my first semester of Bible school I took a class that really impacted my entire ministry. The first day of class the instructor told us that he did not give tests. My first thought was I was really going to like this class! He then explained that he required four papers due on certain dates. If the paper was not turned in for any reasons we would receive a zero. No excuses accepted. None. Zero.

He explained that each of us were there preparing to be pastors. We needed to understand that every seven days we would be expected to stand in our pulpits and deliver a sermon. Our congregations would not care what else had occurred that week. They would accept no excuses. Every week had a Sunday, and we needed to be prepared for that. It was a lesson that I never forgot.

Saturday night specials are never fun. There's no enjoyment in realizing on Saturday you don't even know what you're going to preach the next day much less have it prepared. We know when we're not prepared to preach, and our congregations know it as well. They may be too polite to say anything...for a while, but if we continually neglect our sermon preparation we will eventually hear about it.

The best thing I did was to plan my preaching out at least a quarter in advance. I was flexible enough that if something significant happened I would change my planned message and prepare one to address the event, but that didn't happen as often as some might think.

By planning my sermons weeks in advance I could spend more time in the actual preparation rather than spending half the week deciding what to preach. I could also give this information to our worship team so they could design the entire service around the theme of the message. This allowed for a much better flow to the service.

I share how I did that planning, and many other tips for easing the pressures of ministry, in my book The Healthy Pastor: Easing the Pressures of Ministry. Order your copy and find ways to make your ministry more productive and less stressful.

Preaching with authority

In the 1940s Billy Graham was a young evangelist who was beginning to have questions about the authority of the Bible. A number of theologians were questioning that authority and Graham began to have doubts. He began studying the subject because he knew he could not continue his ministry if he could not be certain of the authority of the Scriptures he was preaching.

One night he went outside, opened his Bible, placed it on a tree stump and began to pray. In his prayer he told God that he even though there were things he did not understand he would accept the Scriptures as the Word of God by faith. When he finished his prayer he never again doubted God's Word. Interestingly enough, this occurred about one month before his Los Angeles crusade which launched his ministry.

Graham was well known for saying "The Bible says...." throughout his messages. The foundation of his preaching was the Bible, and this is what gave his messages the power and authority they had. His absolute confidence in the Scriptures enabled him to preach with passion resulting in large numbers of people coming to faith in Jesus Christ.

The authority of the Bible must also be the foundation that supports our preaching. Man's wisdom and philosophy cannot change a person's heart. Only the Word of God is sharper than any two-edged sword and able to divide even the soul and spirit of a person. Only biblical truth can convict a person of his or her need for a Savior.

Some preachers believe they must water down the Gospel in order to reach more people. Studies have found that is not true. Formerly unchurched people report that one of the things that attracted them to the churches they eventually began attending was strong, biblically based messages that did not compromise the teachings of Scripture.

The apostle Paul told Timothy, "Preach the word! Be ready in season and out of season. Convince, rebuke, exhort, with all longsuffering and teaching." His word is for those of us today who preach as well. Preach the word! Preach it with authority as one who believes that Word has been inspired by God. Only such preaching will change a person's life.

It's OK to repeat sermons

A few years ago I was invited to preach in a church. I had preached there about five years earlier. It was a larger church with two morning worship services. As I considered what to preach I kept feeling drawn to a sermon I had preached there previously. It seemed like the right message to address some issues I knew was going on in the church. Since I felt so strongly that this was the message I decided to go ahead and preach it again. After all, I reasoned, no one would remember this sermon after five or more years.

No one mentioned they remembered the message after the first service. However, when the second service ended a teenager came to me and asked if I had not preached that message previously in that church. I was busted and by a teenager no less.

That was not the first time I've repeated a sermon in a church nor will it be the last time. If a few years has passed since I preached a particular message in a church I don't feel it will hurt anyone if I preach it again in that same church.

1. There are new people in the church who did not hear it previously. This will be a new sermon for them.
2. I'm sure the church has sang the same songs since I was there. If repetition is OK for the music it will also be OK for the sermon.
3. People's lives change. The message may have a greater impact on them the second time they hear it because it addresses an issue that is current in their life. That issue may not have been a problem the first time you preached the sermon.
4. If a message is worth preaching once it should be worth repeating.
5. When we re-read a book we often discover things we overlooked before. The same thing happens when people hear a sermon for the second time. They will hear something they didn't hear before.

Sometimes you don't plan to preach a sermon in a church the second time but find you are. A few weeks ago I was scheduled to preach in a church. I pulled out a message that I thought was applicable to the church and planned to preach it. Just prior to the service I was placing my Bible and sermon on the pulpit when I noticed I had preached that message just a couple of months earlier in that church. I always write down the church's name and date when I preach a message in the left margin of my sermon notes. I had looked but failed to see this church's name before leaving for the service. I had taken only this one message with me.

