Craft 9.29.2022

    Preaching is both a calling and a craft. It is a crushing obsession that refreshes the preacher who gives his life to it without qualification. It begins with a call and that calling invades every area of life. This is what God has called us to do. This is what God has called us to be. 

    This calling is not like being fast or tall. It is something that can be improved by diligent work and experience. Not every experience will seem fruitful.

I just pulled my first “preaching Bible” down from the shelf. There are more old sermons in that Bible than I can count. To read them now is painful. It must have been painful for those who heard them as well. Called? Yes. Capable? Getting there. Polished? Nope. The imperfections of the final product did not invalidate the call but confirmed it and gave it direction as I was learning the craft. 

One of the things that I know now is that being glib and able to speak “off the cuff” was both a blessing and a curse. Mostly a curse. I have learned to be deliberate and disciplined. Sermons like this would now barely pass as first drafts, preliminary sketches really. I would not trot them out in public. But by trotting them out then and learning what it takes to improve I began to improve. I would say that now I’m a passable preacher. Not because I didn’t make mistakes but because I did. 

It takes time and experience. Time must pass and experience must be experienced. There are no shortcuts to the future. But the time must be directed and invested, and the experience must provide a trajectory for growth. The same bad experience, experienced repeatedly without learning appropriate lessons is not only painful but exasperating. Don’t do that. Grow. Learn. Move forward.  

    To improve your preaching, you must take your time. Take the time needed to read. Take the time needed to write. Take the time required to make mistakes—and then correct them. Take the time to go down blind alleys, and then get out of them and continue with the mission. Drill a few dry wells, plug them, and move on. Chase the occasional wild hare, but don’t become obsessed like Elmer Fudd. To improve your preaching, you must take the time. To take the time you must make the time. If you cannot or will not you will not improve your preaching. 

    My goal every Sunday is to preach the best sermon in town. Regardless of the attendance, I want this flock to hear God’s Word as I have prepared it for them. I want them to know that I have labored over the Text. I want them to understand that I have selected my words carefully, edited them diligently, thought through them lovingly, and prayed over them fervently. This is not a hobby. This is my life. If you don’t want to do that, if you don’t want to be God’s messenger to your people on this Sunday, then by all means do something else. This is not pride speaking. This is craftsmanship. Every Sunday morning when I pray for Wes, Dustin, Clayton, Jeff, Lance, Josh, Mark, Nolan, and Sam this is what I pray for them. The best sermon in their town at the appointed time. 

    It takes time. Craftsmanship grows as we become more accustomed to the tools with which we work and the medium in which we do our work. Our tools help us study Scripture and write with clarity. Our tools are the same used by other “knowledge workers” but specifically tailored to our sacred task. Or tools help us to take the material of Scripture and prepare a message for our people. The medium we use is words. We want to speak in our own voice with our own personality. This requires our immersion in the text and the words we will proclaim to the Church when it gathers as a worshipping community. We can view that time as a meal. God has called us to be a Chef who understands the hunger of our people and meets that need with a well-constructed meal built from the raw ingredients of scripture, around which we have wrapped our minds and about which we have chosen our words. 

Craftsmanship takes time. It takes love. It takes obsessive even compulsive commitment. Jeremiah put it this way

“If I say, “I will not mention him, or speak any more in his name,” there is in my heart as it were a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I am weary with holding it in, and I cannot.” (Jeremiah 20:9 ESV)

 

If you don’t feel the fire, you may be a teacher, you may say your peace, but you will never be at peace, and you won’t be a preacher. This fire will warm you as you bend over your books. This fire will flicker in your mind as you consider the best way to tell hard truths. This fire will calm you as you think about how to comfort the afflicted. This fire will fill you with anger as you confront the fallen and lax with their sin. This fire will remind you of your own imperfections and if you subject yourself to its cleansing power this fire will refine you into the preacher God wants you to be.