Tradition 11.14.2024

     We were not the first ones here. We did not magically appear out of nowhere with a fully formed understanding of scripture that came to us unmediated by our ancestors of faith. Churches like individuals descend from someone, who came from somewhere that did, something. The collective memory of who our ancestors were is called tradition. Traditions can be informative (what we think and know) or they can be performative (what we do). The best traditions are even transformative. (They change or define who we are.) Obviously, it is possible that this sort of transformation can be negative. Information, likewise, can be constructive or destructive. What we do can be good, bad, or benign. Often the impact of traditions is determined by the intent of those who maintain the tradition. 

    The 21st century has been challenging for traditional expressions of faith. Doctrine and practice are under constant pressure to conform to society at large or the dominant ecclesiastical model. The best traditions, the ones that have and will endure are those which are constantly evaluating their own origins against emerging expectations and expressions. At times we find something more enduring in contemporary  expressions beyond novelty or entertainment. Those new expressions may eventually assume a place among the cherished traditions of the faithful. 

    Jesus lived in a traditional society. His issue was not tradition itself, but traditionalism which elevates man’s desires over God’s. The best traditions orbit God like the planets orbit the sun. When we lose that orientation, we lose the distinction between our will and God’s. 

    There is not a more traditional time of the year than the period we are entering. Much of our attention over the next 5 weeks will be centered on traditions of Thanksgiving and Christmas. I love this time of year and part of that affection and emotional satisfaction comes from celebrating treasured traditions. 

    We humans can be tragic creatures. We are as easily tempted by good things as bad—and easily distracted. Traditions which should only strengthen us often undermine our faith. The shiny new things of contemporary culture—both within and without the Church too easily displace the hard-won faith of our ancestors. 

     It is essential for us to be reflective. Reflecting upon scripture and historic Christian practice reminds us of the hopefulness of the past. Such a moment of reflection is at the very heart of Christian worship. Around His table of thanksgiving, we join the great cloud of witnesses celebrating His atoning sacrifice and empowering resurrection. Around the table we consider the whole body of Christ; past, present, and future. Around the table we embody not only Biblical thinking but traditional. The place-settings may change but the tradition endures. There is a place for us all around the table of His blessing.

Transition 11.7.2024

    

November is a month of transitions. It began with the weather.  There were hints in October that Autumn meant more than days on the calendar. Even the warmer days began with a different kind of crispiness. Then as we slept Saturday night, we bid farewell to Daylight Savings Time and the hour we “lost” in the Spring was returned to us. Halloween is the prelude to the rest of the fall-winter holidays. For Halloween dressing up meant costumes. In the coming weeks dressing up may mean wearing something nicer to Grandma’s and eventually dressing up gives way to bundling up. 

    November is the month where we begin to assess this year and become increasingly focused on next year. We prepare for the long winter to come and start to make plans for the central celebrations of the Christmas Season. In the Church we think of Jesus every week. The Christmas season means that many others—some who have ignored Him all year will be thinking about Him as well. Some of those people will be hurting, or lonely, or sad. Some will have gotten through such drastic transitions that our shift from late summer to autumn seems quant and harmless. The Church must minister through these transitions as we shift our focus to a different season with different challenges. 

    The Transitions of our current time and place may make people nostalgic for a past that shaped them, hurt them, bent them, or scarred them. They will appear in my congregation and yours and one of our tasks during this intense, emotional season of transitions is to remind every listener that “God did not send His Son into the world to condemn it but to redeem it.” 

     Some will come haltingly and leave your assembly joyfully. Others will come with pain and find a way to leave it there at the foot of the cross. Others will come with debilitating grief and discover comfort. Some will come from a world that is discolored with shame and leave with a renewed appreciation for the myriad colors of life. 

    Now, I’m sure that you have good, well laid plans for Christmas. You are ready for people who will only make that occasional holiday appearance. Are you ready for those who celebrate early? Some snowbirds make this time of year a period of preparation for leaving cold weather behind for the winter. How will you encourage them? Sometimes families have several “Thanksgivings”. You may be catching some of them before, after, or during #2, or even #3. Will you be ready to help them experience the gratitude felt by the entire Body of Christ during this season of transition? 

    Christmas is coming but Thanksgiving will most likely get here first (Trust me on this). What a chance we have! To help people see Jesus with greater clarity and to hear the Word proclaimed with purpose! You have been called not only to lead your Congregation through this transition but to help them serve others joyfully in those transitions.  One November Sunday is past—in fact only eight Sundays remain in the year. The transition is upon us, opportunity awaits. Let’s prepare well to do that work to which we are called.