When I began the message I mentioned to the church that I had preached it in that church a few weeks earlier but I felt there was still a message there the church needed to hear. While the main body of the sermon was the same, I used some different illustrations and made a slightly different application than when I preached it before. Only one person commented that she remembered the message but noted that it was different this time.

This is yet another reason it's Ok to repeat a sermon. Most sermons will have more than one application. Although I was preaching from the same outline and from the same text, the Holy Spirit led me in a slightly different direction from the previous time I preached it. Most likely, it spoke to different people than the first time I delivered it.

You may feel that you're being led to repeat a message to your congregation. If so, do it. We can trust God to know how to lead us in our pulpit ministry. There may be people there who did not hear it the first time. There may be people there who have different needs this time and need to hear this message again so it can speak to those needs.

Preach the Word

Regular readers know that I recently retired after spending the past 14 years serving in a judicatory ministry capacity. Nearly every week I was in a different church in our judicatory either to preach or to visit. Prior to that I was the bivocational pastor of a small church in our community for 20 years. Since retirement I have preached a few times, and on those Sundays I haven't preached I've been visiting different churches of various denominations. After 34 years it's interesting to see what churches are in our community.

This past Sunday I visited a church affiliated with Calvary Chapel. Calvary Chapel churches are often known for their verse by verse exposition of Scripture, and this one was no different. The pastor is a local doctor who serves the church as a bivocational pastor.

I have to say that I enjoyed the in-depth study of the text. Although as a pastor I often preached expository messages I had not experienced that very often since leaving pastoral ministry. Most of the churches I visited as a Resource Minister tended towards more topical preaching. While such preaching has its place at times, I do believe that expository preaching will do more to build up the faith of the listeners.

The pastor was working his way through 2 Samuel. Again, it brought back memories of my own pastoral ministry. Each summer I would preach through a book of the Bible or a major section of Scripture such as the Sermon on the Mount. I always enjoyed the preparation that went into that style of preaching. It prevented me from always preaching on my favorite topics and it did not allow me to skip over controversial issues. I had to preach what the text gave me. That's good discipline for any preacher.

It's also good for the congregation. It allows them to see how a particular passage fits into the overall message of the book. It takes them much deeper into the passage than when the pastor preaches a sermon on this text one Sunday and jumps to another text and topic the next.

Our opinions will do little to change lives. Preaching the Word under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit allows that Word to penetrate into the hearts and souls of the listeners. It is then that real change can begin to take place.

If you do not regularly preach through a book of the Bible you may want to prayerfully consider doing so this year. Rather than starting with an entire book you might want to begin with a section of Scripture such as the Sermon on the Mount or the Ten Commandments.  Try it and see if it makes a difference in the life of your church and in the lives of the individual members.

Plan your preaching for 2016

Now is the time to begin thinking about your preaching plan for 2016. As a bivocational pastor I found that planning my preaching schedule in advance was a major time saver and added continuity to my ministry and my preaching. It also ensured that I had the needed resources when it was time to prepare my messages. Another benefit was that it allowed for better worship planning.

My planning was fairly simple. I would take a sheet of paper and write down the dates in the left column. Since our church had a morning and evening service I listed AM and PM for each date. I then took a calendar and noted holidays and special events on the Christian calendar on the appropriate dates. One piece of paper gave me a quarter of the yearly calendar.

Once I had the mechanical pieces in place it was time to think and pray. Did I sense God wanted us to have a specific focus for the upcoming year? Were there issues in the church that needed to be addressed? Were we about to enter into a significant time in the life of the church? Each summer after Father's Day I would preach through a book of the Bible or a significant section of Scripture so I would spend some time thinking about that series of messages.

Sometime around the middle of November I would begin listing sermon titles and texts on the paper for each Sunday. By noting the dates of special events I not only ensured I didn't overlook one, it also showed me when I had stretches of Sundays I could do a series of messages and when I needed to do a stand-alone sermon.

I never planned the entire year of messages in the fall of the year, but I did try to work 3-6 months out. At the end of each month I would give the next month's sermon plan to our worship leaders so they could coordinate the services with the messages.

Earlier I mentioned this allowed me to have the resources I would need to prepare my sermons. This was especially important for the series I would preach through a book of the Bible. I was able to purchase the commentaries and other helps that would be needed for a more in-depth look at these books.

A busy pastor may wonder how to find the time to do such planning, but this is time well-spent. I found that the demands on my time were less around the holidays so this was an ideal time for such planning. Once I finished my planning I could focus my time each week on sermon preparation and not on wondering what to preach about the next Sunday. There are few things worse than when you realize on Friday that you still don't know what to preach on Sunday.

I've known the occasional pastor who would plan their preaching schedule, sometimes a year in advance, and never veer from that schedule no matter what happened. This is a mistake. One pastor got into trouble after 9/11 because the following Sunday he preached the message he planned to preach that day a year earlier. Like many churches, this church had numerous first-time guests that day wanting to know if the Scriptures had anything that would address this disaster, and they left hearing nothing.

