Good News for Bad Preachers
— Tuesday, August 14th, 2012 —
Last night, I received an email from a young minister who is discouraged. He’s just starting out in ministry, and says his preaching is terrible. He’s trying to improve, but is just starting out, and is mediocre. I addressed this here a while back, but I decided to reiterate this point because I hear from a lot of young ministers who are similarly worried. Here’s what I think.
Your first few sermons are always terrible, no matter who you are.
If you think your first few sermons are great, you’re probably self-deceived. If the folks in your home church think your first few sermons are great, it’s probably because they love you and they’re proud of you. If it’s a good, supportive church there’s as much objectivity there as a grandparent evaluating the “I Love You Grandma” artwork handed to them by the five year-old in their family.
So your first set of sermons, unless you’re very atypical, are probably really, really bad.
So what?
The great thing about Christian ministry is that Jesus doesn’t start all over again with his church every generation. He gives older men in ministry who shape, disciple, and direct younger men in ministry. This includes (although it’s not limited to) critiquing your sermons.
Your sermons will be critiqued. You want them to be critiqued, and harshly.
Now you don’t want them critiqued harshly by your congregations (and a critical attitude toward your pastor’s preaching, church members, is not a fruit of the Spirit). But you want them critiqued, and you want them critiqued now.
Your sermons will be highly critiqued early on in your ministry, when you’re still being shaped, or you’ll just be left alone.
The great preachers you hear or that you read about in your church history books are almost never those who were preaching great sermons from the very beginning of their ministries.
Great preachers are the ones who preach really bad sermons. The difference is that they preach really bad sermons when they’re young, and are sharpened for life by critique.
Mediocre preachers are those who start off with sermons that are, eh, pretty good, but they’re never critiqued and thus never grow.
So if you’re early on in ministry and you preach a bad sermon, so what? You’re in a train of previously bad preachers that extends from Moses to Aaron to Simon Peter to about every good gospel preacher you’ve ever heard with your own ears.
Your bad sermon says nothing about your future. If you’ve got folks in your life saying, “Hey, that was a really bad sermon,” that does indicate something about your future, so praise God for it. It’s probably a sign that God has something for you to say, for the rest of your life.
29 Responses to “Good News for Bad Preachers”
Trackbacks
- What I Read Online – 08/15/2012 (a.m.) | Emeth Aletheia
- Good news for bad (and young) preachers « The Wanderer
- Check out | HeadHeartHand Blog
- Bits & Pieces (8/15/12) | Better Things Ahead
- Are Your Sermons Improving?
- SBTS Southern Blogs » Good News for Bad Preachers
- Links I Like | Blogging Theologically | Jesus, Books, Culture, & Theology
- This and That 08-18-12 « The Thompsonian Times
- Saturday Shout-Outs: Sad News, & Ministry Links | H.B. Charles Jr.
- Links to Get Your Week Going | My World
- …und was es noch zu sagen gibt (21.08.2012): |
- Good News for Bad Preachers « A Modern Puritan
This is great. Thank you.
I remember the first sermon I ever preached outside my home church. It was part of Union University’s Ministerial Nights program, where students could voluntarily be assigned Sunday evening preaching opportunities in rural churches across the region. I was a busy college student, so I didn’t put a lot of time into the preparation. I just assumed I knew what the passage meant (something from Luke, I think). I probably had a basic outline on one sheet of paper.
Going into that preaching date and throughout my first few sermon points, I thoroughly believed that I was going to be a spiritual gift to the congregation. I thought they were fortunate to have me bless them with my presence and giftings. But I began to stumble over my words and my mind drew blanks about what to say. Nobody got saved. Nobody wept.
Afterward, the kind old folks in that church just encouraged me and told me how glad they were to have me preach for them. I think some lady gave me a loaf of bread she had baked. They were kind enough to also video tape my message, and when I watched myself for the first time, I realized how bad my delivery really was and how very little of substance I actually had to say. I also went on for too long without actually making a point. I couldn’t understand why the congregation was so nice to me after the service. At that point, I started to doubt whether I was really cut out for the ministry.
