The morning sun winks through the curtains, and you’re showered and dressed. It’s time for sermon prep.
You walk past your home office door, which is closed and locked.
You’re not surprised by this though. You’re the one who locked it last night—and not because you were worried about those “thieves who break in and steal.”
The key is waiting for you exactly where you left it. To retrieve it, you continue through the quiet house toward your coffee pot.
You stop where your favorite mug, a memento from a cherished vacation, waits on a tray accompanied by a beautiful pottery plate, all reserved only for this purpose. A pastry and cloth napkin rest on the plate, and it makes you smile.
As the coffee brews, you breathe in the aroma and listen to the quiet. When the percolation sputters to its end, you fill your mug and pick up your tray.
Continuing through the house to the dining room, the least-often used room of the house, you find your office key on the table near your laptop.
On top of your computer is a notepad and pen. To its right are two books, a journal, and a jar of pens.
You set down the coffee tray and take a seat. As tempted as you are to check your email, you’ll have to move the papers and notepad before you can.
They are neatly stacked in this order:
a bible verse
journal writing prompt
an article relevant to this week’s sermon text
Your purpose is clearly established. Email will wait.
You read the bible verse, memorize it, and sit in silence for five minutes, sipping your coffee, offering prayers of gratitude.
Next in the stack is the prompt. It’s a question designed to get your creative juices flowing. You choose a beautiful pen, open your journal, and write for just five minutes.
Now you’ve reached the article and pad of paper. On the pad you see the note you wrote to yourself yesterday: “What is the Greek meaning of…? Read the article, then pages 10-14 in the first book, and skim the second chapter of the other book.”
Intrigued by your own question, email is forgotten. You pick up the article and are immersed.
Sermon prep is underway.
(Wondering about that key? Keep reading.)
The Two Most Powerful Words to Writing Sermons in a Busy Season are “Show Up”
Lent is a busy season with extra parish activities: continuing education, worship services, and at the end, Holy Week—the busiest week for preachers in the Christian calendar.
With more to do during these six weeks than any other time of year, it would be a blessing if sermon prep were to come and go with predictable efficiency.
But because sermon crafting by its very nature is a creative endeavor, it won’t always go according to plan:
The sermon’s message might prove elusive
A pastoral emergency may interrupt prep time
The copier might break down, leading to hours spent on hold with the support team
There is much that we can’t control about the process.
But there is much more that we can!
We increase the odds dramatically that sermon prep will go according to plan when we do this one thing: show up.
Show up consistently, expectantly, and with humility and gratitude, and make showing up as easy, hospitable, and worthwhile as possible.
3 Strategies to make “Showing Up” EASY
Make it impossible not to show up
The easiest way to show up consistently is by making it über-hard to do anything else instead.
In the example above, this preacher took specific actions to make it hard to do anything other than show up for sermon prep:
placed notes on top of the computer so they had to be moved off of it before being able to open it
placed the computer in a quiet room without distractions
locked the office door the night before with the key placed next to the needed sermon prep materials so as to eliminate even the possibility of distractions
By setting up the environment the night before, the preacher made it too much work to show up anywhere other than for sermon prep.
Additional strategies you can employ to make it hard to do anything else include blocking notifications and apps until after that session, and disallowing appointments during that time.
Create the environment in advance so you can’t not show up!
Make it welcoming to show up
When you show up, it’s lovely to be greeted with a smile!
It makes us feel welcomed and valued.
We can do that even for ourselves!
Our present self can prepare to welcome our future self with intentional acts of hospitality.
For instance, the preacher in the example set out a lovely tray the night before with a special mug that brought back fond memories, a beautiful plate, folded napkin, and delicious treat.
When the preacher arrived at their workspace, they were greeted by God with a word from Scripture, and the suggestion of discovery with pens, blank pages in a journal, and a question to kick start ruminations.
What a great way to start the day! Your present self will thank your past self for taking a few extra minutes to prepare.
Make it worthwhile to show up
We’ll keep showing up when there’s a reward, and the best reward is that the process works.
Make it easy to get something done by priming the pump and having your resources at the ready so you don’t even have to ask what to do next.
A creativity warm-up gets new perspectives flowing, allowing sermon prep to flow more easily and joyfully.
Pre-determining a sermon prep question along with the resources to answer it starts us on delightful rabbit trails of exploration, making us forget our to-do lists.
Before we know it, we’ve found answers, discovered sermon seeds, and made meaningful progress toward the words we’ll deliver Sunday morning.
When we feel like we make progress and our time spent worthwhile, we’re far more likely to show up again—and again, and again, and again.
The two most powerful words to get sermons done during a busy season—and what season isn’t a busy one?—are “show up.” Use these strategies to make it near impossible to do anything else.
We’ll feel much better about the rest of the day when we know we’ve gotten somewhere with our sermon.
And then we can pocket the key that will unlock the office door to get on with the rest of our ministry.
To simplify your sermon prep this Lenten week, we’re sharing our curated, exegetical resources for March 13th
Compiled weekly for Collective/+ members, these resources provide working links to high-quality, exegetical sources for the coming week’s RCL and NL passages.
Grab your coffee and biscotti, and use this document as a launching point for your exegesis to save time, narrow your focus, and make meaningful progress faster.