Review and Preview 11.27.2025

    As I write this essay, I am winding down my “fiscal” preaching year of 2025. I will spend time this week continuing to focus on the practical, administrative, necessities for researching, writing, storing, and preaching 2026. That will include weekly messages, Sunday School lessons, Blog essays, Newsletter essays, Book manuscripts, Camp lessons, incidental outside preaching (Revivals), and other unplanned (funerals) preaching. None of those variables of circumstance and “deliverables” even take into account that all these writing products are outcome of intensive study. Often the arc of study requires months and weeks of intense research, note taking, writing, editing, and thinking. I find this work both invigorating and exciting. The old joke that “Preachers only work one day a week” is only true if the preacher does not work. Clearly it is not the case if you and I are diligent, committed, and enthusiastic about the task. 

    You will have noticed that I did not post an essay last week. Not going to apologize. I had 31 words written towards an essay during a busy week of external work. Sometimes a person must decide that enough is enough. I was afraid that there was no amount of editing that was going to save a draft that looked like it was written by a tired guy during a long week. I wanted to end my 2025 blog writing on a high note with a reminder that you can do this and that it is worthwhile. It’s better to under promise and over deliver. 

    I’ve been listening to Autumn music and have even slipped in some early Christmas music. Christmas is coming and Grayville First Christian Church is excited for the season. I hope that you have given thought to what you will preach and why. Christmas can be challenging because there are only so many texts which are thought “relevant”.  You can only preach Matthew and Luke’s accounts of the nativity so many times before you begin to get stale. I know I’ve been there myself. It’s always a challenge. One thing I often do is take these smaller, time-determined series, and compose all the messages as a whole. I have completed first drafts of all my Christmas sermons awaiting final week of preaching tweaking to be complete preaching manuscripts. Working this way allows for a single overarching theme to tie tother all the messages from Sunday morning December 7 to Christmas Eve Candlelight on December 24. 

    I saw a story last week that reminds me of why it is necessary to work both hard and smart. Peter Wollny is a scholar of the music of the Bach family. In 1992 he discovered two manuscripts which struck him as having been written by the greatest Bach of all: Johann Sebastian. Since that time, he has been working on verifying the provenance of these manuscripts to finally determine authorship. It was a background project in a long career filled with other scholarly endeavors. Like most tasks of this nature the task required both serendipity and synergy to bear fruit. Over the years he followed the trail of hints and clues that led to a student of Bach’s named Salomon Günther John. The manuscripts in question were clearly Bach’s music, but also clearly in John’s hand. Manuscript and author were correctly delineated and on November 17, 2025, Ciacona in D minor, BWV 1178, and Ciacona in G minor, BWV 1179 were debuted at St. Thomas Church Leipzig (One of the old Bach’s old haunts). 

    How did that happen? Work. Serendipity. Synergy. Be stubborn. Be resolute. Be determined. Be committed. It took 33 years for Wollny to successfully determine that the two manuscripts he had in hand should be added to the official catalog of Bach’s work. There were times that this project was on the back burner. There were times that he relied on the work of others. There were, I’m sure times of frustration. 

    Whilst music and theology are not the same thing (Though Bach himself taught both Theology and Latin to his Choristers), we need the same kind of patient endeavor to succeed. You will not always feel like doing the hardest task which needs to be done on the next sermon. I am sure you have other tasks that need your attention. Like any intellectual work there are things to file, notes to organize, and papers to (ouch) discard. Sometimes the busywork keeps us sane until we are ready to do the heavy lifting. 

    Anyhoo, I hope that you take advantage of some down time this week. Give thanks. Get ready for Christmas. Sneak off and do a little work. Spend time in prayer, review, reflection, and preparation. As the weather gets cooler, things are going to heat up.