the most important sermon you’ll ever preach

Easter Sunday was an amazing weekend.

Not only because we celebrate the great events surround Good Friday and Easter Sunday but for us as a church, it’s usually the only Sunday each year we get to worship together in one service – in a rented facility. While we’re neither a small or large congregation, it just feels so good to be together. Every year during Easter, we celebrate the glorious news of the Resurrection and then host an amazing Feast together.

Easter is special not only for the obvious reason of “The Resurrection” but let’s be honest, there’s a certain energy and vitality that’s not always present each and every Sunday. For some pastors and preachers, they look to the Easter Sunday sermon as the most important sermon of the year. I suppose one could certainly make a case for that but I would respond that the most important sermon preachers will preach

is the next sermon.

Here are some reasons why:

1. Resurrection! So What?

You preached recently on the Resurrection. The following week, you again preach on the power of the Resurrection…and teach in response to, “So what?”

2. Let the past be the past

Preachers don’t rest on the laurels of past sermons. Nor do they allow our mishaps and missteps to decimate them in discouragement. Pick yourself up. Stay humble. Preach the word – in season and out of season.

3. Preaching for the glory of ONE

The most dangerous and difficult challenge for preachers is to preach to gain the pleasure and favor of their listeners. We can mutually manipulate or be manipulated. Ultimately, we preach – mindful of our community and context but we preach for the glory of ONE.

4. Relationship and Love

Preachers should be humbled and honored to be teaching the word of God to their community that have built trust in their pastors. What an amazing privilege! So, we teach in order to share the love of God but in that process, to also demonstrate our love and care for our community. Preachers need to stop thinking about the greener grass on the other side of the fence (aka: other churches) and preach with great love for their people.

5. Faith, Hope, and Love.

Preachers get to not only teach the Scriptures but invite people to once again…worship. In my understanding and reading of Scripture, worship equals “responding to the revelation of God.” We preach – by God’s grace – to invite them to a deeper experience and expression of Faith, Hope, and Love.

6. Reconciliation.

Preachers preach Jesus and the “enough” of Jesus. By the grace of God, we are reconciled and also invited to the work of the Mission and Kingdom of God. We are called to the ministry of reconciliation. We are called to love mercy, seek justice and walk humbly.

The humbling andamazing privilege for preachers is that we get to preach the word of God again this weekend.

Let’s pray and prepare because the next sermon you teach is the most important sermon you’ll every preach.

“May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O God.”