“Brethren, do not be children in your thinking…..but in your thinking be mature” (1 Corinthians 14:20).
I could wish that every pastor would use discernment. That he would “be smart.”
To put it another way, I wish every pastor would determine that in the new year, he is going to do nothing impulsively, out of fear, or motivated by false guilt.
The “un-smart” pastor–to coin a term–does things that are unwise and unhealthy and in the long run, not beneficial to the kingdom nor to his people.
Here is my take on what an unsmart pastor does about his preaching–
1) The unsmart pastor skips the hard work of sermon preparation. He is lazy.
The smart pastor knows this is his most important work and is always thinking about the next sermons, even to the point of rising from the bed and looking up something that occurred to him.
Pastors would do well to use this time just after Christmas and early in January when nothing much is going on to make long-range plans for their preaching.
2) The unsmart pastor refuses to do long-range planning for sermons but decides this week what to preach next Sunday. He is shallow–and will work himself into an early grave.
The best sermons are not microwaved but marinated.
3) The unsmart pastor who does not do long-range planning will end up grabbing a catchy story he heard somewhere and shaping it into a sermon or adapting a message he picked up from somewhere else. He gets panicky.
The result of feeding fast food to church members is they grow soft and obese, not healthy and strong.
4) The unsmart pastor will go for quick results and immediate responses, and not place enough value on the quiet, inner work of the Spirit which may take a long time to bear fruit. He is impatient.
I was telling a pastor friend at breakfast that the best sermons I’m preaching in retirement mode these days are not “sugar sticks,” as some call them. “What I’m preaching these days is the distillation of a lifetime of study and preaching and serving. What the Lord has taught me, the conclusions of a half-century of pastoring.”
And–I could have added–what He is teaching me now. Yes, He’s still at it. And what a blessing that is!
5) The unsmart pastor who does not do long-range sermon planning will misuse great stories he came across or something memorable that just happened.
Later, he finds that story would have been perfect for a sermon he preached a few weeks later. Had he been planning ahead, he’d have known that and used it more profitably.
6) The unsmart pastor who does not do in-depth and long-range planning will repeat himself in sermons.
Now, repetition is not bad. But repeating sermons is a bad sign.
7) The unsmart pastor who does not give a sermon adequate preparation will find himself returning to a text and preaching about it numerous times for the simple reason that he never did “finish” it.
He should listen to his spirit. It’s trying to send him a message: There’s more here. Come back. Don’t rush away.
8) The unsmart pastor without a long-range plan of sermons will be too impressionable. He hears a moving sermon by a brother at a conference and can’t get it out of his mind in order to study his own message, so decides the Lord wants him to preach that for his people. Often that is the result of his having nothing in mind for next Sunday and since nature abhors a vacuum, the friend’s message moves in and takes over.
Your best people, pastor, can tell when you are serving them warmed over food from someone else’s kitchen.
9) The unsmart pastor may be driven by self-centered motives to preach wrong-headed sermons.
Billionaire oilman H. L. Hunt spoke to the student body in our seminary chapel one day. He said, “The pastors of the largest churches in our land preach against Communism regularly.” He was clearly implying that young preachers who wanted to attract crowds should preach against Communism.
I wondered if any of the students went out of chapel that day determining to work up sermons on Lenin and Stalin. And how foolish would that be!
10) The unsmart pastor will some day look back over his preaching and realize he has skipped large sections of the Word and neglected to declare the whole counsel of the Lord.
The Holy Spirit who inspires pastors in the pulpit is just as available and on the job the rest of the week for the pastor who will take the time to seek His presence and His guidance.
Smart people seek the Lord.
(Editor's Note: This blog was posted first on Dr. McKeever's blog site HERE.)
