Author H. G. Wells, whose active mind created The Time Machine, The Invisible Man, and War of the Worlds, knew how precious creative thoughts are.
"Most people think once or twice in a lifetime," he observed. "I've made a reputation of thinking once or twice a month."
Pastors, however, are expected not only to think but to deliver powerful ideas once, twice, even three times a week. It's enough to pale both rosy-cheeked seminarians and ruddy veterans. What is the secret of communicating the Word of God to the people of God without them becoming tired of God?
Parents who love their children try to provide food that's both healthy and tasty. Pastors, too, are in the business of feeding the family. After interviewing pastors from a wide range of denominations, a consensus emerged: balanced diets don't just happen. Pastors must plan a nutritious menu.
Part of the planning problem is the complex role of the sermon. A sermon, like a Swiss army knife, must handle a variety of jobs. Consider the varied preaching models in the Bible.
John the Baptist demanded repentance and baptism. Jesus, in Luke 4, read a passage of Scripture and explained it; on the mount, he talked about lifestyle. Peter, at Pentecost, interpreted current events in the light of prophecy. Paul debated the existence of God with secular philosophers and corrected bad doctrine in struggling churches.
Likewise, today's sermons must play multiple roles. Preachers are caught somewhere between Paul's resolve to "know nothing but Christ and him crucified" (1 Cor. 2:2) and his equal satisfaction in preaching "the whole counsel of God" (Acts 20:27). Modern sermons waver between the evangelistic and the educational. They must both engage unbelievers and enrich the faithful. They must break hard hearts and heal broken ones.
How do effective preachers decide what to preach? Most tend to fall into one of three categories.
One Week at a Time
In some ways, the simplest approach is to determine each week what the people need to hear. The pastor studies the Bible faithfully and selects those portions of Scripture that speak most directly to the church's situation.
Several advantages of this strategy are apparent. The minister uses only those portions of Scripture that leap out at him, and thus the sermon is more likely to be alive, delivered with energy and urgency.
Most preachers can attest that certain passages almost demand to be preached. Others don't arouse much enthusiasm. Anyone who has used a lectionary has at times asked, "Why in the world did they pick this portion?" Free-style preachers have no such headache; they make their own selections.
Ben Haden, pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Chattanooga, Tennessee, is a one-week-at-a-time preacher.
"I never preach a series," he says. "A series assumes you'll have no visitors, no turnover, and the same people present for every message. We have 300 visitors every Sunday. We're an inner-city church, right next to the worst of the ghetto-not a static congregation at all.
"I always assume that half my listeners are unbelievers who either don't agree with what I'm saying or don't know what I'm talking about. That assumption guides me whether I'm speaking to a civic club, a seminary, or the church. It forces each sermon to be clear, simple, and complete in itself."
Haden's Sunday sermons are always on a practical topic. Systematic Bible teaching is done on Wednesday evenings. "On Sundays, unless a message is a practical help," Haden says, "I won't preach it." This system works for Haden and many other preachers. Not everyone, however, feels comfortable judging the congregation's most pressing need week by week.
Further, personal interests can bias the selection of sermon topics. Some pastors feel so strongly about church renewal that 90 percent of their sermons discuss what the body of Christ ought to be. Others hold the torch for the family, and almost every sermon includes principles for stronger families. These are important needs, but overemphasis can lead to neglect of other subjects. Sometimes in the effort to provide spiritual nourishment, pastors go overboard on the carrots. Nourishing yes, but by themselves not a balanced diet. Week-by-week preachers must be careful to touch the varied needs of the congregation.
"We let the Holy Spirit set the agenda," says Haden. "When the Lord shows me a recurring problem, I'll preach it. I don't expect the Lord to bless topics I think of; he's got to lay it on my heart.
"The Holy Spirit doesn't lead ten years in advance," he says. "I want to be ready to speak when he says speak. The Jonestown massacre broke on a Saturday, and the next day I preached about it and the need for us to put our confidence not in a man, but in God's Word. I couldn't have done that if my topic had been decided a year earlier."
