Why Every Sermon You Preach Should Be Your Own
My Dad, who has been preaching for over 60 years, used to chuckle about a fellow pastor he knew early in his ministry whose go-to solution for a Saturday night sermon crisis was a book entitled, Simple Sermons for Saints and Sinners. The temptation to preach someone else’s sermon may not be new, but it is more alluring and more pervasive today than ever before.
If you know where to look (and I’m sure you know where to look!) you can find a good sermon on any text or topic, thoroughly prepared and prepackaged, ready to download, digest, and deliver. Just fold back the plastic cover, pop it in the microwave for a few minutes and voilá, you have a semi-nutritious and not altogether tasteless meal to put before your congregation, usually without anyone being the wiser. If you want to spend a few bucks and go a little more gourmet, you might even get take-out, complete with professionally-designed powerpoint slides and video illustrations!
And why not? You’re overwhelmed with the unreasonably heavy demands of ministry, and you also need to spend time with your family. What pastor really has the time to prepare an original sermon every week? Why should every sermon be your own?
I want to suggest three important reasons:
Credibility. The first has to do with your ethos as a preacher – the perception your hearers have of you. When people give you a half hour of their time and attention on Sunday, they expect (or at least they should expect) to hear a word from God, through a preacher who has been with God. If you serve them a steady diet of second-hand insights and warmed-over spirituality, sooner or later they will know it! And when they do, your credibility will suffer, not only in the pulpit on Sunday morning, but in every other place you encounter them during the week.
Authenticity. If you are “faking it” in your preaching ministry, not only will your people know it, you will know it. You were called to shepherd these people. You began with a sense of confidence in God’s purpose for your ministry, and his power to carry it out. When you compromise your spiritual integrity by preaching canned sermons, this sense of call and confidence is eroded week after week. Tragically, you might even grow accustomed to the loss of vitality, and convince yourself it’s normal. Before you know it, you are no longer living out a God-empowered vocation. You’re just doing a job. Delivering the goods –however paltry and picked-over they may be.
Vulnerability and availability. If your people know it, and you know it, then God certainly knows it! The arduous task of preparing a sermon gives God space and opportunity to do his work in your life. The desperate need for a word from him to deliver to your people makes you vulnerable to his rebuke. Seeking after him makes you available for his correction. Preaching someone else’s material short-circuits all of this, and you find yourself preaching a message you have not applied to your own life.
These all seem like negative reasons – dire warnings of the grim consequences of sermon plagiarism. But they also point to a positive, joyful reality. When you make yourself vulnerable and available to God in sermon preparation, you can preach with authenticity, and your preaching ministry will not lack for credibility!
