One of the most humbling things any preacher can do is look over sermons they preached decades ago. I’ve been doing that recently, and I have to be honest: it’s discouraging. It’s hard to find a sermon from that era that I could re-preach. I look back and marvel at the patience of the people who heard those sermons. I wonder how God could have used any of them.
Marilynne Robinson understood this perspective. In her novel Gilead, the old preacher John Ames starts digging through a box of sermons in his attic. One day he figures out that he’s filled 67,600 pages with his sermons, the equivalent of 225 books. He writes, “There is not a word in any of those sermons I didn’t mean when I wrote it. If I had the time, I could read my way through fifty years of my innermost life. What a terrible thought.”
Reflecting on his sermons, Ames says:
I had a dream once that I was preaching to Jesus Himself, saying any foolish thing I could think of, and He was sitting there in His white, white robe looking patient and sad and amazed. That’s what it felt like. Well, perhaps I can get a box of them down here somehow and do a little sorting. It would put my mind at ease to feel I was leaving a better impression. So often I have known, right here in the pulpit, even as I read these words, how far they fell short of any hopes I had for them. And they were the major work of my life, from a certain point of view. I have to wonder how I have lived with that.
As I think about my old sermons, I’ve come to realize three things.
First, it takes years to make a preacher. When I was in seminary, my preaching professor told our class that we could preach as well as many of the preachers out there. In one sense, he was right. We had learned the skills, read the textbooks, and acquired the necessary tools. In theory, we had everything we needed to be effective preachers. However, we lacked one important thing: the experience that makes somebody a great preacher.
I recently heard a preacher explain how long it took him to prepare his latest sermon: 15 hours, and also decades. You can’t minimize the decades part. Preaching requires not only the skill of preparing a sermon but also the wisdom that comes with age, and skill that only comes with many repetitions. It’s humbling for a young preacher. It takes time. Don’t expect something from someone in their younger years that can only come with decades of experience. No shortcuts. As Paul wrote to Timothy, “Practice these things, immerse yourself in them, so that all may see your progress” (1 Timothy 4:15). Your old sermons shouldn’t be as good as your new ones. In some ways, it’s a problem if we don’t look back at old sermons and see that we’ve grown.
The second thing I learned is to be careful about your influences. I attended a workshop about 25 years ago that shaped my preaching, and not for the better. I was influenced by a style of preaching that, in hindsight, was not helpful. Looking back, I wish I had surrounded myself with more helpful influences. I made a course correction a few years later as I studied under Haddon Robinson and began to be influenced by Tim Keller’s ministry. Both were such helpful correctives to other influences pulling me away from biblical preaching.
One of the best things a young preacher can do is surround themselves with examples of solid biblical preaching. We learn a lot from our mentors, including the books we read. If I could go back, I’d pay much more attention to the influences in my life because they shape the kind of preacher we become.
The third and most important lesson I’ve learned is the importance of simply trusting the Word of God. As Jonathan Leeman writes, “God’s Word, working through God’s Spirit, is God’s primary instrument for growing God’s church.”
The most important conviction a pastor can develop is in the efficacy of God’s Word. Nothing will shape our preaching more than our belief that it’s God’s Word that does its work, and that God will grow his church through faithful preaching.
We don’t need to make Scripture interesting; it already is. We don’t need gimmicks or new techniques for Scripture to speak powerfully. We need to open the Word, understand it on its own terms, and faithfully communicate its message today, trusting that the power ultimately isn’t in our preaching but in the Holy Spirit through Scripture.
I’m a bit discouraged about my old sermons, but on the other hand, I’m also encouraged. I still have a long way to go, but I’ve grown. I’ve learned from better models and now firmly believe in God’s Word to do its work within the church.
Preachers, expect to grow. Give it your best effort. Learn from excellent models and guard against bad influences. Put in the reps and trust in God’s Word’s power. Over decades, with God’s help, we will become better preachers.