The Leading of the Lectionary
At first glance, those who get each week's sermon text from a lectionary might be accused of stifling the Holy Spirit. Not so, say those who use the denomination's preprinted Scripture readings.
One pastor who uses the Lutheran lectionary, with its texts determined years before, has observed that the Holy Spirit takes the passage and applies it to people's lives in unexpected ways.
"After the service, people often tell me, 'Pastor, that sermon helped me with a personal problem,' " says Roger Pittelko of the Lutheran Church of the Holy Spirit in Elk Grove Village, Illinois. "When I ask what problem, they tell me, and sometimes it's a problem I never addressed in the sermon, but the Holy Spirit did."
Pittelko says part of the reason for this is the nature of the lectionary readings.
"I'm astounded how often the text deals specifically with a congregational concern, but usually it's because the passages deal with timeless themes," he says. "And we must remember that the Holy Spirit does not work immediately, but mediately through his Word and the sacraments."
With the texts already provided, pastors don't have to spend time searching for something to speak on. The basic truths of Christianity are covered in a systematic way, helping to keep pastors from preaching only personal peeves, and providing unity for the worship service. And it assists the pastor who follows the church year in worship and sermon planning.
Lectionary systems generally contain for each Sunday a reading from the Old Testament, the Gospels, and the Epistles. From October through December they build up to Advent, covering such themes as creation and the Old Testament expectations of the coming Messiah. From January to May, Easter and Pentecost are the landmarks. Themes center around the life of Christ-his character and teachings-and the coming of the Holy Spirit. May through September focuses on life in the Spirit-Christian ethical, social, and outreach responsibilities-and the hope for Christ's return.
"I use the lectionary as a guide but don't follow it slavishly," says Gregg Mast of Second Reformed Church in Irvington, New Jersey. "For the half year from Advent to Pentecost, I follow the lectionary. June to November is more potluck-I'll do a couple of series I feel the church needs. But I consult the lectionary every week. Its seasonal themes give some sense of where the church is."
One Sunday's readings included Isaiah 61 and the story of the Magi in Matthew 2. Mast's sermon was entitled "Star Gazing."
"I pointed out that we, too, are called to follow a 'star'-God's will-and to meet his Son," says Mast. "The star gives light, and light provides both judgment and forgiveness of sin."
Simply using a lectionary, however, doesn't solve the main problem of the preacher. Even with a given set of three texts, the preacher must still decide what to tell the people.
Some opt for a five-minute homily after each of the three readings, basically to explain any unfamiliar concepts in the passage. That's too disjointed for most, however, and it doesn't allow for serious exegesis or application.
As a result, most lectionary users pick one of the readings to speak from, or else they discover a common theme among all three passages.
"I try to find the connecting links between the Scripture texts," says Claudia Grant, pastor of Central Christian Church in Lebanon, Indiana. "Sometimes they're obvious; sometimes they're not. If the passages aren't speaking to me, I ask myself why not-is this an area where I need to grow?"
Those who don't use a lectionary often imagine it to be rigid and confining. But preaching is a sufficiently inexact science that the same text can be presented with a range of emphases. Like a jeweler, the pastor decides which side of the diamond to flash. The reflected light appears in many colors. Even pre-packaged Bible texts can be preached to reflect the needs of the congregation.
Martin Luther understood the universality of Scripture. "A preacher can get no more effective text than the first commandment: 'I am the Lord thy God.' With it he can preach hellfire to the forward and heavenly peace to the pious, punish the bad and comfort the good alike."
This, then, exposes both the potential benefit and danger of the lectionary system. To its credit, it gives balanced exposure to Scripture. "It keeps me in touch with a lot of Scriptures I normally wouldn't touch," says Grant. And because of the Scripture's range of applications, each passage can be personalized to the congregation.
"Our church goal for last year was 'to build a loving community,' " says Grant. "So in most of the Scripture passages, I was able to interact with that theme, and that was the focus of my preaching."
But the danger of the system is that pastors may assume that balanced coverage of Scripture equals balanced preaching. As Martin Luther pointed out, one Scripture can have several applications.
