Increase Your Sermon’s Lifespan – Too Young to Die

It’s Monday morning. Jack gets up early and drags himself to the office coffee in hand. He shuts his office door, sinks into his chair, fires up the computer, and proceeds to stare at the blank word processing page in front of him.

Suddenly, there is a knock at the door. Startled, Jack looks at his watch.

“Shoot! Is it time already?”

An hour had already passed, there is still nothing on the screen, and it is time for Jack’s round of Monday meetings. First he has to meet with his staff, followed by a men’s Bible study, a hospital visit, a few counseling sessions, a handful of phone calls… and before he knows it the day will be over.

Jack collects himself, downs the rest of his coffee, and heads out the door thinking to himself, “Here we go again… Another busy week.”

Jack is an average pastor of an average church in an average city. And this is just the beginning of his week.

The rest of his week will be filled with a lot of activity trying to balance way too many ministries with limited budget, limited staff and limited time.

Here and there, Jack will find enough time to study, write a sermon, pray over it, edit it, internalize it, and rehearse it just before he delivers it Sunday morning.

Jack prays all the hard work will pay off. He prays that one or two lives will be changed because of the message. But, sadly, Jack knows that no matter what happens on Sunday, Monday is just around the corner.

His sermon will be over, and it’s impact will soon fade along with its memory in the minds of his congregation, and it will be time to write another.

When Jack first got into ministry he was excited. He couldn’t wait to do God’s work. But after years of the same thing week in and week out. Jack is tired.

Maybe you can relate.

The Problem: Sermons Die Quick

Preaching is hard work. Doing it well requires hours of study, thinking, writing and rehearsing. Add to this responsibility the million other tasks on the average pastor’s to-do list, and it’s easy to see why most pastors are overworked and exhausted.

Now, think about this: What would you think about someone who spent 15+ hours a week working on something that only lasts 30-40 minutes? Crazy, right?

Well, that is what pastors do every single week! We put most of our passion and effort into something that has an insanely short life span.

Just imagine if a sermon were a living creature.It would be in the womb for 6 days, and only live one hour. It would then die a quick death only to be remembered vaguely by a few of those who were there to witness it.

Kind of depressing, huh?

How tragic is it when a preacher gets up, preaches an amazing message and then… poof… that’s it! He poured hours of prayer, writing , collaborating, re-writing, and internalization into every aspect of the sermon. Then it goes out, the Holy Spirit uses it (praise Jesus!), but then the sermon disappears.

Like a firecracker or a bottle rocket, most sermons are a one hit wonder, never to be heard again. Then it’s back to the drawing board studying, writing, rewriting, rehearsing for another flash in the pan.

Could there be a better way?

Wouldn’t it be nice if for around the same amount of work that you do every week, you could birth a sermon that lived a long and healthy life? What if your sermons worked for you while you sleep? What if you could get your sermons to outlive you?

Make Your Message Outlive You

This isn’t just some pipe dream. It is possible for your sermon to outlive you. In fact, people have been doing it for centuries.

Look at preachers like Charles Spurgeon, Jonathan Edwards, or Martin Luther. They are all long dead, but people today still download their sermons. And where would we be without being able to read Jesus’ teachings in the Bible, or even those of Peter and Paul?

These sermons continue to live on, because they were written down years ago and made freely available.

In Jesus’ day it was ink and paper, in the reformation it was the printing press, and today it is the digital revolution (TV, iTunes, YouTube, websites, Kindle, and many others).

Here’s The Plan…

Over the next few weeks, I will be writing a series called “Increase Your Sermon’s Lifespan.” I will walk through different ways to make all the blood, sweat and tears that you put into each sermon last longer than just a Sunday morning.

Sound good?

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Other posts in the Increase Your Sermon’s Lifespan series:

• Increase Your Sermon’s Lifespan 01: Too Young to Die
• Increase Your Sermon’s Lifespan 02: How to Record Your Sermons
• Increase Your Sermon’s Lifespan 03: Writing, Transcribing, and Archiving Your Sermons
• Increase Your Sermon’s Lifespan 04: How to Broadcast Your Sermon
• Increase Your Sermon’s Lifespan 05: The Pastor’s Guide to Blogging
• Increase Your Sermon’s Lifespan 06: 13 Ways to Extend Sermon Life With Social Media
• Increase Your Sermon’s Lifespan 07: How to Send Your Sermon Out on Mission