Glue 10.10.2024

 

    As you consider your course of preaching—your sermon calendar for the coming year—what will be glue that holds it all tougher. Sunday morning is not sneaking up on you. It isn’t a surprise. The new year is not upon us for many weeks. Each of us has the opportunity to look at the big picture, to think of the coming year, as a whole. 

    Those Sundays need not be thought of as 52 separate entities. Yes, you and I will go into the pulpit week by week with God’s word for His people for that specific week, but effective, pastoral preaching should be strategic and cumulative. In fact, the weekly logistics and tactics of preaching this text, this week, to these people is actually easy if each individual sermon is contributing to your overall preaching campaign. 

    So back to the question. What is the glue that will hold it all together. A well-balanced Biblical diet will be drawn from the full counsel of God. Gospel, Epistle, and the Old Testament all have a role to play. However, the sermons are not simply falling like mana to be gathered by us. Each message is the result of a life lived in devotion to studying and teaching scripture. Fifty-two scraps of unrelated, scattergun, spur-of the moment messages will not only leave the congregation to figure out the big-picture—you will exhaust yourself chasing down enough ingredients to make a healthy meal. 

Leaving the nutritional analogy behind us let me ask the question yet a third time. What is the glue? What is the theme? What is the focus? What is the “big picture” going to be for your preaching in the coming year? Taking an entire month to focus on a sermon calendar only seems like an extravagant luxury when we have already decided that our ministry calling primarily consists of something more important than “Devoting ourselves to prayer and the ministry of the word.” (Acts 6.4). If that is the case what I write will be of little help to you because you are actually doing something different. 

    You know what’s coming, when, and how frequently. What is the glue—what holds it all together?  You need some kind of a thread to run through the whole year that links Advent to Easter to Autumn, to next Advent. People need to understand that if they miss a Sunday that they be missing a vital piece of a story that you are unfolding throughout the full year. It may take you time to teach your people. If you are diligent in your preparation and persistent in your practices, they will not only understand what you are doing but will appreciate the impact that it has on their spiritual development and maturity. 

    Haphazard preparation makes for slipshod sermons which devalues the entire worship experience. Good preaching creates good listeners. Good listeners crave good preaching. We’d like to think that the magic happens in the pulpit. Suffice it to say, there is no magic. Acceptable outcomes come from hard work. Hard work occurs in an environment of planning. Planning is not an end in itself but the environment in which ongoing preparation occurs. If you want to improve your preaching—improve your planning and you will find that you have more time to study, write, pray, and think about what you will say every week. You won’t be thinking “What will I preach, what will I say?”

    Will your plan evolve throughout the year? Of course. We’re not talking about crazy glue here! The only permanent frame of reference is the Bible itself. The Bible, does not however, read itself. It does not preach itself. It requires interpretation and incarnation. This is what we are called to do! It is not an act of faith to leave this ministry to chance. Waiting for some kind of nebulous nudging to a text and sermon is an act of hubris if not malice. You are called and equipped and filled with the Holy Spirit. God trusts you to do this. Faith requires that we expect Him to work in, with, through, and by our efforts. Yes, occasionally, some sermons will fall flat. If that occurs it should be through no lack of effort on our part. 

    I will be talking about the Church in 2025. That “theme” is the glue that will hold my sermon calendar together. We will work through several New Testament scriptures, and some Old Testament texts. Each series will to some degree consider the topic of what it means to be God’s People. To some a theme like “the Church” is simple, even naive. Where are the big “topics?” What about the hot items people are yim-yamming about on Social Media? What about clever and entertaining titles driven by contemporary content? Well, I’m not a luddite and I’m aware of the “times and the seasons.” Good preaching needs to be aware of the contemporary context without being driven by it. The Bible provides the form and content for each message. The broader Biblical theme gives coherence to the whole year. That’s the glue. To foreground cultural, social, or community concerns tends to put the proverbial cart before the horse. 

    The process of “mixing the glue” is pretty simple. Look at your past preaching. Consider the texts you preached and the trajectories you traced through the various books. Review each year as a whole and remind yourself of the glue that held those previous years together. Even when you are preaching familiar texts—books you have perhaps preached many times you will find that a close reading provides a fresh way to contextualize what is written. As you look year by year, series by series, you have the opportunity to find the commonality in the books and or topics that will allow you to formulate a plan for your year. If nothing else this is simply a good process for reviewing your own preaching and study of the Word. When it is done well you will find that the glue of your sermon calendar may just be the glue that allows your preaching to stick in people’s minds.