In the story of the Good Samaritan, for instance, Jesus teaches the principle of loving your neighbor. The application for a specific congregation is up to the pastor.
Does it mean making sure next-door neighbors meet Christ? Does it mean tutoring inner-city kids? Does it mean teaching in the Sunday school? Does it mean giving money for world hunger? Any of these is a possible direction the application could take.
The lectionary system helps balance Scriptural coverage, but balancing applications and illustrations is still up to the pastor.
A Series of Series
Those who preach several series each year claim they have the best of both worlds-they can customize topics and texts, and with a little advance planning, they don't sweat each week wondering what to preach. Finding series topics is rarely a problem.
"Several years ago," says James Folkers of Mission Hills Baptist Church in Mission Viejo, California, "I went through my personal library skimming the books and noting key subjects that ought to be preached on. I wrote down over 1,000 topics! The whole counsel of God is a pretty vast subject."
Folkers reviews his list each October to plan his sermons for the following year. He decides on ten or twelve subjects per year and plans a month-long series on each-unity, for instance, or forgiveness, or interpersonal relations, or the church functions: baptism, the Lord's Supper, fellowship, worship, caring for the needy, and evangelism.
Series preaching offers several advantages. It gives purpose and direction to background reading. Concentrating on one topic allows for deeper exploration and more potential impact. If there is some connection between sermons, what is said one Sunday may make next week's easier to grasp. Learning and transformation usually don't happen during a single message, but from repeated exposure. A well-placed pattern scores better in target shooting and in preaching.
Some sets of sermons, of course, are series in name only. Clarence Macartney, the famous Presbyterian pulpiteer, had a line-up of "Great Nights of the Bible." Someone else constructed a string of sermons on "Famous 3:16s," based on texts from the third chapter, the sixteenth verse of various New Testament books. Such "series" have little unity and merely provide the preacher with a hook on which to hang miscellaneous thoughts. These sundry Sundays aren't series so much as collections of individual sermons.
On the other hand, sermons can reinforce one another without being called a series.
"In this transient society, each sermon must be complete in itself," says John Killinger, former professor of preaching, worship, and literature at Vanderbilt University and now pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Lynchburg, Virginia. "I'll often preach a series, but I won't tell the people it's a series."
During the post-Easter season, he preached three sermons on "The Fear of Death," "What Heaven Is Like," and "Love Beyond the Grave: Can You Contact the Dead?" He didn't bill it as a death-and-dying series, but the effect was the same.
Likewise, when Killinger preaches doctrine, he doesn't call it a doctrinal series (a label guaranteed to lower the congregational metabolism). Instead, his three sermons on the Trinity were called:
Your God Is Too Big-addressing why God doesn't always change things the way we want, and describing how God limits his own omnipotence.
Your Christ Is Too Small-correcting the tendency to view Christ as merely a good human being.
Your Holy Spirit Is Too Vague-focusing on the genuine power available to Christians in the discreet aspects of daily life.
Of course, series preaching has dangers, too. It requires variety as well as continuity; the pastor risks repeating himself and thus irritating the regulars, or else bewildering visitors by assuming they heard last week's message.
In addition, series preaching runs the risk of sparking the interest of only one segment of the body. A series on family communication may intrigue some and ignore others.
But on the whole, a thoughtful series can touch the varied interests of the congregation.
"I usually preach through Bible books or through the lives of Bible characters," says Dale Schlafer of Denver's South Presbyterian Evangelical Fellowship. "It keeps me honest. Certain subjects you like will keep popping up in your preaching if you don't think about it. For me, those are salvation, family, the filling of the Holy Spirit, and lordship. But a series makes me preach topics I tend to avoid-divorce, Satan, sexual morality.
"The beauty of scheduling series," says Schlafer, "is that planning is God's idea, too. He can work through a schedule as well as the spur of the moment. And if a problem arises-say, for instance, gossip and bad report-my schedule is always flexible enough to insert a series on the tongue."
A Question of Balance
No matter which system a pastor uses-week by week, a lectionary, or a series-balancing the pulpit menu is a challenge. Simply selecting a variety of scriptural starting points or tackling a different practical problem each week does not guarantee a well-rounded spiritual diet.
