“Preach the Word” (2 Timothy 4:2).  But three times a week?

My wife and I had this conversation an hour ago.

I was remarking on the demanding weekend looming before me this Friday morning.  Tomorrow morning, I drive 400 miles to North Alabama for the funeral of my oldest friend and former classmate.  Later, following the funeral and after visiting with family for an hour or two, I drive to Meridian, Mississippi to spend the night. On Sunday, I will drive to Bryam, Mississippi to preach (and sketch, as always) in the morning and to Louisville to preach/sketch for a afternoon-evening missionary event  On Monday, I will drive home and teach at the seminary all that afternoon (a four-hour class, filling in for a professor friend).  In all, probably 1200 miles.

I said to her, “I’m so glad I’m preaching familiar sermons.  If I had to invent new sermons, the stress would be enormous.”

Margaret observed, “Most people don’t realize that’s one of the greatest stresses of the pastorate–having to come up with three new sermons every week.”

I agreed and continued to think about that. Being out of the pastorate for a full ten years  provides a great perspective on these things. (I left the pastorate in 2004 to become leader of the New Orleans Baptist Association for five years. Now in my 6th year of retirement, which means an itinerant ministry.)

Here are my observations on the subject of having to produce several new sermons every week and why that is such a preacher-killer….

1) This is one reason why many pastors have shut down the Sunday night service.  Contrary to popular thought, it wasn’t just the dwindling attendance, although that provided a convenient excuse. It was the burden of additional sermon-preparation on top of a thousand and one other jobs pastors are called on to do.  By freeing them up on Sunday nights, many pastors feel like they’ve been let out of prison. Literally.

In the late 1980s, the church I was serving had 3 morning worship services–and yes, I was preaching all of them, back to back to back.  Often, I’d get home at 1 o’clock and go straight to bed, then rise and eat lunch at 4 pm.  One day, a neighboring pastor who lived under the same schedule said something I had not thought of. “The worst thing about this is having to get it back up for Sunday night.”  Arrgh, I thought. So true.

2) Much of the stress of sermon-building is self-imposed.  Pastors tend to be perfectionists.

We want to do better. We want our churches to do well, want to reach more people, and are willing to do whatever is necessary for that.

We know when our sermons are poor.  We worry about that glazed over look congregations give us, indicating they are clearly zoned out during our preaching.  So, we pray and fret, we attend conferences and study books and try to find ways to improve our preaching.

I can tell you how to do that, pastor. Do what I did.

Quit pastoring for 10 years and reduce your work load to a dozen or so sermons, constantly tweaking them until you have them just the way you want them.  You will find preaching such a delight.

Okay, pastors cannot do this. But it is a thought.

3) Much of the stress is imposed from members with demands and expectations on the pulpit. 

Whether these members of the congregation want to be spiritually fed or entertained is debatable and depends on the situation. But one thing is sure. Most fit the mold of the Athenians in Acts 17, described as “spending their time on nothing else but telling or hearing something new” (vs.21).

Some will even remind the preacher that “You’ve preached that sermon before.”  (I tell them, “No, I have preached that same text before. But not the same sermon.”)

Pastors wonder if those who constantly make demands on the preaching are not described in 2 Timothy 4. “For the time will come when they will not tolerate sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, will accumulate teachers for themselves because they have itching ears” (vs. 3).  The HSBC puts this “because they have an itch to hear something new.”

Church members who pester their pastor to “preach more on sin,” “give us more prophecy sermons,” and such should be alert to this danger.

Pastors want our people to be happy with us. No preacher delights in being criticized or the congregation feeling he is failing. That desire to please the people can be both a positive as well as a great danger.  If, say, we start lining up prophecy preachers or miracle workers or prosperity promisers who play fast and loose with Scripture in order to feed the monster–you know what I mean!–we are prostituting our ministry and shaming our Lord.  Let us hold the course, and be faithful to our calling.

Church members can say all they please about the kind of sermons they prefer.  But once they finish, the pastor should simply thank them and say, “Please pray that the Lord will tell me what to preach.”  End of that conversation.

The young chairman of deacons sat in my office with yet another criticism. “Joe,” he said. “They say you’re not preaching the Bible, not feeding us spiritually.” I said, “Mike, I just finished preaching through Matthew. What do they mean by that?” He didn’t know.  I said, “Please go back and find out.” That was the last I heard of that.

4. Pastors do well to train their people to look to the Lord and to receive what He gives with thanksgiving, whether it’s their favorite subject or not.

Dropping their demands on the preacher liberates him to do several things he almost never does now….

–It frees him up to preach unpopular subjects that may offend some in the congregation.  Only the most mature of congregations will support a preacher when he does this.

–The liberated pastor can repeat a sermon several times in order to get it right, get it across, or get it into the hearts and minds of his people.  By this, I do not mean he would preach the identical sermon. No preacher would do that. But he might present variations of it, different approaches that make the same point.

–He could even read one that blessed him greatly.  Ever seen a preacher read a sermon?  I’ve not seen anyone else do it, but I’ve done it once or twice in a half-century of preaching. Only the most mature congregation will receive that with gratitude. The immature will balk and rally their troops against him.

–He could make wholesale changes in the mode of presentation of the message once in a while to get it across more effectively.  Why doesn’t he do that now, you ask. Answer: He doesn’t feel the freedom.  Church members often see their duty as registering instant approval or disapproval of everything he does. That adds enormously to his stress and burden.  Rather than have to deal with the complainers, he plays the game.

–He could involve unusual people in his presentations, some of them in the church and some out of it.

I once told some leaders of my desire to invite in the Pulitzer-Prize winning editorial cartoonist from our newspaper for a Sunday night forum.  This man is so bright and insightful about issues, I felt he could help our people think about community and national matters.  “There is one problem,” I told them. “He is Jewish. And I do not want any of our people to embarrass him by putting him on the spot.”  Those I consulted reacted negatively.  More than one went away wondering about their preacher’s orthodoxy.  That I wanted to build a relationship with the cartoonist while acquainting our members with a community leader mattered little if any to them. I dropped the plans.

5) And how would a preacher “train” his people to liberate the pulpit?

Short answer: By working with the leadership in small groups, talking about these matters and teaching the Word.  He should understand this takes time. No pastor can pull this off in six months or a brief pastorate.  Only the minister who stays at a church for a decade or more can get this across to his people.

Longer answer:  While teaching leaders in small groups, let the pastor sometimes push the envelope in his preaching.  From time to time, as the Lord leads, he should preach those controversial subjects as found in the Word, understanding that some will react negatively and he should be prepared to take his lumps.

As he does this, the pastor will want to show himself a role model of grace and kindness. He will continue shepherding the congregation faithfully and gently. As the people learn he is no loose cannon but a faithful minister of the Lord, they will trust him more and learn to accept those cutting-edge sermons.

The pastor must be patient with the people.  There will always be those who want what they want and who make demands on the pulpit. If new people are constantly arriving into the membership, the older and more mature can help educate them about expectations on the pulpit.  Meanwhile, let the pastor stay the course.

Teach the people to pray for their minister and then to accept what is preached as God’s answer to their prayers.

Now, there’s you a revolutionary thought!