Closure, Holy Spirit, 10.31.2024

     We are ever dependent on the Holy Spirit.  Though preaching still requires work, planning, reflection and perspective to prepare for this yearly task of creating calendar to guide our preaching, it should also be an act of devotion. At the end of a full month of intense preparation the work product should be a complete sermon calendar. Our attitude should be peace because we have achieved closure on one of our central, yearly tasks. 

    For me, most of the tasks are finished, there are just a few loose ends.  I have full sermon series planned. For each I have texts, titles, and themes. There is a little air in the schedule where I will allow developing circumstances to provide ongoing structure as to how a series or two plays out. I have already made a significant change reducing the overall number of distinct series to spend additional time focusing on the Gospel of Matthew. 

    I am dotting the “I’s”, crossing the “T’s”, and lining up my ducks. Big picture details become to-do items with checklists to channel the work-load day after day through 52 weeks of the year.  Bibliographies are prepared and resources sequenced for the most profitable process of reading, reflecting, taking notes and expanding my understanding of these portions of Scripture I will be preaching in 2025.

    Yes, it is work but it is a pleasant, joyful task. I am neck deep in scripture, praying and reflecting on God’s work among His people, and expectantly waiting the Spirit who both indwells the preacher and inspires the Biblical text. The preacher depends on this divine interaction to make the connections that provide for clear, articulate, understandable preaching. The difference between a sermon and a speech is the capacity to faithfully declare “Thus says the Lord.” If you preach, I would guess you agree with me when I say we have the best job in the whole world. 

    There are only a couple of days left in this month, and I am Five Sundays away from the first message listed on my 2025 Sermon Calendar. Over the next few days, I will shift from the planning phase to the study phase. I have books ready to be read and I have assigned time in my schedule. I know from experience that the growth of the preacher provides parameters for the growth of a congregation. A stale preacher makes for bored listeners. A well-prepared Sermon Calendar is not an end in itself. When it is finished, when you and I arrive at closure on this part of the work the next phase can begin. May God bless our work through the presence and perspective of His Holy Spirit working in our hearts and minds to speak to His people.

Space 10.24.2024

     I’m late. I should have finished this first draft a couple of days ago, done some editing yesterday, polished it up this morning and then posted it. It’s nearly noon and I ‘m just beginning my draft. Why? Sermon calendar work was a priority, and I spent the morning revisiting, reconsidering, revising, then redoing the work I had already done. It is getting toward the end of the month, and I had the time to do this primarily because I built space into the schedule for this critical month. 

    If you work with your brain, you will find that you not only need diversion, but you also need room. If the well is too full it can be difficult to dip out the water without spilling some, wasting it or losing track of it. You need a little bit of room to grow, to breathe, to function. 

    I try to encourage you to work hard at fulfilling your ministry. Preparing to preach and teach is hard, exacting, lonely, frustrating, and invigorating work. We each need to allow space for the information we learn to be incorporated into our previous understanding. If you are diligent at good, applied exegesis you will gain insights that will require you to think, absorb, and recalibrate your approach. If you read commentaries, theologies, and other materials parallel to what you are preaching, you will need time to consider new and challenging concepts. If you hammer out good sermons you will want to let them sit for a couple of days, marinate, age, and tenderize. Then you will want to revisit them in terms of structure, accuracy, theological depth, and practical application. 

    Each of these scenarios expect the same thing. Enough time. Enough distance. Enough space. You need space. Your mind needs space. Your thinking needs space. Your sermons need space. I was able to totally revamp my sermon calendar this morning, something I had been pondering for at least a couple of days, because there was time and space. Even though there are still many practical matters to attend to, even after lots of revision and cutting, even after second-guessing and banging my head on the desk—three-quarters of next year’s preaching is scheduled in my Things to do list. 

    In fact, the space itself provoked the tinkering. It was because time and space were built into the process that I could make changes to my emerging plan. I have been doing enough preliminary reading, sketching, outlining, and thinking that I knew that this morning was the time to act on some of that tinkering. It was nearly time to transition from preparing my preaching calendar to actually scheduling work. If I wanted to make significant changes, this was the day, because this is where I had provided space for those kinds of changes.  The air in my schedule, the space left between tasks, the detailed reading, preparing Bibliography, and skimming resources gave me the chance to nail down what I thought would be important in 2025. I was able to think through things and pray for wisdom, discretion, discernment, and perspective. Without the time and space, it is not uncommon for our prayers to become desperate pleas for deliverance. 

    I think it is best to work in partnership with God and to use all the tools we have available. Panic is not nearly as effective as planning. We have books and essays, calendars and to-do lists, paper and pencil, colleagues, congregants, and students. Our own past preaching and the piles of work we have laid in store. When we dedicate the time and allow for enough space, we give God’s Holy Spirit plenty of room to move so that God’s voice is clearly present and artfully articulated in our preaching.