Looking back over 10 years later, I realize what a great learning opportunity that was for me mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. That congregation wasn’t lucky to have me there. It turns out that I was the one who blessed to be in their presence and to receive their listening mercies and encouragement. Now, that realization is constantly on my mind every time I get up to preach behind the pulpit.
Thanks so much for this, Dr. Moore. Oftentimes as young preachers, we compare ourselves to the likes of John Piper, David Platt, Russell Moore, Mark Driscoll, Albert Mohler, etc., and conclude that we are horrible communicators. What we don’t realize is that these great preachers have been critiquing their trade for a number of years, and there is a strong possibility that one will not be able to find all of their (bad) early sermons on their websites’ archives.
I was thankful to be a part of a church in Louisville while I was going to seminary which allowed me to stand behind the pulpit and have a few disasters before I was kicked out of the nest and expected to fly. I was also thankful for one of the local nursing homes which allowed me to come and preach sometimes as often as four Sundays a month while I was going to seminary. This gave me plenty of opportunities to get into the rhythm of preparing and delivering sermons long before I ever stood behind “my” pulpit.
To any seminary student out there who complains that they don’t get enough opportunities to preach, I will heretofore extend to you a challenge: offer yourself up to nursing homes! They are always looking for ministers to give their residents some love, and it is very good practical experience. You won’t get paid. You won’t get showered with a lot of praise. 85% of your audience will be asleep by the time you read your text, and oftentimes those who are awake will cause some kind of distraction (mostly the nursing home staff). However, you WILL find out if you are really called into the preaching ministry, because there is no chance of fortune, fame, peer approval, good grades, or anything like that. I would go so far as to say that if you can’t take joy in preaching in a setting like a nursing home, then you are preaching for the wrong reasons, and you will not be able to stay in the pulpit through the pressures of pastoral ministry.
@A.J., I couldn’t agree more with you on your point about nursing homes. I preached some pretty dreadful and poorly conceived messages at nursing homes, but thankfully many of the folks there were asleep, haha.) I do remember very vividly when one woman stood from her wheelchair, held her hands to heaven, and loudly began praying for God to take her home.
I wasn’t sure if that was because my message was so good or so awful.
Either way, it was a wonderful year of ministering to some old saints as they entered the twilight of their lives, and I wouldn’t trade the experience for about anything.
Dr. Moore,
Thanks for the interesting article. My comment is concerning what is it that makes a bad or a great sermon and what makes a poor or a great preacher. Often we look at the immediate results, the amount of good comments, the amount of initial responses. I would propose a radical idea. “There is no such thing as a great sermon or a great preacher. There are only specific times when God the Holy Spirit chooses to work in someone’s ministry for the furtherance of His work - and this has nothing to do with the delivery or the place or the person - but with His choice to use His truth in His way.”
I have often said that I need to go back and apologize to those folks in my first church!
Great post.
If the gospel is there in some way, even poorly preached, the Holy Spirit can use those words for His purposes.
And then try again. Having the gospel be the center, and not the law.
The law kills, the gospel makes alive in Christ.
____
I would say that a bad sermon is one where Jesus doesn’t even show up. But instead Moses does.
good word doc! i can remember my really bad sermon days, uuggghhh, we all have them!! young preachers need to hear this over and over.
another thing we need to hear is that we must remember that the ministry of preaching is a ministry of grace and the Holy Spirit…”not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit…” God graciously chooses to use us by His gift of the Holy Spirit to minister his grace to others and He WILL use us if we depend on Him, focus on exalting Christ, and focus our sermons on the intent of the text as well as the deep human needs that the truths of the text speak to.
Good article.
I agree with the comment that I need to apologize to all who heard my first sermon.
If the average pastor has a 30-40 years in the pulpit then that is between 1500-2000 sermons. That helps put things into perspective and leaves much room to improve on those bad sermons.
