Best Preachers Practice, Not Rehearse, Sermons

Not only do the best preachers deliver sermons and develop a point of view they also practice their sermons. This is something that every homiletic class (the fancy title for preaching class) in seminary teaches. Practicing sermons are vital to the delivery and to the development of the point of view. However, practicing sermons is not the same as rehearsing sermons.

One does not have to rehearse sermons, but they must be practiced. 

Practicing sermons, or "practice what you preach", is the idea that we need to do what we preach not just speak it. So if you are a preacher that preaches about the need for reconciliation, then your sermons will be made great if you practice reconciliation. If you are a God accepts all people sort of preacher, then you should practice that sermon. 

The beautiful part is that when you practice your sermons, then you will not have as much of a need to rehearse them. The sermon will come from your being and doing. The people can see your sermon each time you stand in the pulpit.

You can rehearse all you want, but the best preachers practice their sermons.

There is a great little story by Henri Nouwen (Time Enough to Minister, 1982) that speaks to the need to practice your sermons, even when you don't have time to rehearse them. It goes like this:

"Often we're not as pressed for time as much as we feel we're pressed for time. I remember several years ago becoming so pressed by demands of teaching at Yale that I took a prayer sabbatical to the Trappist monastery at Geneseo, New York. No teaching, lecturing, or counseling--just solitude and prayer.  

"The second day there, a group of students from Geneseo College walked in and asked, 'Henri, can you give us a retreat?'
""Of course at the monastery that was not my decision, but I said to the abbott, 'I came here from the university to get away from this type of thing. These students have asked for five meditations, an enormous amount of work and preparation. I don't want to do it.'

"The abbot said, 'You're going to do it.'
"'What do you mean? Why would I spend my sabbatical time preparing all those things?'

"'Prepare?' he replied. 'You've been a Christian for forty years and a priest for twenty, and a few high school students wan to have a retreat. Why do you have to prepare? What those boys and girls want is to be a part of your life in God for a few days. If you pray half an hour in the morning, sing in our choir for an hour, and do your spiritual reading, you will have so much to say you could give ten retreats.'

"The question, you see, is not to prepare but to live in a state of ongoing preparedness so that, when someone who is drowning in the world comes into your world, you are ready to reach out and help. It may be at four o'clock, six o'clock, or nine o'clock. One time you call it preaching, the next time teaching, then counseling, or later administration. But let them be a part of your life in God--that's ministering."

Ecclesiastical Chemotherapy?

Not long ago Mark Cuban (the owner of the Dallas Mavericks) said that he feels President Trump is Political Chemotherapy. The point he was making is that regardless of how you feel about Trump, everyone in the American political system is having to examine what it is we want to be normative and what are values are and what it means to be a public servant today. This is for some, a painful process and for others a sense that this is the last chance to "fix" the sick system. It is an interesting metaphor regardless of how one feels about President Trump. 

The UMC faces among her more difficult future in the months ahead. The ruling of the Judicial Council on Bishop Oliveto, the Commission on the Way Forward, the called session of the General Conference, local churches voting to leave the denomination and the evolving of renewal/schismatic groups - just to name few of the challenges. While the future is not something that I would have desired for my denomination and I have no doubts that there will be a great discomfort and pain, but perhaps the UMC is not dying but going through chemotherapy?

Part of the intensity of chemotherapy is that it does not discriminate - even healthy cells are affected. All of this facing the UMC, of course there will be a number of good people who will leave the denomination, and perhaps the Universal Church. There will be indiscriminate pain and hurt across the UMC. So what do we do? 

I submit that we look to how we would minister to those going though chemotherapy. Sit. Pray. Be still. Cry. Find the moments of joy where we can. Remind one another we are not alone. Try not to get too bogged down in the days ahead, but be present right now. 

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Note: It is not my intent to downplay the intensity of cancer, and I only offer this as a metaphor and like all metaphors it breaks when stretched passed its usefulness. I have witnessed the effects and in no way mean to imply that the struggles of the UMC are of the same level of pain and fear that come with medical chemotherapy.

Faith Seeking Understanding (Not Explaining)

There is a subtle irony in the nature of jokes. If you understand the joke, then you laugh. If you don't, and someone explains it to you, then the joke is much less funny. Jokes shine from understanding and loose their luster with explanation. 

The same can be said about the life of faith. 

The life of faith is one that seeks understanding a deep wisdom that is not only difficult to explain but sounds ridiculous. For instance, Jesus says the meek with inherit the earth and that the peacemakers are blessed; turn the other cheek, forgive our enemy seventy-seven times, the last will be first and the first will be last, and that Jesus is found among "the least of these." Frankly it all does not make any sense. 

In my short time as a preacher, I can tell you it is getting to the point of silly to try to explain the wisdom of God. The wisdom of God is like a joke: not only does it often sound silly but it also shines in understanding and looses something with explanation. 

This is why the mystics were less interested in prose and more interested in poetry. Why the ancients were less worried about doctrine and more interested in practicing the disciplines. The Church seems to be at her best when she is not explaining God (and getting bogged down in the silly conversations like the big bang vs. "creationism"), but seeking the peace that passes... well you know what I mean.