Practice the Fundamentals 5.22.2025

     Practicing the fundamentals is a common trope in coaching sports, advising business, and yes, mentoring preachers. Each, though different, obviously correlates the expectation that repeatedly doing the simple, elemental facets of a task produce muscle memory and mind memory that creates a context for excellence. 

    The next, practical step is to identify what those fundamentals actually are. Truthfully there are differing fundamentals for various dimensions of any job. Some are intellectual others physical. Some fundamentals are preliminary, other’s primary, and still others, tertiary and dependent. Practicing the fundamentals begins with identifying those fundamentals and often that identification admits that the fundamentals are often not even tasks—but attitudes or approaches that frame the entire endeavor. In this essay the fundamentals that we will discuss are less things to do than approaches to doing. 

Start Early

    Begin a task as soon as you can. You do not begin a task early in order to be first, but to go deeper. Deep thinking and reading require time and space. We can’t create more time, but we can redeem the time by allocating the time needed, with the space needed to allow for depth. 

    Depth is a function not only of having ideas but of reviewing, revisiting, and revising those ideas.  Consequently, (And, yes, redundantly) depth requires time. When we start early, we have the time to suggest hypotheses and to test them. Space gives us the opportunity to have both bad ideas and good ideas; to weed out the former and to water and nourish the latter. 

    Good thinking cannot be rushed. We work with a weekly deadline that is set in stone. If we want to have the time and space to do good, original, challenging work we must start months and weeks early. Because if we wait until the last minute, we will not have the time needed for practicing the next fundamental. 

Edit Often

    Editing a sermon is often more important than the initial outline, general phrasing, or specific wording. It is through a detailed, repeated editing process that we find mistakes and misstatements. As I begin this essay on Monday this draft comes immediately after finishing my sermon for Sunday. Wow. There were parts of my sermon (The slide deck) which required 5 edits. That never happens. For some reason I kept generating copy that was either sloppy, inexact, or truncated. Finally, I got things ironed out. One of the main reasons I could iron things out was that 1) I was doing this on Monday. 2) I allow plenty of time for editing. Beyond correction there are other benefits to editing.

    The first benefit is that you can experiment with phrasing, pacing, word selection, and presentation. The words of a sermon, if read on paper, will always just be words. However, your sermon is not an essay, and you will not merely read it. You will be preaching and a central part of editing material for the pulpit is editing for the ear rather than the eye. You may want to red line the document while reading it aloud. I often dump the raw text into a simple word processor and have the computer read it to me whilst I look for corrections both in form and content. 

    The second benefit is that you introduce space into the writing process. If you just stop and never come back you may find later, say when giving things a final look Saturday night that time has worn down your cleverness. It happens to me all the time. By building in space for editing as a part of the composition process you develop regular habits of going over, under, and through the same material repeatedly, to achieve different purposes. 

    A third benefit is that if you want a second opinion you can specify to your outside reader what issue you need help clarifying or fixing. Inevitably if you just send someone a sermon and ask, “What do you think?” the feedback will be too indirect and nice to be of any help. 

    Before we move on let me make this very clear. You need a well thought out process and procedure for editing. You need to review your copy basically the same way every week and follow the same pattern. That clearly defined path leads us to the next fundamental. 

Quit when finished.

    This is not only true when preaching a sermon, it also pertains in the study. Many of us may “Murder our darlings” but we don’t do a good job burying them. They follow us into the pulpit clinging to our legs and whining into our psyche, reminding us just how intelligent we are. Editing is not a process for prolonging a document, but for ending it. Remember what I wrote earlier about process and procedure? It is repetition that distinguishes editing from piddling or fiddling. Piddling with a document means not being able to let it go. Fiddling means returning again and again to alter a perfectly acceptable phrase or clause—generally by reducing it to proper written prose rather than a document properly worded for preaching. Piddling and fiddling keep us from finishing. Editing helps us to know exactly when it is finished. 

    The solution is simple. Have a checklist, follow your checklist, when everything is checked off—stop. You are finished. I really only learned to stop in the pulpit when I figured out how to stop in my study. So long as you never remove the “cuttings” from your mind there is always a risk that you will roll them back in. Flee the temptation. When you are done with the sermon do something else and don’t glance at it until you have a regularly scheduled review (mine is Friday when we are doing other worship prep). Far too many sermons suffer from too much material rather than not enough. If we can’t get closure as a writer imagine what it is like for a listener! 

Again!

    A final admonition. Write and preach as if they are going to come back next time. Leave them wanting more. Don’t answer every question, give the impression that you are only getting started. Many writers and preachers wait, or search for the perfect word. Other’s when finding it, cling to that word even when it does not fit. And yet some will take that word and through a process of piddling or fiddling find a way to work it back in after they have edited it out. No need! Just act like we will all be back next Sunday. Maybe the word, phrase, or notion you had to cut this week will be appropriate next week. 

    Once you become proficient at editing your work you will recognize that there is preservative and developmental process in throwing out phrases or thoughts which need more work. You’ll return to them, perhaps over the course of writing several sermons until it finally takes form and is ready to help declare the good news. This is not an act of recycling but of cultivating and nurturing. 

    The time and place you will preach are not a secret. I’m sure you have a sign which tells people when to come. You have weekly communications that keep people involved and attentive. You do things throughout the week to encourage participation. The rhythm of congregational life is one of the structuring mechanisms that keep us focused on the task of preaching. Those external structures can only help if we are diligent about what goes on when the study door is shut. So. Set aside the time. Sharpen a red pencil. And for heaven’s sake when you are done. Stop.