If your church or ministry setting requires you to prepare more than one sermon a week, how can you prepare an additional sermon after pouring everything into the first one? A reader recently raised this question. It’s the challenge you face if your church has a Sunday night or mid-week service in addition to your primary weekend worship service(s). Let me state the question from another angle: if it takes all your time and energy just to produce one quality sermon a week, how can you hope to prepare two sermons which rise above mediocrity?
Admittedly, it’s been awhile since I’ve faced this challenge. Currently, I prepare one sermon a week, and I still have my hands full! But I’ve faced this challenge in previous pastorates, and I still do on occasion when I need to prepare a funeral sermon, a wedding sermon, or a sermon for a special occasion or a guest preaching assignment. I have five suggestions. I’ll share the first two today, and then I’ll give you the final three in my next post. I look forward to your counsel, too.
First, you must prioritize! Spend most of your time preparing the sermon for your ‘primary’ worship service(s), and spend less time preparing for the ‘secondary’ preaching opportunity. This is a strategic move growing out of a desire to give your people your very best. Usually, there will be fewer people at the secondary events. This does not mean that you’ll settle for a sloppy, half-baked sermon. But if you simply divide your time, you may end up with two mediocre sermons. My theory is that spending 80% of your time on your primary sermon and 20% on the secondary one(s) can actually produce two compelling sermons – not just one good one and one mediocre one. Spending less time on the secondary one will force you down a different creative process and path.
Second, feel free to recycle! A good sermon is worth preaching twice, especially when you re-work it and tinker with it the second time around. Normally, I’d let at least 4 years elapse before bringing back a sermon – longer if I’m going to re-use a series. If you re-use a sermon or a series in a secondary preaching setting, make sure to buy at least one new commentary or resource so that you are forced to do some fresh thinking. Change an illustration, or change the sermon’s structure. Make sure to re-read the text a few times and pray through it. But you don’t have to re-duplicate all the exegetical work and sermonic thinking you’ve done before. Build on it! God’s Spirit will honor your previous work and your new work.
I’ll share three more suggestions on Friday. In the meantime, I pray for a special measure of God’s power and anointing for those of you who are preparing more than one sermon this week!
Posted by Steve Mathewson at 9:53 AM on June 12, 2007
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Steve
I currently deliver two messages per week and sometimes three when I preach to the homeless. When I preach to the homeless, I usually modify what I preached on Sunday at Loving God Fellowship.
I have found that as I focus on prayer and Bible Study, God drops the messages in my heart. The prep time is much shorter. When I first started in the ministry, I would sometimes spend 40 hours on one sermon! Now, I focus more on prayer and study.
Know that you are loved,
Greg
Posted by: Greg Johnson on June 12, 2007
That'sa great start Steve, I look forward to your other thoughts, recylcing can work once you've built up a back log of stuff. It can of course be painful to look back over previous material but as you say the back bone of work might already be done for you.
You make an interesting point about the 80/20 prep thing, I've heard something similar and its clearly a discipline because the temptation to give you best to both, is a hard one to overcome. Who doesn't want to knock the ball out of the field everytime, even if its only preaching to one person? But what is worse is to have preached well at your secondary service and not at your first - that is sobering.
Good stuff,
Grace n peace
Dave
Posted by: Dave on June 13, 2007
I preach two sermons a week and have found two things helpful.
First, I plan and study ahead. About October, I begin thinking about the themes, topics and issues our family needs to address in the coming year. (Of course, I leave plenty of flexibility for pressing needs, emergencies and the like. The plan always changes.)
From there begin to do my exegetical digging well ahead of time. I jot down detailed notes during my research, organize concepts into handout form so I can refer back to it when the actual sermon gets closer. (In preparing 100+ sermons a year, I have found to do it without a plan is a real disservice to my people.)
Second, I preach thematically. Sometimes I preach in an expository fashion through a book; sometimes I preach along monthly themes (May is "Evangelism Month"); sometimes, I simply preach in a series (we are currently discussing the Fruit of the Spirit); sometimes I preach a separate series on Sunday morning and Sunday evening.
There are downfalls to this kind of thing. Those who do not come back miss half of the discussion. However, those serious about the topic make the effort to return, which I find encouraging.
It is tedious, but with this approach, it has gotten easier - for me anyway.
Posted by: Rob on June 13, 2007
Great discussion and a daunting problem! I'm currently working on a book about such matters and have found that bivocational pastors especially list time for sermon prep as their most urgent need. I look forward to all suggestions.
In regard to repeating sermons, I had a preaching prof who boasted that he always threw his notes away after preaching a message one time(said he wanted to "stay fresh")! Not my idea of good stewardship!
Posted by: Jim Kinnebrew on June 13, 2007
I don't think my trackback got through, but I recommend this one. Thanks for sharing both parts of this post.
Posted by: Milton Stanley on June 14, 2007