Monday, January 22, 2007

On using old sermons

I know I've talked about this before, but one of the benefits of getting older in the ministry is that you accumulate a lot of sermon notes. The danger, of course, is that you simply go back (after a "decent" amount of time has passed, of course) and re-preach those old messages! I have found that I can't generally do that.

For example, I am now preaching through the book of Revelation. It was a series I had done back in 1997 and was well-received. But as I look at those old messages, I see a lot of flaws as well as out-dated illustrations, etc. And not only is the world a different place than it was 10 years ago, I am a different person and my church is a different church. So while the Word of God is eternal, our understanding of and application of the text is constantly growing and changing.

Does it save me some time to re-trace old steps? Maybe a little some weeks. But generally, I find it just as easy to look at the old sermon and then virtually start from scratch!

Saturday, January 06, 2007

On Long Sermons

One of my parishioners was visiting out-of-town relatives and attended a church service where the pastor preached a 71-minute sermon. To my mind that borders on just plain wrong!

I was concerned about the length of my own sermon for tomorrow, because with communion I didn't want to see the service go too long. My philosophy on these things is that the mind can only absorb what the seat can endure. So as I looked at my introduction tonight, I realized that while it was endlessly interesting to ME, it was actually unnecessary to the sermon. So I cut it, introduced the message with a sentence, saved five minutes, and had a much stronger sermon.

John Stott says that a sermon should last 20 minutes . . . or feel like it. As usual, he's right.