On Preaching
Preaching is a truly difficult endeavor. Every sermon I write feels like a hike on a brand new trail that I'm navigating alone with an inadequate topographical map. I have a hard time staying focused. The Grey Wizard's ten steps are helpful as a method, but accomplishing a sermon is much more than simply following ten steps. A good sermon ought to: convict, educate, encourage, bring about life change, entertain (like a good lecture can be entertaining if the professor is diggin' his material), jolt, challenge, renew. It out to be enjoyable, it ought to be slightly uncomfortable, it ought to be interesting. Then on top of all that, it ought to be focused on God, not on you. The people should heard the Word of God, not the Word of Ben. Nonchristians should be able to understand what you're saying, but believers ought not to be bored. Worst of all, your sermon has to "connect." Connection is notoriously hard to engineer. That's why some dates end the relationship while others end in marriage.
God help us all.
posted by Benjamin @ 7:49 AM
2 Comments:
More thoughts:
"I would not have preachers torment their hearers, and detain them with long and tedious preaching, for the delight of hearing vanishes therewith, and the preachers hurt themselves."
"The defects of a preacher are soon spied; let a preacher be endued with ten virtues, and but one fault, yet this one fault will eclipse and darken all his virtues and gifts, so evil is the world in these times. Dr. Justus Jonas has all the good virtues and qualities a man may have; yet merely because he hums and spits, the people cannot bear that good and honest man."
"When a man first comes into the pulpit, he is much perplexed to see so many heads before him. When I stand there I look upon none, but imagine they are all blocks that are before me."
Articles 334, 340, 350
Martin Luther, Table Talk, first published in 1566
I like that line, "yet merely because he hums and spits, the people cannot bear that good and honest man." hahaha.
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