BUSTING OUT OF SERMON BLOCK
Having to speak doesn't always mean you have something to say.
Haddon Robinson
January 1, 1993
Having to speak doesn't always mean you have something to say.
Fundamental is the task: preaching. Fundamental, therefore, is the need: to have something to say.
Fundamentals-and fine points-of preaching have been Haddon Robinson's lifetime focus. He has written enough books (including Biblical Preaching [Baker, 1980]), preached enough sermons, talked to enough pastors, and taught enough homiletics students to know the difference between having to say something and having something to say.
This article is excerpted from A Voice in the Wilderness, co-authored by Steve Brown, Haddon Robinson, and William Willimon. The book, which deals with handling the pressures of preaching, is the latest volume in the series Mastering Ministry's Pressure Points, co-published by the editors of LEADERSHIP and Multnomah Press.
Preaching well is hard work. We're expected to be witty, warm, and wise. And then next week, we have to do it again.
The great science fiction writer H. G. Wells reportedly said most people think only once or twice in a lifetime, whereas he had made an international reputation by thinking once or twice a year.
Lots of pastors have to think once (or more) a week! More often than we would like to admit, we begin preparing a sermon with the feeling not that we have something to say, but that we have to say something. Only one time in twenty do I start my preparation feeling that this sermon will go well. The creative process is accompanied with a feeling of ambiguity, uncertainty, of trying to make the unknown known.
Like the homemaker whose goal of three nutritious meals a day is complicated by toddlers making messes, demands of a part-time job, overflowing baskets of laundry, and a phone that won't stop ringing, the multiple ...
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