Preach Magazine Issue 1 - Creativity and innovation in preaching | Page 41

FEATURE

Here they are:

1. The Stream of Rest
A writer once wrote, I’ve
forgotten who: ‘When I take
a walk, angels talk to me’.
I’ve found that to be true in
both writing and preaching. If I’m stuck
in my studies, I go for a midday jog. I
find, almost universally, that this little
practice jostles my blood-flow enough
to bring new ideas to mind.
In fact, I’ve found over the years that
sometimes my study is best served by
leaving it. Receiving adequate rest and
exercise is like ‘sharpening the saw’ to
cut down the tree – sure, you can work
really hard with a dull blade. But you
could work more quickly and effectively
if you stepped away from the tree, and
sharpened the axe.
For me, exercise is a form of rest from
my study – it sharpens the blade. When
I return, I’m ten times more effective
than I was when hacking away.
Unfortunately, many pastors neglect
their personal health in the name of
serving the church. But how well is the
church served by an overworked axe? If
you want to keep your preaching fresh,
you need to be refreshed yourself and
that means taking care of the body God
has given you.

2. The Stream of Worship
It’s a rule for me that if
I’ve not been personally
worshipping the Lord
throughout the week, it’s
impossible for me to encourage others
toward worship on Sunday morning.
Preaching is always a personal matter
– you will always reflect your growth,
or lack thereof, from the pulpit. As
Martyn Lloyd Jones has once said,
‘Preaching is logic on fire.’ If there’s
no fire in your belly, Jeremiah-style,
your preaching won’t be fresh. If your
growth is stagnant, your sermons will
be stagnant as well.
This doesn’t mean that at the end of a
difficult week, you try to eke out some
spiritual sustenance from your time in
the study – no. Study time and worship

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time are like oil and water. Carving
out daily time to read Scripture (other
than the texts you’re preaching on)
and prayerfully responding will always
show itself in your sermon, whether
you know it or not.
Remember: your congregation can
only grow as mature as you are. And if
you haven’t matured in the last week in
Christlikeness, neither will they. If you
want to keep your preaching fresh, you
need to spend time away in worship.

3. The Stream of Relationships
While it might seem ideal
to acquire fresh
perspectives by being
on the mountaintop of
personal study all week, the truth is
pastoring real people coincides with
preaching in a way that is striking,
and new. If you haven’t spent time with
people in your congregation in the last
few weeks – significant time – don’t
expect to know how to preach to them.
Preaching and pastoring are like two
oars in a rowing boat; if you only
have one, you’ll just go in circles.
Often the reason I’m at a dead-end on
Saturday morning is because I have
no relational wells to draw on from my
pastoral experiences. But when I spend
time listening to people – their real
lives, their fears, their dreams, their
struggles – I don’t have a difficult time
taking Haddon Robinson’s suggestion
of sitting them in an imaginary circle
in my office and saying: ‘So-and-so,
how does this apply to you?’
If we’re to keep preaching fresh,
we need to keep it relevant.
And that means keeping it
pertinent to the diversity
of problems, sins and
struggles which
constantly assault our
congregations.

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4. The Stream of Study
It’s an old Spurgeon adage
that the preacher ‘ought
to prepare a sermon with
the Bible in one hand and
a newspaper in the other.’ Whether
that newspaper is paper or electronic,
Spurgeon is correct: preachers need
to stay fresh by staying in their
culture. For me, I constantly find that
my personal spiritual reading, novel
reading, or cultural reading always
results in fresh illustrations and
applications to the current situation.
Without these ‘newspapers’ in hand, I
find my sermons become boring.
Make it a habit of studying not just
the scriptures, but the world they
illuminate. Scripture is a lens, not
simply a canvas – it is meant to be
looked through, to see the reality
that surrounds us from the correct
perspective. The preacher who has his
eyes set on the text and blinds himself
to the world will constantly find his
sermons lacking in freshness, because
they’re lacking in reality. Instead, the
preacher can take a lesson from Christ
– use the flowers, and sparrows, and
farmers of the twenty-first-century to
illuminate the goodness and grandeur
of God, their Creator.

Nicholas McDonald
Nicholas is an M.Div student at
Gordon Conwell Theological seminary
and youth/assistant teaching