My friends who read the title will think, “Well! Finally something Joe knows a little about!”
Every preacher, I imagine, knows about dull sermons. Anyone charged with turning out multiple sermons a week over decades will certainly produce his share of messages dead on arrival.
I’m thinking of a Christian leader/professor of past years who turned out book after book and built a reputation as a leader/writer/professor of note. He was off the scene by the time I was thirty, so I never saw him when he was in his prime or I in mine. But, repeatedly, I came away from his writings thinking, “How dull. Why was he considered such a wonder?” My quick answer is that the standards were different in the mid-1900s. Denominational publishing houses turned out books not for their sharp content or even sales figures but for other reasons. In a word, he was “safe.”
Now! The challenge on penning something about dull writings and boring sermons is to keep from being dull myself. But, always one for a challenge, let’s see how this goes.
My recipe for articles and sermons that are DOA….
1. Spout platitudes.
Given a choice between a catchy turn of phrase and an old saying you’ve heard a thousand times, go for the latter. Faced with telling either something exciting you saw yesterday or an uninteresting rehashing of something Charles Spurgeon said 150 years ago, Spurgeon wins without a runoff.
Never meet a cliche you don’t like. Pepper your sermons/writings with old bromides, common sayings, and everyday wisdom. Likewise, shun (like the plague?) any expression that would challenge the reader/listener to question his presumptions, analyze his ways, reconsider his beliefs.