Saturday\u2019s post on plagiarism took me by surprise. Lots of chat for a Saturday. The challenge to preach and teach weekly, and often more than once, is far more challenging than most comprehend. I\u2019m wondering what you do to keep yourself fresh and in condition to give your own sermons.
\nI begin by comparing my life with the preacher\u2019s, but my life and the life of a preacher is not comparable. I don\u2019t have committee meetings that can increase tensions in the church, I don\u2019t have parents calling me about their children, and I don\u2019t have funerals and weddings and other sorts of meetings that eat up time and emotion. I grouse, as you may recall, about Dept and Faculty meetings. The more I think about this, the less this analogy works. Still, I do teach and I preach (though not in the same location weekly \u2014 and that is really the problem, isn\u2019t it?) and maybe a few observations will help you and trigger your comments on what can be done to avoid getting stale and keeping the sermon grind stimulating.
\nOne more comment: I\u2019m assuming you are not a pastor that has only one responsibility \u2014 teaching and preaching. If you do just preach and teach, our lifestyles are more similar than not.
\nI make the following suggestions and welcome your own:
\n1. Always be reading something outside sermon or lecture preparation in order to keep your mind active in another area \u2014 it stimulates and comes in handy in all kinds of situations. You can build a databank of ideas this way. Read biographies or whatever you like. Key here: read what you want and not what you think you should read to \u201ckeep up\u201d. (By the way, no one \u201ckeeps up.\u201d Forget it; never; no one; there are 5,000 or so books published in connection with the Bible per year; thousands of journal articles. No one digests it all. It would be another post to discuss responsible reading patterns, but the one that suggests we need to \u201ckeep up\u201d is just not realistic. Pastors can\u2019t possibly keep up in all the fields they enter: Bible, history, theology, leadership, discipleship, evangelism, missions, spiritual formation \u2026 .) So, as I was saying, read what you want as often as possible.
\n2. Get your ideas for your sermon on paper sooner rather than later: one of the major problems in preparing sermons is waiting until the last minute. Why not get your big ideas ready early in the week so they can ferment and brew? I know some pastors who are working weeks ahead on their sermons. Good for them; that way allows a fermentation to occur that really helps avoid \u201cbrain block\u201d at the wrong moment. It surely helps them avoid swiping sermons from someone else.
\n3. Chat about sermons with your friends during the week, or your wife, or your fellow ministers \u2014 this way you get feedback and contributions from others. Pass your ideas by a favorite professor you had. Most of them love to hear from former students. Avoid thinking you are the only one who has anything to say or the only one who can interpret the Bible.
\n4. Work hard at having both \u201cdown time\u201d and \u201cquiet time\u201d \u2014 down time means time when you are not working as a preacher\/pastor. Quiet time doesn\u2019t mean personal prayer but uninterrupted preparation time.
\nWell, these are my suggestions. Many of you will have others.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Saturday\u2019s post on plagiarism took me by surprise. Lots of chat for a Saturday. The challenge to preach and teach weekly, and often more than once, is far more challenging than most comprehend. I\u2019m wondering what you do to keep yourself fresh and in condition to give your own sermons.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":197,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n