Imbalances can occur when pastors use applications or illustrations of only one type, or when they aim for only one kind of response. Some pastors aim for salvation and repentance in every sermon; others choose to preach love, acceptance, and forgiveness. Some invariably turn their applications to holiness and personal piety; others stress servanthood and outreach.
How can preachers maintain balance? How do loving shepherds make sure the flock is well fed? Unfortunately, there are no easy formulas.
"You fly a lot by the seat of your pants," says John Killinger. "But the mind is a very sophisticated computer-weighing all kinds of factors, data, signs, and portents."
Fortunately, some of that specific data can be spelled out. There are at least three factors to be kept in balance for well-rounded preaching.
Balancing Content
The first thing mentioned by pastors who try to balance their preaching is content. Yes, the whole counsel of God is overwhelming, but they are at least going to make an effort to touch all areas.
David Seamands has a "kerygma list" to keep him from missing something.
"I made a list of 100 theological categories from books on biblical theology," says Seamands, pastor of the United Methodist Church in Wilmore, Kentucky. "These include everything from God's character to salvation to sanctification to eschatology."
Every sermon, he finds, fits into one of the general theological categories. Each week he jots down the date next to the subject he dealt with. He tries to touch each of the 100 topics at least once every two years.
John Killinger keeps track of the types of sermons he preaches. Each year he aims for approximately ten dealing with life situations, ten biblical expositions, ten doctrinal sermons, ten in various series, and a sprinkling of seasonal sermons and personal interests.
"Some sermons ripen slowly in my notebook," he says. "I like to pick one when it's ripe."
One Mother's Day, for instance, he preached on "Some Things I'd Like My Mother to Know."
"My mother was dying at the time," he says. "And I was working through some terrible feelings. I wanted to use the occasion to let the people see what I was going through-pain, but a Christ-centered pain."
Balancing sermon content, says Killinger, "is like painting a picture. There are no rigid limits regarding colors or brush strokes. You need breathing space for things going on in your life and the life of the congregation."
Artists may not have color quotas, but they're always aware of the color mix and the final effect they want the painting to have.
Balancing Style
Variety of presentation can be as important as variety in content. Two aspects make up presentation style: the form of the sermon, and its tone.
Jim Rose, pastor of Northwest Bible Church in Dallas, Texas, works hard to vary his preaching style.
"I want to preach the Word and apply it," he says. "But I don't want to jump out from behind the same tree every time."
Rose plans not only the sections of Scripture he will preach but also the type of sermon structures he will use: problem-centered, narrative, straight exposition, or drama.
"My biggest problem is preaching only the material I love-the Old Testament narratives," he says. "I have to fight my way into the Epistles."
Drama, he has discovered, can communicate with powerful effect. And it need not always be a full-blown production. Two more modest forms of drama can be used on Sunday morning.
"The simplest is a monologue done by the pastor," he says. "For example, Jonah can visit any congregation and tell his story.
"Second, dialogue is very effective. It can be an actual dialogue in Scripture, such as David and Jonathan, or it can be an interview. We've done several 'Meet the Prophet' sermons with a panel of interviewers.
"All the steps of developing a normal sermon are followed-exegesis, illustration, application-except the manuscript is put in role-playing form. Of course, we have to tell the congregation that what is being presented is a dramatization of what Scripture actually says. It's not us writing our own material and adding biblical names."
Balancing the form doesn't add any more nutrients to the menu, but it certainly makes them easier to digest.
The habitual tone of a pastor's sermons can also affect their impact.
"A deacon in a small church I served in Kentucky described a revivalist he'd heard," recalls Killinger.
"He really skun 'em," said the deacon.
"I thought it was interesting that he didn't include himself among those skinned," says Killinger.
After a while, bombast loses its effect. People seem to build up an immunity when exposed to only one type of content or delivery. When people have been used to noise, sometimes a whisper speaks loudest.
Balancing Sources
Sermon ideas come from two directions-Scripture and the congregation. Effective pastors learn to read both.