Paperwork 10.17.2024

     Asana is a company that provides project and work management software for individuals and teams. The origin story for the company comes from the system the company's founders put into place at Facebook to streamline work processes. Every job has a disproportionate amount of what Asana calls “work about work.” These tasks are, in Asana's marketing often derided as drudgery, “make work”, or mere paper-pushing. However, for real people living in the real world these tasks are vital, even essential to doing what we might call “adult person” work. These unfashionable duties are often the bones and sinews that hold together projects, bring work in on time, and provide context for the next project. This is no less true of the critical work of studying and preparing to preach

    When “work about work” is denigrated, marginalized, overlooked, or just plain ignored, when you don’t pay attention to those details you can endanger or even shipwreck the entire operation. The Asana mythology is nice. Out here in the real world, we realize that “work about work” is, in fact, actually just work. Plain old, unglamorous, painstaking, detailed work that needs to be done well  so that tasks can be approached appropriately, work product can be usefully stored, and the final output--in this case our weekly sermon--is ready to be presented.  

    In the 21st century the physical aspects of virtually any job have been altered by our digital reality. I’ve personally used computers to research and write sermons since 1985. It is really within the last 20-25 years that we have been able to move virtually the whole research, writing, storage, filing, tracking process into local or digital storage.  Here’s a quick review of the analog process for you youngsters who be too young for the "age of paper".

     In 1997 (just picking out a year) I would start with  a case of legal pads and other necessary stationary. This meant a hanging file folder for each sermon series. Depending on the part of Scripture each series came from I might also have a separate hanging folder just for research. In the “Sermon” folder went a manilla folder for each sermon. Into that folder would go all notes, outlines, illustrations, clippings, drafts, edits, and final preaching copy for that particular sermon. Given all that paper, most preachers could have had “Tree slayer” as their nickname.  Notes and typewritten copy were stored on a computer. Much of the time I stored each years work its own floppy disk. In addition to the stationary products there were consumables for the computer and printer and the final piece of the puzzle--filing cabinets for storage. Besides preaching preparation there also was Pastoral work, Professional growth and interaction, Planning and Leading, and Programming. Even in a ministry setting with secretarial or administrative assistance most of that "work about work" was mine to organize and execute. 

    The digital age has both changed the process and intensified it. It is possible for me to read, review, and research far more material and keep richer records because none of it ever leaves my computer. Virtually all of it is  in the cloud accessible on every device available to me. Since 2012 virtually every sermon and point of research I have prepared is available to me on phone or iPad. I rarely print paper for notes. I still take take a lot of handwritten notes and if what I write down is something essential that I need to keep for possible future reference I snap a scan of if with my phone and store it in the appropriate folder on my computer.  

    It is somewhat easier to do this basic administrative work with our interconnected digital technology. Yet It is still important to review and consider these mundane processes because the depth and breadth of the information, coming at us at ever greater velocity,  still needs to be organized and accessible—not merely “piled” on a distant hard drive. 

    I’m preparing to preach from Matthew this winter. I have at least five complete sermon series from Matthew available to me at the click of a button! I need to know what I have said in the past, what I’ve said recently, and what materials I have researched and to what degree. Yes, it is easier to just rifle through files on a computer than it is to pull and review a physical folder. Easy or difficult, digital or analog it’s got to be done and despite the Asana folks wanting to shill on doing away with such paper-pushing, real jobs require personal and institutional context. That context comes by intentionally connecting the past to the future. That process is real, necessary work.

    And we must do it. During Sermon Calendar month I will go into the folder on my hard drive cleverly named: 2025. I have already labeled the following folders: 1. Preaching. 2. Pastoral Care. 3. Planning/Leading. 4. Professional. 5. Programming. The primary focus of this month will be that first folder--Preaching. I have prepared subfolders: A.M. Preaching. Theology. Improving Interpretation. Sermon Calendar Work. There are a few scattered files that will be properly filed as I go through the process. A.M. Preaching has a subfolder already for each series I’m planning. Each sermon series gets subfolders for research, preaching manuscript, slides, handouts. This system takes a few more clicks than some methods. I can also do a quick search using the Alfred utility on my Mac and just find it the hard way. Following the folder tree reminds me that this is not a random process. There is a purpose and direction to what I’m doing. No. You certainly don’t have to do it this way. If you want to use card stock and envelopes that’s fine. You either are organized or not. Yes it takes time. It can be drudgery and I do work as quickly as possible to just hammer through the "paperwork" so that I have as much time reserved for study as possible. The time is not wasted. Presumably that study will result in notes, drafts, preliminary outlines, and strategies. If I'm going to be able to find it 12 weeks from now that will only be because I've done that administrative work in advance. 

