Dear co-worker in ministry,
Early in my ministry, when I was planting a church with just my wife, and no other staff, I had very limited time for in-depth Bible study. So I depended on tape subscriptions from other pastors to not only help feed my soul, but to also supplement my sermon preparation. They were lifesavers--keeping a fresh flow of new ideas and insights pouring into my heart and mind.
Today, with a large staff helping me, I am fortunate to be able to spend about 20 hours in study for each of my messages, plus I now have a large library, a staff assistant, and a research team of about 30 volunteers. Hopefully, with my own maturity, my messages are improving! At least my wife thinks so!
But I still remember how grateful I was for the help that other pastors gave me in sermon preparation, and for that reason, I want to help you, particularly if you're a bi-vocational pastor who must prepare weekly messages under extraordinarily difficult circumstances--by putting my messages on the Internet and by offering subscriptions to the weekly messages. We all know that, with the many demands involved in pastoral ministry, some Sundays it's a victory just to show up at the service!
The way I see it, we're all on the same team--and we need to help each other whenever and where ever we can. If my sermons can help you-I'm thrilled to serve you. And if you get a good sermon idea that you think will help me--please send it! NO ONE can be brilliant week-after-week, so let's help each other out and when we get to heaven we can all rejoice over the people who were saved as a result!
Let's be honest. No one is ever completely original. The guy who says, "I'm going to be original or nothing," will end up being both! Harry Truman used to say, "I use all the brains I've got and then I borrow all the best brains I can find." And the brilliant Charles Spurgeon once said, "The man who never reads will never be read. He who never quotes will never be quoted! And he who will not use the thoughts of other men's brains proves he has no brains of his own!"
When you get one of my messages, you're not just getting my best thoughts, but the best thoughts of all that I've read or heard, plus all the best thoughts from my research team. All totaled, there may be as much as 50 hours of research behind any Saddleback sermon. I learned a long time ago that I don't have to originate an idea for it to be truth or for God to be able to use it in my life or someone else's life. God has called us to be effective, not to be original at everything we teach. So if my bullets fit your gun, shoot them!
Of course, I've heard professors put down preachers who use other pastor's sermon outlines. But those same professors get many of their ideas from reading other people's commentaries! Pastors quote other pastors and scholars quote other scholars. But I've discovered that if all you do is read commentaries for sermon preparation, you end up sounding like a commentator rather than a real-life pastor. You end up overemphasizing background minutia and academic debates and minimize the practical life-changing application of the Word. Often commentators forget the purpose of preaching is to change lives! As D.L. Moody said, "The Bible was not given for our information. It was given to CHANGE OUR LIVES."
All pastors use a combination of study tools – reading commentaries, reading books of sermons, listening to tapes of messages, and using manuscripts that most pastors share on the Internet now. Most of us pastors feel we are on the same team, So pastors share sermons with each other and don’t worry about who gets the credit. We all work for the same boss- Jesus.
If a pastor has been helped with sermon from me, I’m very happy for him. Pastors are faced with emergencies every week and have to balance sermon prep with caring for people. Hundreds of thousands of pastors have preached some of my sermons. Truth is never original. If it is the truth, it has always been truth, and it has been stated over and over for thousands of years by thousands of speakers. The original source of all truth is God.
In my early days of ministry, before I had a volunteer research team helping me, some sermons of Dr. W. Wiersbe helped me feed my flock in ways that I never could have done myself. Dr. Wiersbe didn’t care who got the credit. We want people to focus on Jesus, not us. If using some of my messages help grow people, or if it makes a pastor a more effective teacher, I suggest we rejoice over it, rather than worry about it. We pastors are just mules delivering the truth.
Let me close with a word about the importance of LISTENING to sermons, not just reading them. Of course, reading messages is good for your soul: you get good content that way. But when you LISTEN to a message--you not only get the content of that message--you also learn delivery tips! You get to hear the passion and the phrasing of the message. This is far better than just reading it.
As a pastor who preaches the same message six times each weekend, I know from experience that the difference between a home run and a base hit is delivery. The same message that God greatly used in one service can fall flat in another if the delivery falters.
That's why I'd rather listen to a sermon rather than read it any day. I learned to be a better communicator by listening to great communicators, not by just reading their sermons. I would encourage you to do more than just download the transcripts--get the audios and listen to how the Teaching Pastors of Saddleback deliver their messages.
God Bless you! |