I'm Doing Something I've Never Done Before Today

Much of ministry (like any profession) is filled with repetition. I preach every week, only the subject changes. I minister to people every week, just the faces change. But today I’m doing something I’ve never done before in ministry, and I’m a boiling mixture of nervousness and anticipation, excitement and fear.

Today I’m spending all day with six of my staff in one meeting with one goal: to rip apart my sermons for the upcoming year and make them better. It’s a sermon series planning meeting with the goal of taking the “B/B+” ideas I’ve already prepared for the next school year and hopefully turning them into “A” sermons, creating 52 contagious experiences that overwhelm our people with the gospel of hope. It’s something I’ve dreamed about doing for years but finally get the opportunity to do today.

To be honest, this is also the most uncomfortable thing in I’ve done in awhile. But ask me in a year (more importantly, ask my church members) if this worked. Here are some of the factors that got me to today:

Openness – Most pastors create their sermons in a vacuum. It’s just them and the Word. As spiritual as that sounds, it also is very insulating for the pastor, closing him off from any potential negative criticism. That’s why many pastors choose to prepare on their own. It takes a certain dose of openness to admit that you need help and creative input to craft the best sermons possible.

Thick Skin – Pastors in a way are artists, creating word pictures that hopefully lead to life transformation. But to make anything better, you have to be open to criticism. Some pastors have thin skin and are closed off to constructive criticism, choosing the drape themselves in the Bible and labeling any attacks on their sermon as an attack on the Word.

Preparation – Thinking a year ahead has been daunting. I’ve had to create enough margin from the immediate to allow myself breathing room to project ahead. I’ve created nine sermon series ideas that will potentially take us through the end of next school year. Developing nine different series and a year’s worth of sermon ideas has been exhausting, but I’m hopeful that the results will be worth it.

Discipline – There’s no way I could sit at a desk in one sitting and spew out a year’s worth of sermons. My trusted friend in this endeavor has been Evernote, an app that collects and organizes my ideas and syncs with all my devices. A few of the sermon series are ones I thought of the day of. Several of the best ideas are ones I had months or even a year ago. When inspiration hit, I wrote everything down in Evernote before I forgot, and I’m able to pull up my ideas when I need them most. It took discipline to faithfully write down my ideas when I had them, knowing that I might not preach those sermons for a year or longer. But today that discipline is paying off.

Team – I didn’t just pick six staff and random and ask them to tear apart my sermons. This same team is one I’ve met with every week for months, planning and dissecting all of our Sunday experiences. They have familiarity with my sermons on a weekly basis, giving them the foundation needed to project out with me for the coming year.

Self-worth – We’re not going to get too far into the day before someone (very nicely) begins to tear my sermon idea to shreds and suggests another one. What I thought would be the perfect sermon might get left on the cutting room floor. I’ve got to continually remember that they’re not attacking me, they’re attacking an idea. I am loved whether they like my ideas or not.

If you get a moment, please say a prayer for us today!