I usually write about the challenges of professional and executive speaking, but there’s one speaking gig that presents difficulties even most pros don’t have to face: preaching.
Preachers face the same audience (mostly) week after week, year after year, and have to somehow persuade them to listen afresh every Sunday. Even assuming you get a couple of Sundays off, you’re still facing roughly 50 20-minute speeches a year – and each of them has to be different.
While a few professionals give different speeches each time they speak, most give roughly the same talk with variations. That way they can control the brand and keep the quality consistent; it’s a good idea.
A preacher can’t do that. Even a very sleepy congregation would notice if all the sermons were the same, eventually.
So how to you keep the quality high and the invention fresh while at the same time bringing the Word to a congregation that is very, very familiar with you and your message? (Oh, and by the way, these ideas will work for anyone who has to address the same audience repeatedly.)
1. Become an infovore. That’s Mitch Joel’s word, and I love it – it’s someone who ceaselessly hunts for new information. You’re going to turn that information into new sermons, sermon hooks, and pieces of sermons. If you demand so much of yourself, then you have to keep filling the well. Then you can use your latest news item or info-tidbit to kick off this week’s sermon.
2. Use callbacks and inside jokes. Having a regular audience is on the one hand a challenge – the need for new material – but on the other hand a gift: these people know you, and know your reference points. So if you’re not returning to ideas, thoughts, jokes, and concepts several times throughout the year, why not? Your inside references and jokes will connect you and the congregation and give newcomers something to look forward to – learning the insider stuff.
3. Create series. Repeated trips to the pulpit give you an opportunity for longer explorations of material – spread out over several weeks. Do a five-part series on Christmas, for example, or a long, multi-part run-up to Easter. This approach enables you to cut up the big problem into smaller ones, and to vary the kind of material and depth you take on. How about that multi-week dissection of materialism?
4. Return with a difference. One of the most interesting opportunities with a long-term gig like a weekly sermon is to return to an earlier message, and dissect it with an eye to seeing how much your perspective has changed. It’s like taking the same picture of Junior standing in front of the same bench every year on his birthday. Over time the changes themselves become a feature of the message.
5. Start a serial. Charles Dickens perfected his (long-term) relationship with his audience by giving them stories drawn out over several years in monthly or weekly installments. One of them, The Old Curiosity Shop, and its heroine Little Nell, so fascinated his readers on both sides of the Atlantic, that when the end of the book finally came close, Dickens’ fans in New York lined up on the dock, shouting at the steamship as it came into the harbor, “Is Little Nell dead?” It’s hard to imagine a story so holding the minds of readers today. Perhaps the nearest equivalent is the cliff-hanger TV show, beginning with who shot JR.
6. Starting a serial means creating long-lasting characters. Whether the characters are your own invention, or provided by the Bible, returning to particular people over and over again will create a cast of characters that your congregation looks forward to every Sunday. So fill your sermons with people and return to them with new adventures every so often.
7. Create categories and fill them. A blogger might do a podcast one week, a book review another, and an opinion piece the next week. Thinking of the weekly chore in terms of categories of kinds of sermons is another way to fill the calendar.
8. Crowd-source your topics. Whenever there’s a big speaking chore to handle, involve the audience. You will determine the best way to get sermon topics out of your congregation, but you can be sure that, if asked in the right way, they have plenty of ideas.
9. Trust in the spirit. If you really want to live on the spiritual edge and test your Sunday chops, then do what Martin Luther King did – walk into the pulpit with a couple of themes, or chunks of sermons, in mind – and make it up on the spot. I wouldn’t advise trying this early in your preaching career, but once you’ve got the experience, give it a try. Many people don’t realize that the second half of the “I have a dream” speech was adlibbed. Now, that’s preaching.
Wow. Never thought about the profession this way! It reminded me why great teachers are such a treasure, as well. Thanks, Nick.
Thanks for the comment, Maureen!
Wow…. I never heard that about Martin Luther King’s speech. Crazy.
The church I grew up in would have a pastor step up to the pulpit, open the Bible, and start preaching from whatever page opened up. I often wondered if there was a bookmark there! :)
Regardless, I have friends who are pastors and we occasionally talk about how I get to repeat previously constructed messages where they need to craft a new one each week. I think you’re spot on–as usual–that this could just be one of the most difficult speaking gigs out there.
Thanks Nick.
Thanks, Andy — I wonder how those “open the Bible” sermons were — do you remember at all, or were you too young to give them a speaking critique?
I’ve been invited to give lay sermons at Unitarian churches in the past couple of years. So not a regular gig, like a minister faces. It’s a different kind of inspiration we’re going for as speakers to congregations, and I find it’s much more personal to talk about one’s beliefs openly, in front of a group of even like-minded people. It’s harder than telling a story about a mean boss you once had or a mistake you made that changed your life. This is suddenly “where you live” in a serious way.
One advantage, though, is that you get to read a sermon, unlike a speech. It’s expected that you read (unless you follow recommendation #9 above), and for speakers who are not used to that, I find reading it is a luxury!
Thanks, Susan. And I want to hear about the sermon when you do speak from the spirit:-)
Great piece Nick. Didn’t know that about MLK. Wow! I’m a regular listener of Rick Warren. He obviously follows your advice. :-) Further, his writing and style offers a great model for both sermons and keynotes.