Cultivating your Sermon Garden

Those of you who regularly read this blog know that earlier this week I provided a bonus blog. I now what to share with you what is actually on the schedule. When I planned my blog posts for 2021 I intentionally targeted several audiences. First of all I have a special burden for preachers and teachers of the Word. Each month I try and provide at least one article which focuses on best practices for preparing and preaching sermons. I also try and provide Biblical insight intended to help the Church and its individual members live out their faith in the “real world.” I try and provide some timely reflections on the impact of the gospel on our culture and finally, I try and give you some idea of what I am reading and studying throughout any given month.

Today I am more directly addressing preachers. Those of you who do not regularly preach may actually learn something about the difficult responsibility of addressing God’s people in God’s stead. It is a task which when done well will seem effortless. It is never effortless. When a preacher communicates the Bible accurately and authoritatively it motivates the hearer to be consequential and intentional in understanding and living the faith. 

When we consider what it takes to preach every week it can be a little overwhelming. Every week a preacher must prepare a significant amount of content. We live at a time where it is increasingly easy to purchase, pilfer, or purloin, that material. This blog is not about that.  My goal is to encourage preachers to read, study, accumulate, curate, evaluate, and assimilate what they study so that their writing is fresh, timely, and clear. 

In the business world there is a class of worker known as a knowledge worker. Knowledge workers  write advertising copy. They design communications interfaces for messaging services. Knowledge workers  evaluate information for corporate planning. One class of knowledge workers  prepares and tries lawsuits. Their work is often divided into “work product” and “deliverables.” Consider the last example. A lawyer needs to prepare a brief for court. The process will require her to read case law, review the facts of her own case, consider testimony from witnesses, and evaluate other forms of evidence. From that raw material a brief is crafted. She quotes case law, refers to and summarizes what she has studied and frames her argument in the best way possible so that she might win the ruling she is seeking. The only document the Judge sees is the brief. The rest is work product. 

In preaching, the deliverable is the sermon. In preparing that message the preacher will exegete the text. He will read the assessments of others. He will, in the course of his work week, read many other materials. He will take notes. He will brainstorm. He will revise. He will edit. He will correct. He will re-word. The only thing the congregation sees/hears is the sermon. That is the deliverable. The rest is work product. 

In my experience the best way to be prepared is to always be preparing. Many in the past have described this process as cultivating a sermon garden. I would like to add a little bit of my insight to this process. 

  If we are to do this job well, week after week over the course of perhaps many years, the responsible course of action for us is to prepare diligently—not just for Sunday but for a fruitful long term ministry. This process begins with a well thought out sermon calendar put together at least a couple of months before the first sermon is to be preached. What this allows for is the time to accumulate and to asses the raw materials that will be a part of your writing process. A well organized sermon calendar provides to you themes that will be highlighted during the year, describes and delineates the series you will preaching, and the passages of scripture from which those series will be created. Once you know what you are preaching then it is possible to assemble all of the materials from which you will write. Yes I said write. You are a writer. A sermon is a document written for the purpose of being spoken aloud. First it must be written. 

So, what should we use as the basis that informs not only what we will preach but how we will preach it and what we will do to put these messages together? Again, you are primarily an exegete of scripture. There is no substitute for delving into the scriptures using the best available language tools  and reference materials to discern accurately what the text teaches. You need access to reliable  resources, commentaries, monographs, journal articles, and other treatments of your text(s). Now that you know what the text says how do you take that text and best communicate it to your congregation?  You could simply go into the pulpit with all the fruit of your study; everything you have gathered and everything you have learned. In so doing you will likely overwhelm your hearers. The congregation deserves well-developed deliverables not your work product. A part of the job is knowing not only what to put into the sermon-but what to leave out. Who or what to quote. Thinkers to mention who have helped you to formulate how you express yourself—not only  in preaching this text but everything else you write or say. This process requires work, thought,  and perspective. That only comes with time. 

I know that much of what I am saying here sounds like what I said in my essay Durable Preaching. They are certainly related. This is an essay about “how?” more than “what” or “why?” And I cannot provide a very detailed answer in this space. My goal is to give basic guidance about  what you can do to plant the right seeds in your garden so that the sermons you write will be as fresh and healthy as possible. 

1. Read. In his book On Writing Stephen King is very pointed: “If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have time to write.” Some of what we read will be for content. Much, much more of it will be for context and perspective. Read everything you can. Fiction, non-fiction, history, biography, current-events, newspapers or online news sources. Be wide-ranging and promiscuous in your reading. Put a screen over your funnel. Take notes. Underline. Excerpt. If you don’t have time to read you don’t have time to preach.

2. Curate. Organize your material. Cross-pollinate. Critique. Compare. Sumarize. Make sure you have reliable electric and paper file systems and pay attention to them. 

3. Write more than you can use. If you write more than you use you will be ready to expand, contract, revise, revisit, and repurpose old content. If you only write enough to meet your immediate needs you will be perpetually behind and probably exhausted. 

4. Edit Ruthlessly. This is the other side of the coin to number 3. Every time you put together a sermon a lot of stuff will end up on the cutting room floor. Save it. When you learn to “murder your darlings” you are learning how to edit yourself. When you know how to edit yourself then you are teaching yourself to be precise and to the point. If you never have any excess then every time you begin you are starting entirely from scratch.

5. Always be in the Middle of Something. Because preaching means a Sunday deadline we are tempted to focus all of our mental energy on the beginning and to find ourselves emptied after we preach. Work on a continuum. Yes, this sermon is finished and preached, but I have a lesson due! There is content for the newsletter! Hey the blog is coming up! Never get too finished. Make sure that when you sit in your study you are ready to function at some point in the process of preparation. 

This process of reading, assimilating, writing, editing, and being future focused means that your “harvest” will be coming in gradually and consistently. This is a mindset which will prepare you for this week, next week, next month, next year. Most of us like to eat every day. One big meal once a week will leave a person famished most of the time. By learning to cultivate an ongoing process of learning and growing you will not only be providing solid Biblical content to your congregation you will also be modeling what it means to be a responsible workman. 

In closing, I believe that this kind of an ongoing process will help all of us as preachers to be more consistent. At the end of the day one of my goals is to reduce the difference between my best sermon ever and my worst sermon ever. God’s people deserve a constant diet. Your best chance for providing that balance is by cultivating your sermon garden with integrity and intelligence.