I would also imagine that most preachers who managed something of reasonable competence and sufficiency the ‘first time’ they stepped into the pulpit did so because they had already honed some of those skills and had some of the rough edges sanded off in other appropriate environments. As A.J. hinted above, men seeking to develop a preaching gift should not consider themselves above going to the very old or the very young - such ministries as those in nursing homes and Sunday Schools are a smithy in which we can start to forge the tools of the trade. Gifted men might forge better tools more quickly, but they still learn. Trying to explain the truth to those whose faculties are developing or declining will help us be plain and pointed. Besides, speaking of eternal things to those at the start of life and on the brink of death will not only develop the external gifts but also the sense of spiritual realities under which every preacher must labour.
As a reasonably-experienced “lay preacher”, I can say there is, really, no substitute for practice. Being a good preacher or teacher is no different to being a good musician; you need a certain natural talent, true, but the rest comes from a lot of hard work and the occasional botched piece of work.
The main failing I’ve noticed with people starting out is very simple: a lack of structure. The other failing: trying to imitate others, and not looking for your own “voice”, or way of doing things, as a preacher.
Thank you for this, Dr. Moore. We have a number of young (and not so young) aspiring ministers who have come into our church. I will put this in our training manuals here in order to encourage them to preach but also to persist from these initial stages.
Thanks for this post, Dr. Moore. This is a wonderful bit of encouragement to me, particularly in light of preaching a fairly not-awesome sermon recently.
By what standard is your friend using to measure his preaching as “bad” or “mediocre”? Is it because it doesn’t possess the oratorical tonal quality of a particular megachurch pastor he admires? Is he not able to reproduce the cadences of old time Southern preachers? If his sermon is Biblical, and it was well prepared in that he was led by the spirit during preparation, and had a sense of what his congregation needed to hear (notice I said needed, not wanted), regardless of the style or oratorical quality, I’d say it was a good sermon.
AS has been pointed out above, more often than not, the congregation is the one ministering to the new minister more than the other way around. We need to be open to young men using their gifts, even when they don’t use them well.
True, and good post. Though I would add a footnote, and that is that it is essential we ask the question, ‘has this person been given the gift of preaching?’ really early on. Training can only fan and develop a gift from God that is already there. Crudely speaking, if someone have been gifted by God it is possible to train them from a 6/10 preacher to be a 9/10 preacher. If someone has not been gifted by God, you might be able to bump them up through training from 2/10 to 6/10, but rarely further.
One of the saddest things to see in church is where somebody is ministering in any position in the church, where it is obvious they don’t have a gifting for it, and no-one was loving enough to tell them that.
Good words, Doctor.
NEW PREACHERS — The new pastor, after preaching his first sermon at his first church, was greeted at the front door by the Deacon Chairman. Wanting to encourage and affirm the new minister, the Deacon commented, “Preacher, that was a mighty fine sermon you preached. Yes, Sir! It is good to have you in our pulpit!”
Mustering up all the humility he could, the young preacher replied, “Aw, it was all of God.”
To which the Deacon immediately and straightforwardly answered, “Son, it wasn’t THAT good!”
PREACHERS WITH A FEW SERMONS UNDER THEIR BELTS — The new pastor, with over 30 years in the ministry, had just finished preaching his first sermon at his new church. As the congregation was leaving many members where showering him with praise, admiration, and encouraging words concerning his message.
One man though, as he shook the preacher’s hand, looked the preacher straight in the face, and unmoved by all the excitement, simply and flatly commented, “Preacher, that was a warm sermon.” And then, without saying another word, turned and exited the doors.
“Warm sermon?” the new pastor though to himself. “Warm?” “What in the world did he mean by ‘warm?’”
Having, in all the years that he had been preaching, his sermons described by the use of every adjective imaginable, good and bad, he’d never had one called, “warm.”
This bothered him. He tossed and turned in his bed that night. He couldn’t get it off his mind–”warm?” “Warm?” “What did the guy mean by ‘warm?!’” He couldn’t sleep thinking about it. He tossed and turned some more.
Finally, about 2:30 am, he got out of his bed. Immediately he went to his study, got out his dictionary, sat at his desk, and looked up the word “warm.” It said, “Not too hot.”