I did my planning but remained flexible. If another message was more timely or needed due to some unforeseen event, I changed the message to fit that need. However, that seldom happened. Develop a preaching plan for 2016. Both you and the church will benefit.

What do people hear when you preach?

Yesterday I had the opportunity to preach in a wonderful church that has two worship services with a Sunday school class in between. As people began coming in for the second service an individual I knew said the ones in his Sunday school class who attended the first service talked about my message during their class. He said he was excited to hear the message himself due to the positive comments he had heard in class.

This individual went on to talk about how excited they were about one of the points of the message. The only problem was that what they were excited about was not mentioned in the sermon! Now, I could see how someone could draw from the message that particular point, but it was not one that I had made nor was it ever mentioned.

That's not the first time that has happened to me, and if you've been in ministry very long it has probably happened to you as well. People tend to hear different things from the same message. This becomes a problem if someone hears something negative that was not said in the sermon. A couple once stopped coming to the church I pastored, and when I finally got them to tell me why they quit coming it was because they took offense to something in one of my sermons. I never said what they heard, but I could not convince them of that. I even told them I would have been offended if someone had said that in a sermon, but I still could not get them to return.

However, in most cases I believe God speaks to people words they need to hear from our messages. We focus on a point which causes someone to begin thinking, and their thoughts lead them to apply our words somewhat differently than we might have intended. They respond positively to that application, and they are convinced that it was our words that led to the positive conclusion.

Several years ago I preached in a particular church. A couple of weeks later in a local store I met a young man who attended that church. He complimented me on my message and told me he had taken my advice. I smiled and asked what he had done. He replied he had quit his job! My jaw almost hit the floor. He went on to say that he had wanted to start his own business but had been reluctant to do so, but my message convinced him that now was the time. There was absolutely nothing in my message to insinuate to anyone that they should quit their job to start their own business, but that is what he heard, and that is what he did. The good news is that his business has been very successful, and he's doing something he really enjoys.

I always pray that God will speak through me and the message I'm about to deliver. I don't know everything going on in people's lives. I didn't as a pastor, and I certainly don't as a judicatory leader who covers a wide area of churches. People come to church with a variety of needs, and my prayer is that God can use the message to speak to those needs. His Spirit can take just one word or phrase and make it come alive in a person's heart that will address their greatest need at that time. He can take a different word or phrase from the same sermon and use it to address a different need in someone else's life.

I appreciate it when people compliment me on a message, but I know if it really spoke to them that God was at work speaking to them through that message. We're the instrument that delivers the message, but it is the Holy Spirit that causes that message to come alive in people's heart.

Do people in small churches want in-depth preaching?

Do people attending small churches want in-depth Bible preaching? Some people doubt that they do. We've all heard complaints about how many in our churches have a shallow faith and are not interested in sound biblical preaching. Maybe it's because they've not been exposed to such preaching in the past.

As I think of many of the small churches in the area in which I live, for years many of them were served by student pastors. These pastors usually stayed for a couple of years until they graduated from seminary, and then they moved on. Short tenured pastorates do not lend themselves to in-depth preaching.

Most of my regular readers know I was the bivocational pastor of my small, rural church for 20 years. My experience was that our congregation enjoyed in-depth sermon series and grew theologically as a result of them. After a few years at the church I began a habit of preaching through a book of the Bible after Father's Day. If I remember correctly, the book of Romans took about 18 weeks, Sunday morning and night, to complete. Nobody complained, and most seemed to enjoy the opportunity to go deeper in this book of the Bible. I did similar series with other books of the Bible. The series I preached on the Sermon on the Mount was another lengthy series, but it was so rich in all that it taught.

Although I was reluctant to do so, the congregation urged me to preach through the book of Revelation. I finally agreed to but only on Sunday nights. It took an entire year to complete that series.

We did other lengthy series as well.  Twice, we did a "Journey Through the Bible" on Sunday nights. We purchased notebooks that had outlines of the series for each family. This was a way to give people an overview of the entire Bible in one year. It was another rewarding exercise.

When you preach through books of the Bible you are able to go much deeper in a passage than in a single sermon. You also can't skip over the difficult passages. Every preacher has certain favorite Bible themes that he or she enjoys preaching, and we all have those topics we would prefer to ignore. When you preach through an entire book you have to cover it all. That's good discipline for the preacher and for the congregation.

Another advantage to preaching through a book of the Bible is that it makes sermon planning much easier. You don't have to wonder what you are going to preach next week; you just pick up where you left off. That is a huge time saver for a bivocational minister. You can also assure you have the study tools available to help you prepare your message. Once I determined which book I was going to preach through I would purchase two to four good commentaries on that book to assist me in my preparation.

As you think about your preaching calendar for 2015 I hope you'll consider preaching a lengthy sermon series. I think you will find that it will help your congregation deepen their faith and their understanding of the Bible.