I remember when I preached my first sermon. I was in high school, and had talked my youth minister into having a Youth Led Sunday for the first time in the church's history. Since it was my idea, and I had already said I wanted to be a minister, I volunteered to preach that morning. My pastor, who though I haven’t seen him in years I still think is a great preacher, loaned me some commentaries, though I had no idea how to use them. I remember asking him if he got nervous before he preaches. He told me, “Every time. I think that the first time I don’t get nervous will be the day I give it up.”
The sermon itself was not all that memorable. One thing that does stick with me is how there were probably five or so sermons in that one passage, and I tried to preach them all that first day. Regardless, I’ve had a lot of practice since then. Not as much as some, but I’ve had opportunities to stretch my skills on occasion. My old pastor was right, I still get nervous. I worry about fumbling over words, or not reading the correct passage for the sermon, or droning on like white noise. It’s not unique to worry about such things, and I hold no illusion that I’m the only one who gets nervous. Even though I am someone who is comfortable speaking in front of a group, my pulse quickens, and I can hear my heart pumping in my ears. I am human, after all.
While all of those worries and fears are valid, they are all internal. I can control how fast or able I can speak. I use bookmarks and stickies to make sure I read the correct passage, and I have the ability to work with the energy in the room. However, there is one fear I can not control, and that is how you are going to respond. No matter how much I prepare and how much I pray, your response is entirely your own. It’s one of the downsides to being human. I can’t force you to like what I say or agree with my position. If there was a way to exert some sort of control over people’s tastes and preferences, my favorite candidate would always get elected, music would always be good, and I everyone would make art that reflects and appeals to my sensibilities. In essence, life would be so much easier.
I don’t remember where I heard it, but I was told that the hardest thing to change is what someone else thinks/believes. It’s why political polarization and disagreement exist. It’s why you can’t convince your uncle at Thanksgiving that Jerry Jones is not actually working on a premeditated plan to make the Dallas Cowboys the laughing stock of the NFL. He truly believes it, and it is something that goes much deeper than evidence. There are a whole host of issues that we will believe regardless of the facts, evidence, or persuasiveness put forth by the opposing side. What most people do think about is how that affects the way your pastor puts together their sermon for the week.
I don’t know about everybody, but I have always viewed preaching as something close to an art. The ones who do it well are some of my biggest heroes, and there are good number of those heroes that are dead or I have never met. One day during seminary, during a class on the Old Testament Prophets, we watched MLK’s, “I Have A Dream,” speech/sermon from the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Afterwards, we were discussing his use of the words of Amos, and how the words of the prophets about justice functioned for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. I remember saying, “I wish more ministers would stand up and preach like that in their church’s.” Dr. Frampton, who is a rock star at my seminary, replied, “Imagine you were a pastor of a church in the south in 1964. The Civil Rights Act had just passed, and you are preparing for your sermon. Do you write your resignation letter and keep it in your desk because you are going to tell your white church that they have been functioning contrary to the message of God? Or do you begin a long slow process of, ‘bending the morale arc’ of your church toward justice?” It was the first time someone had ever put the thought, in a very eloquent manner, directly into my lap. While I wasn’t as young and naive as I had been when I preached my first sermon, I still believed that ministry in the local church was all about just doing the best I can to follow God. I still hadn’t accounted for the fact that there were other people involved.
That's the thing about serving in the local church they don’t really talk to you about in seminary. When Dr. King delivered some of his post powerful speeches, his words were not for the members of the movement. They already believed those things. It was for the white community that had either supported segregation or remained unengaged in the struggle.
When William Sloane Coffin preached in support of nuclear disarmament, he wasn’t preaching to the people of Riverside Church because many of them were already supporting such a position.
Most of the ministers I know are not preaching to their congregation, at least not the whole congregation. It’s because they are having to hold their base of support together. While we long to preach truth to power like Jesus and the Old Testament prophets did, we are getting our salaries and benefits from that power.
I believe the old saying is, “Don’t bite the hand that feeds you.”
For many ministers, we dream of the day when we can really cut loose from the pulpit or in a Bible study, tell you what really animates our passions, and bring on an altar call of people who want to walk with us in that passion. However, very few ministers feel that if they were to do such a thing they would be run out on a rail. I joke with people that I am a person who tends to like pushing the hot topics, and says what they think. However, I get that luxury because I am not serving a local church. And it’s in the local church that ministers are supporting families. Your tithes and offerings are paying that person’s salary, putting braces on their kid’s teeth, and paying for college degree that the parent hopes they will use. Not only is ministry then an expression of someone’s passion, but it’s a livelihood.
Often, those family concerns, and the politics of navigating a congregation have much more influence over the topic of the sermon for any given week than the Liturgical calendar. For instance, you have to be very careful how far you push sermons about turning the other cheek or loving your enemy in a place where there are a lot of NRA members. Jokes about being shot aside, the minister can easily be asked to leave or publicly apologize after a sermon like that. Same when it comes to issues like poverty, refugee response, education, or religious liberty. While every minister has opinions on those matters, the ones you have probably heard are the ones that sound an awful lot like your own.
Early in seminary, my friends and I used to joke that ministers were always more progressive than their congregation. We thought it was a really funny thing to say as we were beginning ministry and running headlong into the situations where you say a little more than you should have. However, as time went on, and we got closer to graduation, we stopped making that joke. First of all, it’s not true. Ministers, just like people everywhere hold a wide variety of views on all kinds of issues. Most importantly, we stopped saying it because we had started to feel the weight of just how influential our words are on our futures. We either heard stories of people losing positions for saying things their congregation thought were controversial, or we had gotten into some serious issues ourselves.
It makes that one spot in the front of the sanctuary where everyone is staring at you kinda scary. I mean, in a way, your job is on the line.
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