Transitions 9.24.2022

    The tide of the year rolls endlessly on. Unable to stop it or even slow it down, we ride the rising tide to the beaches of our imagined tomorrows, like early mariners guiding their craft through surging surf and shifting shoals to discover new places and perspectives. The last heat of the summer. The final throes of the growing season. School is well underway, and the year passes silently by as we begin to take stock of what we have accomplished whilst laying the groundwork for what is to come. 

    The farmer plans for harvest. Solomon reminds us that ants and now grasshoppers consider their needs for the coming winter. Now is the time to consider the harvest of this year as you consider what you will do next. As you might have guessed I have some ideas.

Review

    Well, we’ve all done enough work this year that we can begin to review what we have accomplished. What to review? I would make at least two recommendations. 

    First, you need to review work product. Look at your sermons and lessons. Have you provided your congregation a well-balanced diet that teaches the whole counsel of God? Did your broader theme for the year provide continuity from sermon to sermon, series to series throughout the year? When and why did the plan need revision? Was there a small issue (such as getting COVID at the beginning of August) or was there a real, significant oversight in your planning? A good debrief helps clarify your effectiveness.

    Secondly, you need to review process. Big problems are generally process related in some way. If you came to June and did not think your planned series was in step with the rest of the year that is likely a glitch in your planning. Now is the time to work it out as you begin your preparations for next year. Did you find yourself short of time to adequately prepare each week? Maybe you don’t feel like you are doing enough general reading. Or, maybe, you just feel like you are perpetually behind. All of these are process issues. You can build the time into your schedule to accomplish what God has called you to do. Now is the time to look at your processes and see how they can be changed so that your work product—your sermons are better.

Revise 

    Next, take out some of your sermons from earlier in the year. Look at Christmas and Easter seasons. Print out copies of your sermons from around that time, pick up your red pencil, and revise them. I know, you’re not preaching them anytime soon. This is for you as a writer and preacher to improve your craft. Even well-written, clearly preached sermons have room for improvement. Unfortunately, we seldom take the time to revisit our work because “out of the pulpit, out of mind.” 

    Don’t reinvent the wheel here. Don’t question your call or claim incompetence. This process of revision is a small job that will repay you in the future. You will learn to edit yourself better before you take your sermons into the pulpit.

    After 40 years of preaching, I find myself doing this much more frequently. My basic calendar for 2023 is set. I have preached most of these texts many times. My first order of business will be to go back and look at what I’ve said before. Doing this with the red pencil, revising, and rewording as I go along helps me to clarify what I’ve said in the past so that I can be clearer in the future. I think that this will help you as well.   

Reconsider

    Those forty years of ministry have produced some bad ideas. The only way to separate the ones that work from the ones that don’t is to look at the big picture and reconsider the whole thing. Revision is detailed. Reconsideration considers the big picture. In my outliner, I can look at the big picture of every series and every sermon for the year. I can see the logical flow of the whole year right before me. Or the illogical mess of the whole year. Generally, I get it mostly right. The only way to know for sure is to reconsider the big picture. 

    In reconsidering what I did this year, and the year before I can have a better idea of what God is prompting me to preach next year. The Holy Spirit will lead us. The Scriptures will guide us. For the Spirit and Word to work within our congregations we need to give them context to work. If every sermon is detached from every other, and every week is an island unto itself we practically require Spirit and Word to begin their work anew every week. Much of what we allow to play out before our congregation should be worked out in the study so that the unfettered Word and the indwelling Spirit can flow freely. 

Hard Intellectual Work

    Preaching is hard, intellectual work. There are shortcuts and chicanery that can replace that work, but you won’t improve, and your people’s growth will be superficial. Simple steps taken at the outset of the work spread it out over the course of a year. Doing this regularly will spread the hard work evenly throughout your whole ministry so that this great task to which we are called does not become overwhelming. As you prepare for 2023 take some time to look back, look over, and look through what you have said during the year that is passing. Then you will be ready to look forward.