Preaching is no easy or simple task.
You’re given a passage from old and ancient scripture and are posed with the job—with the help of the Holy Spirit—of sharing some Good News found in that passage for a modern audience. A lot of preparation goes into writing a sermon: reading the passage multiple times (often weeks in advance and/or with other people), flipping through commentaries, maybe looking at the original Greek or Hebrew, reminding yourself what period this passage was written in and how that contributes to its contextual meaning.
This is why preachers are often known to be avid talkers. When we do all this research and exegesis on a text, we want to share it with our people! We long to tell stories and give historical background and share insights from all the learning we’ve done because we think it’s fascinating.
However, little snippets of cool information does not a sermon make. A sermon is not a Bible study or seminary class, nor is it a morality seminar or political speech. A sermon is an event. It is when the Word becomes flesh among us, within our communities, bringing to life this Gospel promise in scripture.
Though there is so much out there on every passage in the Bible, it becomes the essential job of the preacher to parse it out, discern the needs of their community, and proclaim the Gospel message. In a very real way, it becomes the preacher’s job to get out of the way of God—who is eternally compelling—and point to Christ crucified, died, and risen.
My preaching professor in seminary, Dr Karoline Lewis, challenged us to rein in our desire to say all the things in a sermon by giving us a prompt:
Write down one clear message we want our sermon to proclaim. One snippet of Good News that would be heard and carried with someone throughout the week. One scripture-led revelation of how God meets us in our broken human condition. One Christ-centered focus statement that the entire sermon supported.
This one statement or thesis would then act as a strainer, and if a paragraph or story or bullet point didn’t serve that focus, it got cut. She sought clarity and focus so that the Gospel would not only be heard, but experienced. She challenged us to edit, edit again, and then edit some more.
This was put to the test in our preaching precepts, where we only had 10 minutes to preach our sermons. Dr Lewis was adamant that if you took this focus statement seriously, you can proclaim the Gospel in under 10 minutes even though most of us had never heard that short or clear of a sermon before.
Though this was a challenge for me, I took it seriously and my preaching noticeably improved. I saw the effects in my own sermons and how much more I enjoyed preaching them when I was embodying one clear message for the community. When I knew clearly what the Gospel was for myself, I was even more excited to share it with others. When I was not allowed to go wide in my message, I ended up going deeper.
However, many pastors and preachers don’t follow (or know) this counsel. They preach all the ideas in their head and leave the person in the pew feeling bored or confused by the end. I know because I have been this person too many times.
Preachers can easily over-complicate the Good News, covering it up with empty words, too many ideas, or general oversimplifications about life or faith, leading me to wonder what God is saying or doing in the world.1 I also leave a lot of sermons wondering if preachers even believe what they just said, because it was void of real emotion.
God is far from boring or uncompelling, and yet I struggle to believe otherwise after some sermons!2
This is the preaching education, knowledge, and experience I had going into my Preaching Fellowship, and my time with street ministries has confirmed it all.
If one side of the sermon spectrum is preachers who talk too much and say all the things, the other end of the spectrum is street pastors who preach sermons that are rarely longer than 5 minutes and seldom use any notes or manuscripts.3
Street church sermons are short mostly because of logistics. Worship is outside, which means people don’t want to hear a long sermon if it’s freezing cold. If there’s a train or plane overhead, you have to pause and wait for it to pass. Being outside also means you might not have a captive audience for long because there are a lot of distractions. You have to say what you mean above all the noise.
A manuscript doesn’t tend to help you in these situations, either. It doesn’t allow for the flexibility to respond in the moment—whether it’s a change in the weather or a member of the community who keeps interrupting. Manuscripts can often become a crutch, leading preachers to say more words instead of less. And it’s worth noting that the communities who worship outside aren’t always “word” people.
I didn’t like all the sermons I heard at street churches (just like I don’t like all the sermons I hear in indoor church), but I began to notice that the shorter the sermon meant the clearer the message. Even if I didn’t think the message was the “best” one for the text, wasn’t Lutheran, or included theology I didn’t agree with, there was no question of what the message was.
Pastor Chris Matson4, who is no longer a manuscript preacher, said this:
“I kinda have to know exactly what the Good News is in the passage, because you never know what’s going to be happening. If it’s raining, you have to say it succinctly in two minutes and you’re done. [… You have to know] what it is that this scripture has to say to this community.”
She and other street pastors aren’t coming up with focus statements for their sermons because their seminary professor told them to.
They’re doing it because when you’re leading an outdoor church and only have 3-5 minutes to share some Good News because it’s pouring rain outside or everyone’s getting burned under the summer sun, you cut to the chase and make it as clear as can be.
Then you say it over and over and over again because you know they’re probably not hearing it anywhere else.
This is a good reminder for all of us preachers, because I don’t think the people in our pews are any different than the communities who gather to worship outside.
We are all God’s beloved, desperate to hear a Gospel message in a world riddled with pain and suffering. This Good News has the power to transform, comfort, and send us out to be God’s Body in the world. On the street or in a sanctuary, people are coming to our churches to hear a different story and encounter this God in the incarnation.
But I often struggle to hear this from the pulpit because it’s buried under a bunch of unnecessary and boring words.
Yes, preaching is no easy or simple task. It should be taken seriously and given the time and faithfulness it deserves.
But sometimes, I think we preachers forget to get out of our own way. As I am reminded at street churches, it is not the preacher who makes God compelling or interesting. God does that on God’s own.
It’s simply our job to name the Gospel clearly and repeat it over and over and over again for our people who are yearning to be loved and held by this God we point to on the cross.
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Are there sermons that have stayed with you over the years? How have you experienced the transforming Spirit in the Word event?
These reflections, experiences, and dedicated time for writing is thanks to the generosity of The Reverend Janet Karvonen-Montgomery Preaching Fellowship from Luther Seminary. You can learn more about Rev Janet and the Fellowship here.
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I want to name that this is not just the job of the preacher, but also the Holy Spirit. I know that. But my God, the Holy Spirit has to do some heavy lifting sometimes!
Well-known preacher Will Willimon says, "God, forgive us for making the Gospel boring."
I often found myself wondering, was that long enough? Is that even considered a sermon? Where was the law? My Lutheran sermon-loving soul was often convicted.
She’s the pastor at Church on the Street in Sioux Falls, SD.