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How To Write and Deliver a Sermon

[The common cold hath made me a sniffling, coughing, raspy-voiced wretch these past days so I offer this to you, and may it help those whom it helps – PB]


HOW TO WRITE AND DELIVER A SERMON
Rev. Victoria Weinstein
Workshop, October 25, 2008
First Parish Unitarian Church in Norwell

PREPARATION

● What sets your soul on fire? What insights do you want to explore, explain and share that will minister to the congregation? What stories and illustrations will communicate your message?

● Draw from your life. Good sermons come from real-life questions and struggles that have application to our relationships, our work and our inner growth. Lengthy theoretical musings and esoteric expositions have their place, but it is not in the pulpit.

● A sermon is a conversation that only appears to have one participant. In fact, effective preaching is grounded in community and relationship: it is not “what I think that you should hear/listen to” it is “what we all struggle to understand/deal with/do better that I have deeply reflected upon and humbly offer as a gift of insight to the beloved community this morning.”

WRITING

∞ Write what you know; avoid what you don’t know or subjects that are so big that they require a lot of research (I write “big research” sermons six to ten times a year, and they are extremely time-consuming).

∞ A sermon usually takes an entire day of writing to prepare, and then some. Give yourself at least eight hours, preferably with some time to leave the sermon and go back to it for editing.

∞ It helps to know what your conclusion will be before you begin.

∞ Write simply and clearly. When you go back to edit, edit for clarity. “What am I saying here?” If you don’t know, the congregation most certainly won’t either. Keep your vocabulary accessible; if you’re digging into Roget’s every other sentence, you’re writing an academic paper, not a sermon.

∞ Organize your thoughts. Don’t take the congregation on a whirl-wind tour of your thinking process (eg, “And I should have made this point earlier…”). Figure it out before you put it to paper.

∞ I spend as much time stopping to think about what I am writing as I do writing. It’s okay to stop and think.

∞ Use stories – give the listeners something they can envision in order to make your message more effective. As the old adage says, “Show, don’t tell.”

∞ Have one major message and support it with two or three major points. Not more.

∞ Some sermons may end with “amen,” but they absolutely don’t have to. In fact, they are far more interesting when they don’t.

∞ As a general guideline, my 15-20 minute sermons are 7-10 pgs. of double-spaced, 12 pt. font (Palatino). I recommend that you aim for 7-8 pgs. Shorter is better. I keep working to write better, shorter sermons but it’s a real discipline. The vast majority of my sermons wind up being 14 pages on Thursday night and get edited down to 7-10 pages on Saturday. Which means that on during a typical church year, I write 100-150 pages that get completely thrown out. Don’t fall in love with your every word. 😉

DELIVERING THE SERMON

√ Take time to transition into the sermon. The congregation should feel that the sermon is deeply connected to everything else that has happened thus far in the service. The way you move into the pulpit helps that to happen.

√ Center yourself physically in the pulpit before you begin speaking. If you want to use the stepping stool, make sure you’re comfortable on it.

√ Thou shalt not fiddle excessively with the microphone.

√ Move pages from right to left with your left hand as you read rather than flipping them over; it’s quieter and much less distracting.

√ Print in big enough font so you can see the page easily.

√ Avoid sarcastic or unthoughtful “asides.” They are usually impossible for most people to hear, and they come from nervousness and detract from your message. Preaching requires self-control as well as careful preparation.

√ Make sure you know how you will transition out of the sermon.

√ Know that the congregation is very supportive of your efforts and appreciates your courage in preaching to them. Let their care and energy fuel your delivery.

√ Make eye contact, but don’t stare at anyone in particular.

√ SMILE!!! Seriously, smile! If not with your lips, then with your eyes. Preaching is a gift of love. If you look like you’re going before the firing squad, the congregation will be very concerned for you and will not be able to focus on your words.

√ If you stumble or find yourself misspeaking a sentence or word, simply say, “Excuse me” and start over. If you lose a page or find that the computer has failed to print out a sentence or two, stop, excuse yourself, and explain that you are missing part of your manuscript. Do the best you can to summarize your point, and move on. Vent your anxiety later.

√ Embody your message. Do you care about what you’re saying? We should be able to see that in your physical presence and hear it in your vocal inflection! Many a beautifully-crafted sermon has been murdered in the cradle by zombie-like delivery.

TO AVOID LIKE THE PLAGUE…

χ Sermons are not book reports. You may choose to use a book or play as your main illustration (not as easy as it looks, by the way!), but do not preach a sermon that is a series of highlights of a book you liked.

χ Sermons are not free therapy for the preacher, so don’t preach on emotional subjects from which you have no distance and have little or no objectivity. Avoid over-sharing, blaming, or “dumping.”

χ Keep your subject broad enough to minister to the gathered community in all its diversity. If your sermon is extremely narrow in focus (“How I Found True Spiritual Peace Through Gardening”), work with your liturgist to make sure there’s a broader spectrum of human emotions addressed in other parts of the service.

χ Sermons are not “talks” or lectures. They should minister to people, not merely inform them.