    If you are not organized, you will spend a lot of time simply looking for things that you have but can’t find. You will likely not prepare preliminary drafts and do much editing because you’ll find it difficult to remember where you’re at in the process. You’ll be able to leverage the power of modern computing to find things, but you won’t really know where they’re at, or why. Much of what I write in this space encourages you to be thoughtful and intentional in your preparation and preaching. Part of that process is storing the fruit of study so that you are able to use it. Real study should be a journey of discovery. Don't get lost in the undeveloped country of your own work. 

    You might be thinking “I didn’t get into ministry to do paperwork.” Get over it. Real jobs include real work. Adults don’t just get to have fun. Doctors need to take and maintain good notes. I want engineers to keep their materials organized rather than risk unnecessary road or bridge failures. Lawyers do briefs and are organized. Accountants keep accounts straight. Even professional athletes study their playbooks, review their film, and keep notes on their past performance and the tendencies of their competitors. Simple or complex, real jobs have work product and deliverables. Preaching has a different focus and domain, but you still do the work (work product) so that you can preach on Sunday (deliverable). 

    My point is, given that we will do something let’s make sure that it is intentional, storable, usable, and discoverable. Your life’s work needs more attention than a tangled mess. If we are going to heed God’s call on our life and do the work, let’s do it well.

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.

Octoberific! 10.3.2024

     For some, the first days of October are exhilarating because of the crisp, Fall air. Others, for reasons I do not—and care not to understand, look forward to indulging in pumpkin spice. For some October means playoff baseball. Other sports fanatics are encouraged as both the NFL and Collegiate Football seasons begin to winnow out the haves from the have nots. 

    And for me? October means Sermon Calendar preparation for the coming year. It may be a personal tradition, but it is a tradition, nonetheless. And if you follow me in this space you have heard about it many times. I will never stop declaring the empowering freedom of knowing every single week what you will preach. There is no need to lose sleep or fret over the task at hand. Preparation and planning provide a birds-eye view of 52 weeks of preaching that enhances weekly study and, with a little discipline will make you a better preacher. 

    It is still early. The month is just started. Yet, in just a few hours this afternoon I was able to map out a big-picture strategy for the year. Now I have 29 days not only to secure resources and plan out individual messages I have a yearly theme that I can pray over beginning right now. 

    A sermon calendar may seem overly nerdy and a little obsessive. And it may be those things. But when I come to the first Sunday of Advent I will know where I’m going and how Christmas season leads directly to Easter, Easter to Pentecost, Pentecost to the rest of the year. 

    I can begin right now to read in the secondary literature for the whole year. I have time to consider books which I may have avoided because they are too long or don’t seem relevant, knowing that I am preparing for a long-term season of study. 

    Last month I wrote about reviewing and taking inventory and different strategies for controlling the flow of information. Some of that information will be resurfaced and pigeon-holed for use in the coming months. Other information will be filtered entirely out or re-filed for another day. I’ve already began going back through my past preaching on the texts chose for the year to ensure I do not unduly repeat myself. I have already found materials used in different setting that I will repurpose and reedit into a series of sermons. 

    While the fall may be terrific for some, and others celebrate Rocktober, for me it is Octoberific. A deep dive now will yield fruit, save time, provide quality control, and keep me focused. It is more important at this stage in my ministry than it has ever been before. Only the experienced are truly tempted to be lazy. 

    For example, when I opened Matthew 1 in Logos Bible Software today, without looking for a specific pericope, I was presented with 126 different documents. There were sentence flow documents and other research, but mostly sermons. Sermons I have written from Matthew. Some might find it tempting to re-preach those old sermons, or at least reuse much of that old material. I find it informative and helpful, but I am committed to preparing fresh sermons from current exegesis. This preliminary work is a help to me, not a substitute for doing the hard work I am called to do. The process of exegesis, outlining, writing, editing, rewriting, and ultimately preaching is a spiritual process—a drama in several acts that should result in better preaching—because the process makes for a better preacher. 

    God has called us to stand for Him every Lords Day, to represent Jesus and to proclaim, “This is what God says!” The only way to do that with integrity is to be listening intently to His resonating voice in the text.  

    Let’s saddle up and do the work He called us to do. Let’s enjoy the company of the Biblical authors and the great cloud of exegetical witnesses that has gone before. Let’s join with our colleagues and commit to not only preparing sermons that will be the heart of worship, but to seasons of preparation which are themselves acts of worship. I am convinced that God will honor that work and that if you stick with it, you, too will find the process Octoberific.