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Pastor · Sunday Schedule · FBC
News
February
2005
From the Pastor
The Sermon
At one point in this entire process of retiring I counted up the number of Sundays left for me to preach. I was struck by the finiteness of the number. It was nineteen. By the time you get this newsletter it will be down to fourteen.
Nothing in the ministers life defines his or her use of time as does the sermon. As soon as one sermon is preached, thoughts for the next one begin.
My practice has been to first study the text, then write the Scripture out in longhand. Some how this helps me feel the text. Next I brainstorm thoughts about what the text is saying, particularly in light of the people to whom I will be preaching. Then begins the process of writing it, and as with the text I always first write it out in longhand. I have found the best place for doing this is at home, in an empty house, or early in the morning at a coffee shop.
I then type it into the computer, print it out, and the next day revise it. Finally, sometime on Saturday and again early Sunday morning, I read it aloud, making small corrections and committing the sense or flow of it to memory.
Monday the process starts all over.
In the thought process of the sermon, the congregation and the world in which they live has always been before me. I have tried to be honest and stay away from
cliché or illustrations drawn directly from the people for fear a confidence would be betrayed or I might cause embarrassment to someone.
I have always been in search of the insight, a ray of light cast on an eternal Truth. I know my sermons have been weighted more toward the cerebral. What I have hoped from the congregation is a thoughtful pause.
Sometimes I have seen in peoples expressions, they just are not interested, and I wished I could stir them more.
Now, it is down to the final few.
I wish I could give more than that of which I am capable. I feel the pressure of having so few Sundays left yet, I realize that is false pride wanting to go out with a flourish, but how vain is that?
The sermon is never about the person preaching it. It is more than content, symbolically saying, the words in Scripture still have relevance. They are tied to today. They are tied to your life. Let the words of Scripture live in you and know that the same Spirit that gave birth to those sacred words is a whispering presence in your life.
All my sermons, after they are preached, end up in a drawer behind my desk. That drawer is almost full. I haven’t had the heart to simply throw them away, but what am I to do with them? They were crafted for a moment in time and for a particular people. They were not meant to endure. It is the Scripture, not the sermon, that is meant to last.
They do in some way, however, represent the work of a lifetime, an accumulation of an effort to say, the Gospel is worth believing in, God is worthy of all praise.
For a few more weeks I get to try it again, in front of a people I dearly love, a very patient and forbearing people, a people kind and generous, a people who have been respectful and attentive to the sermon far beyond what was justified by either the talent or intellect of the preacher.
I am very grateful and know that whatever life came to be in a sermon, came out of this connection, born of the Spirit, between a people and a pastor. It is that intangible Spirit that is for the pastor the most humbling part of the sermon because it is beyond the skill or talent of the pastor to craft. It belongs to the people. You have been generous in your gift to me, I lean upon it for the last few sermons I will preach, and pray the new pastor will be bathed with the same generosity of love, affection and anticipation from the first Sunday he or she enters the pulpit of the First Baptist Church.
Dr. David W. Andersen
     
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