Part of my ministry includes working with GodSearch, the Vineyard’s young adult ministry. 703 is the Sunday evening service targeted directly to young adults. This summer, my teammate Tony Ranvestel (the young adult pastor) and I are preaching through the book of James. This Sunday evening I tackle James 2:14-26 — faith and deeds are inseparable.
Someone told he that he thinks it must be fun preparing a sermon, which he called a symphony. I’ll tell you, it is fun, and so very important in God’s Kingdom (God keeps using the foolishness of preaching). Mostly, it’s a lot of work. My friend said that with my experience a sermon must roll off my fingertips while I sit at the computer. Well, that happens about every 15th sermon.
In fact, sermon preparation feels much more like doing dental work than it does anything else. You drill and tug at the text. You write the outline and try to come up with good illustrations. You sleep on it. You look at what you’ve written the next morning and suddenly feel as if you know nothing about preaching. You rewrite it and try reading the text in lots of different translations. You just keep hanging with the thing and finally out pops a sermon.
All the while you’re asking the Holy Spirit to transform your thoughts and ideas. You pray, “I’m not leaving this desk, Lord, until you speak. What is it you want to say through me when I preach this sermon?”
Finally, you finish the thing, stand up in the pulpit and take a swing. You know without question that if the Lord doesn’t build the house, your labor is utterly in vain. As the Apostle Paul once said about his preaching to the church at Corinth,
“I came to you in weakness — timid and trembling. And my message and my preaching were very plain. I did not use wise and persuasive speeches, but the Holy Spirit was powerful among you. I did this so that you might trust the power of God rather than human wisdom.” (I Corinthians 2:2-5)
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