Review 7.6.2023

 The Independence Day holiday is past. We are halfway through the calendar year. This is the 33rd week of my sermon calendar for 2023. Whether with the passing of the days or the preaching of the sermons, it is time for a little inventory. A little review. We don’t get report cards in the preaching ministry. And it is very rare for someone to be critical to our faces with respect to a sermon. Feedback can be helpful, practical feedback is rare. 

    It is up to each preacher o review his own work and submit samples for review to friends and colleagues who can provide valuable direction. Each of us should have a trusted reader or two that we use regularly to proofread our work and provide editorial guidance. If you trust no one else in this at least trust your wife. Beyond that, if you have kept your Elders and other interested leaders informed of your plan, they should be able to provide some valuable insight as to your progress through the year. 

    At this point in the year, there are several questions we need to ask ourselves. With our preaching plan open before us well as our daybook and task list, we can ask the right questions to determine the effectiveness of the plan so far, as well as any calibrations necessary to carry us to the end of the year. 

Did I stick to the plan?

    Question 1 is elementary. Did I actually do what I intended to do? Did I execute the plan I had prepared? This an elementary question but essential. This question speaks directly to the quality of our work both long-term and week by week. A plan that cannot be executed is a bad plan. 

    There will always be occasions when immediate needs and pressing emergencies require a change to the plan. Otherwise, we trust to the providence of God that our prayerful planning, guided by the Holy Spirit and familiarity with our past preaching will guide us through a year’s preaching plan. A plan that will lead, weed, and feed our flock.  If there is more necessary change than normal, then I have misread the situation or not thought through things thoroughly. 

Was the plan properly focused?

A     properly focused preaching plan has a unity of theme, and diversity of purpose, and comes from a variety of texts. This is challenging work. That is why a substantial portion of the universal Church outsources this task by using a lectionary system. That relieves the preacher of 1/3 of the planning burden. 

    You and I still must provide focus in a timely, creative manner. That is the real trick. My broad theme for the year is “beginnings”. One would think that there is a limited number of things you can say about “beginnings.” Therein lies the “work” part of this process. 

Did I Overreach?

    My most recently completed sermon series was from the wisdom literature of the Old Testament. The series title was Wisdom: Faith Begins to Work. Five book sermons, one each from Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Solomon. As I went through the series, I concluded that it was perhaps an overreach in three ways. 1. The initial idea. 2. Book Sermon from Job. 3. Book Sermon from the Song of Solomon. Obviously points 2 and 3 follow from the real issue: it seemed, at times, like a bad idea. It looked great in October, but not so much in June.

    In retrospect, five challenging book sermons required more weekly study than was easily accommodated. I had to make some concessions to time. I may not have overreached, but I was certainly stretched thin. The book sermon from Job went surprisingly well, and we had someone respond to the invitation for baptism, so it’s a little hard to be overly critical. The message from the Song of Solomon ended up being practical advice for marriage and did not draw criticism even though I had to read some explicit text from the pulpit.

    I would not say that I went too far in this sermon series, but I definitely had to extend myself. That is fine for one series a year, or a particularly thorny problem that needs to be handled from the pulpit. Do that kind of work too often and you will wear out. 

Did I leave the ball short?

    Overreach is the result of ambition. Leaving the ball short is a result of an abundance of caution. Could I have done more? Did I leave something unclear, unsaid, or undisturbed? Should I have “gone for the pin?” 

    Preaching requires balancing the long-term growth of the congregation with pressing issues. The best approach is to incorporate emerging issues as they can be accommodated into the overall preaching plan for the year. Well-planned exegesis should always be bridging the gap between the world of the text and our contemporary situation. Sometimes the text will determine the shot, and sometimes our local circumstances. 

    The key is to always be aware that there are objective standards (the text) and more subjective circumstances which are the ingredients from which sound Biblical preaching is formed. On a golf course, one considers variable factors such as pin placement, wind, moisture, and temperature in deciding how to play a shot. The distance is always the same--many other things change. Similarly, what a text says is invariable. Everything else is, however, in flux. Effective preaching speaks to that flux from out of the text.

Middling Well

    Instructions about preaching quite often discuss beginning well and ending well. These elements of the sermon are essential to the enterprise and often the most difficult to master. Similarly, beginning the year well and ending it well help to focus the year's preaching and keep the congregation focused on understanding scripture and learning to apply it. All well. All good. Like the middle of a sermon, the exegetical body is essential for its effectiveness as a message. And the middle of the year is important for the preacher’s yearly plan. 

    Middling well, and thoroughly reviewing our work, helps ensure that the plan conceived, now some nine months ago, is still focused, and that the preacher is still excited about the plan. Review the year too early and we lack the data and information to fruitfully recalibrate. Review the year too late, and there is no time to reconsider.  

    This is the time.  July is the perfect season for reviewing our year's preaching. We’ve done enough work to determine the integrity of the plan and have enough time left to subtly change focus if necessary. Yet, making any alterations requires taking the time to review. Your preaching will be improved by taking a hard look at what you have done so that you can improve what is to come.