The purpose of preaching is to apply God's Word to the people. As a result, pastors usually find their main source of direct preaching ideas in Scripture, frequently punctuated by ideas springing from congregational needs.
"My preaching plan is like a piece of Swiss cheese," says Gordon MacDonald of Grace Chapel in Lexington, Massachusetts. "I plan my series, but I leave holes because I want some of my sermons to be delivered only five or six days old."
Bill Solomon of Cornerstone Presbyterian Church in Columbia, South Carolina, has a similar plan. He's preaching through the Bible, as much as five chapters at a chunk in some narrative portions, but he interrupts the process frequently. Interruptions come from two sources:
Personal devotional life-"If I'm blessed by something, I'm arrogant enough to believe that God will bless others with that thought," Solomon says with a smile.
Counseling-"I'll address an issue any time my counseling tells me it's bothering a great number of people," he says. Recently Solomon preached on "A Christian Looks at Herpes" based on Romans 1 and 2 Timothy 4. "I suggested that this might be a form of judgment on those who 'take pleasure in wickedness.' "
Some pastors actively search out preaching ideas from their congregations.
Ira Gallaway of First United Methodist Church in Peoria, Illinois, once put two three-by-five cards in each bulletin. One card asked, "What is THE sermon above all others you'd like to hear?" The other asked, "What is the faith problem that troubles you most?"
"I got 420 replies," says Gallaway. "I went on a personal three-day retreat to categorize them. For the next year my series was 'Sermons You've Asked Me to Preach.' More than once people met me after the service and said, 'That was my sermon, pastor.' "
Jim Rose's gauge of congregational needs is a bit more subtle. When he's visiting in homes, he likes to ask informal, open-ended questions:
"How are the children doing?"
"What's God doing with you in your business?"
"What have been difficult points in your marriage?"
"These kinds of questions usually reveal the pressure points people are feeling," he says. "I don't know the struggles of every member, but I should be close enough to a representative group to feel the problems and pressures they face."
Keeping ears open is an effective means of inspiration. One pastor said he kept hearing comments in committee meetings such as "We can't do that with the economy as it is" or "Our people don't have the (name one) talent/money/commitment to do it." He decided to preach the Book of Joshua because of its emphasis on faith and victory.
Perhaps the most important source of preaching material, however, is the sense of what God is saying to the pastor personally.
"My mind is usually enveloped in a fairly thick fog," writes author and preacher John Stott. "Occasionally, however, the fog lifts, the light breaks through, and I see with limpid clarity. These fleeting moments of illumination need to be seized. We have to learn to surrender ourselves to them before the fog descends again."
When that flash of insight comes (and it's usually at an awkward time-in the middle of someone else's sermon, in conversation, in the middle of the night), Stott accepts it as a gift and writes furiously, taking full advantage of the excitement of the fresh thought from God. It's not wisdom but conviction that's contagious. Only pastors who've experienced real heat can kindle a flame in the congregation.
Of course, you can't expect special illumination for every sermon, but some pastors do force themselves to discover one fresh insight each week.
"When I'm studying the text," says Everett Fullam, rector of St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Darien, Connecticut, "I expect the Lord to speak to me out of that passage. Preaching is the overflow of God quickening the Word in me. My words must be timely even though the Word is timeless.
"So each Sunday when I climb those three steps to the pulpit, at least I believe God has spoken to me. If he hasn't, then I won't."
Fortunately, balancing sermon sources isn't an either/or situation. As Everett Fullam says, "I don't take my preaching agenda from the needs of people, because Scripture is addressed to the needs of people." For pastors at home with both the Word and the world, the balance will be there.
In a sense, that's the secret of balanced preaching in all areas. The pastor can't be something he's not. If he or she has not known the crucifixion and resurrection, or if they have become such commonplace truths that they can be handled with ease in safe clichs memorized years before, then no list of homiletic helps can produce a nourishing spiritual diet.
The most balanced preaching comes from balanced human beings who share their growing faith with their congregations.
Marshall Shelley is assistant editor of LEADERSHIP
Leadership Spring 1983 p. 30-7
Copyright © 1983 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
