Cultivating Sermon “Seeds”
I’m on record as being strongly opposed to preaching someone else’s sermons. So why would I have a “Sermon Seeds” category in this blog, where I give you preaching ideas?
I’ll give you three reasons: First, I want to give you some samples of the thought-processes I am blogging about. It’s hard to learn without examples. Second, I acknowledge that we do learn from others, and can benefit from their ideas. I’ve learned from serving on preaching teams that synergy is an expression of the Spirit’s work in the body of Christ. Finally, I believe that sermon plagiarism is not the same thing as gleaning wisdom and insight through the ideas of others. It’s one thing to copy sermons. It’s another thing to cultivate sermon seeds.
I won’t give you sermons to copy. But I will give you seeds to cultivate in the soil of your own heart and ministry. In fact, I hope that you will keep a seedbed of sermon ideas that come from a variety of sources, including your own moments of inspiration. Consistently “cultivating” your collection of sermon seeds can give you an endless harvest of fresh sermon “fruit” that flows from your own life of seeking after God.
Staying with the agricultural metaphor, here are five ways to “cultivate” your sermon seeds, whether you find them on this blog or somewhere else.
Feed/Fertilize your sermon seeds by studying the text. There’s no substitute or shortcut for the hard work of digging into the language, historical and cultural background, literary context and theology of the text. Good study habits will mature, and sometimes correct your initial ideas.
Work the soil by meditating on the text. Process the text through your own spiritual disciplines. Mull over it frequently, considering ways it challenges you. Try it on. Apply it to your own life. Live in the text for awhile.
Water the seeds through prayer. Pray through the text. Ask for the Spirit’s guidance. This is a text he has used in the life of the people of God throughout millennia. Ask him how he wants to use it today, in the life of your people.
Pull the weeds of your own agenda. Does this sermon seed represent an axe you have to grind, or a project you want to promote? The cultivation period is a time to set those things aside and hear from God the message he has for his people.
Give the sermon seeds time to germinate. No gardener worth his salt goes out to the garden to dig up seeds before they are ready. Cultivation is an act of patience. Time plus intentionality will yield mature sermonic fruit that can feed your hearers richly from God’s Word.