χ Rehearse your sermon at home and at church. Deliver it more slowly than you think you need to. And then slow down some more. Breathe. Let people have time to absorb what you are saying.

χ Speak up. Even with the microphone, you must project. Do not mumble, do not drop volume at the ends of sentences. Consider recording yourself before you preach; it can be very helpful in identifying vocal tics or deficiencies you’d like to correct before your Sunday in the pulpit.

χ Avoid flashy earrings or distracting ties.

χ NEVER APOLOGIZE for your sermon. DO NOT begin a sermon by saying how unworthy you are to be there, and (during sabbatical) do not invoke the minister unless it is to quote him/her.

χ NEVER begin a sermon by describing how hard it was to write the sermon, how nervous you are, how little sleep you got last night, or talking about “what I was going to preach about before I changed my mind and came up with this.”

χ Never use someone else’s life as an illustration even anonymously if they might be recognized by any member of the congregation; always obtain permission from anyone you will be mentioning by name.

Remember that when you stand in the pulpit as a preacher, you stand in an ancient and honored tradition. Enjoy it!

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in Thy sight, O Lord, my strength and my redeemer. — Psalm 19:14

christening william detwiler
[Not preaching, but there’s our beautiful pulpit there in the background. – PB]

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Death In the Room

As a pastor, you spend a lot of time passing around the chewing gum in the parking lot with the Grim Reaper, having that “meeting after the meeting” that all church folk are familiar with. I have actually had dreams where I am dancing with him, waltzing beautifully in a large, silent ballroom and feeling romanced and loved by this hooded, faceless Presence. Sometimes I see Death as the Spider Woman, sexy like Chita Rivera in that webbed gown she wore in “Kiss of the Spider Woman,” and I can tell when she’s hanging around a hospital room or bed. She wears heady perfume and smokes thin little cigars, and you can faintly detect their odor under all the other human smells.

And sometimes Death is a stern presence, tall, gaunt and impatient, dressed in a Puritan clergyman’s vestments and tapping his toe, pursing his lips and wanting to quote some more from the Bible — injecting the Word of God into your heretical 21st century nonsense. I always stare him down until he backs against the wall and promises to remain quiet. “This isn’t your gig, Reverend.” He nods and sighs his acquiescence, but his perfect posture never flags.

Now and then Death is a grandmother Jesus, rocking and knitting, looking up and glancing at the suffering one and humming a soft little song to help her baby along. She is calm while everyone else is frantic. She smiles with ultimate understanding but never rises from her chair. This isn’t her work, it is ours, and she is content to be a supportive witness while we attend to it. Even when the last exhalation has occurred and the dying one is finally still, she still doesn’t get up, just tilts her head and checks to see everything is alright, and goes back to her knitting and her humming. She will be the last one out of the room, and she will draw the curtains when everyone is gone.

The Death I have never met is the one who will be there for the person who, after a decade of heroic, exhausting and constant medical intervention to keep herself alive, has decided that she can no longer endure the pain and is stopping treatment. When she told me of her decision over the phone this afternoon, I felt this Death in the room behind me, a strong, young, taciturn farmer with some kind of big rake in his hand, wearing overalls and sturdy boots and a hat to shield his face from the still-strong October sun. He clomped through the house leaving bits of dirt on the floor, and the screen door slammed behind him as he went back outside to the fields. It is harvest time, after all, and there’s work to do.

I wanted to run after him, to shout that he should clean up after himself, that he had left dirt on my floor. More than that, I wanted to pick a fight with him, really, to land a good punch to his jaw. I wanted to pummel him right on the bib of his overalls, to stomp on his boots with my own. I wanted to tear off the sleeve of his worn cotton shirt and make a hankie for myself and for her — something we could hold in our hand and cling to — and leave him bruised and sorry for what he’s taking.

I know what he would say. “Don’t take it personal, ma’am. This isn’t anything you need to fight me about.” And then he would give me a kindly look and again leave the house, this time closing the screen door more carefully behind him.

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Walter Bruegemann on Covenant As Subversive Paradigm

I feel more than a little bit stupid that I have never seen this article before. Here I am writing my doctoral dissertation on the relevance of covenant in the 21st century church and wondering why I should even bother now, given that Bruegemann has just said pretty much everything I want to say in eight pages.

I remember feeling this way about seventeen years ago when I was trying to articulate my personal theology and came across Emerson’s essay “The OverSoul.” After I read it I felt mighty dumb for having believed that I had ever had one original theological idea. I started divinity school and people would ask me for my Big Statement of Faith, you know, and I just wanted to hand out “The OverSoul” and say, “What he said.”

I still feel that much that way about my BFF Waldo’s essay although my theological ideas have been greatly influenced by becoming a Christian shortly after discovering it. You might wonder why. All I can say is that it was not a conversion experience so much as it was a response to my direct experience of God’s presence in my life and in the world.

I believe that creating a covenant is a way a community can respond to their shared experience of God’s reality and presence.

And I keep reading because frankly kids, I’m terrified to start the writing process!! But I’m presenting a chapter in class next week, so it’s time to put my fingers to the keyboard and produce some thoughts of my very own.

eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek