Osler's Razor

Today (at 9:30), I am giving the sermon at First Covenant Church in Minneapolis, 810 South 7th Street.    They take preaching pretty seriously there-- Minister Dan Collison is a fantastic preacher, and they give you a full 30 minutes to do the job right.

I give sermons three or four times a year (this is my second of this year), though I am not a minister and was never formally trained in it.  I love doing it, though, and am happy to have the chance to do it now and then.

My secret weapon is this: for nine years, I taught a class called "Oral Advocacy" at Baylor.  My co-teachers were Randall O'Brien and Hulitt Gloer-- two of the best preachers in Texas.  In other words, I got to hear two great preachers show how to give a great sermon year after year.  I will never forget it; there is a wealth of stories from those days.

The single most important thing I learned was this, which Hulitt emphasized:  You have to brood over a sermon.  That is, you can't just bang it out and then tinker with the words.  You have to hold it quietly in your mind soul until it is ready.  He is so right, too.  I find that my better sermons have been the ones where I take his advice: I block it out on Monday or Tuesday, and then think about until Friday. It becomes deeper and better and more real in those days.

There is something else, too… those brooding days themselves are deeper and better and more real. I think, in a way, this brooding is a way of inviting in the Holy Spirit.  If you think you can control the whole thing, own it, you aren't allowing in any space for that.  It's like anything else: it is bettered by allowing for blessed imperfections.