of any changes are going to be done by cooperating with the work God is already doing. That spiritual emphasis may be paired with any variety of practical skills. Depending on the current focus, helpful sermons may walk people through putting prayer apps on their smartphones, giving people practice in naming a place they saw God working in their lives recently and sharing those God-sightings with someone else, or discussing the appropriate time to talk to someone on the vestry about a conflict in the church.
Addressing these topics is not something that can happen in a single morning sermon. Even a short series is likely inadequate to handle all aspects of what a congregation might need, although the sermon series can be a component of a larger initiative. A long-term sermon is the best approach to offer the needed theological rationale, practical vision, and concrete skills at an appropriate pace.
The goal of the long-term sermon is to allow time for the variety of information and application needed for a congregation to understand, get comfortable with, and be prepared to make changes. Instead of moving directly through information, a long-term sermon allows a preacher to introduce something in a small way and then circle back a couple of times while weaving in other relevant information that illuminates and reinforces the overarching goal. Such a practice assumes that the congregation needs to hear something several times to become comfortable with it. Preaching a consistent focus over a year or two also acknowledges that the average congregant is not in church every Sunday. Points need to be repeated for everyone to hear them, but preachers can’t just preach the same sermon over and over again until it reaches the whole congregation. If some key leaders miss a great sermon while traveling, that is a loss. If those same leaders miss a key point about the parish’s current focus during their trip, the preacher needs to ensure that the point is reinforced at other times.
Long-Term Sermons Integrated into the Weekly Sermon
Preaching a long-term sermon means that the goals for our weekly sermons will be slightly different. In seminary, most of us were taught to have a tight, coherent sermon. Many books on preaching rightly emphasize the effectiveness of having a single point for each sermon so that listeners know exactly what they are hearing and what the sermon is asking them to do. Some successful preachers argue that even the traditional “three points and a poem” sermon contain two points and one poem too many. As people’s attention spans shorten, a homiletic laser-focus is helpful.
While maintaining best practices in preaching is important, we also need to look at our sermons as contributing to something larger. A good comparison for a long-term sermon might be movie franchises like the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Each individual film has to be coherent and excellent in its own right and on its own terms. No one mistakes Spider-Man or Ant-Man for the Guardians of the Galaxy. At the same time, each film contains content that moves the story of the entire franchise forward. In some cases, the whole movie plot is integral to the larger series. In other films, however, the plot may center on an unrelated escapade. Even in the seemingly tangential installments, however, something happens that connects to the wider picture. That connection could be a conversation, the introduction of a character, or even a short seemingly unrelated clip at the end of the credits. Both the film and the connection are important. A series of isolated great films will not move the overall story arc forward. Each story, even with different actors and directors, makes its own impact while serving the larger whole.
Sometimes our weekly sermon will dovetail perfectly with our over-arching focus. The example above about the rich young ruler being told to sell all he has and give to the poor during a stewardship arc is a great example. Usually, however, the point of our sermon will not line up so precisely, especially if we are preaching from the lectionary. To move forward, we need to find ways to incorporate some aspect of our larger goal into the weekly goal.
Many weeks, some aspect of the scripture readings connects with where we want the congregation to move. If the focus is on welcoming and hospitality, perhaps a character in the Hebrew Scripture reading exhibits hospitality in an interesting way or the Epistle lesson touches tangentially on the theme. Highlighting it for a minute or two as the reading is preached doesn’t detract from the sermon. Letting the camera linger a little longer supports the long-term goals without detracting from the coherence of the sermon. The ability to incorporate a long-term point can influence the direction of the current week’s theme without dominating it.
Other weeks, the scriptural passages may seemingly have nothing to do with the long-term sermon goal. Those weeks offer a couple of options. The easiest is to ignore the long-term focus for a week and pick it up again the following week. Not everything can, or should, happen every week. Sometimes the Spirit is moving in a different direction and God is ultimately responsible for giving the congregation what it needs. Ignoring the long-term focus is not the only faithful option, however. Most congregations are willing to follow a preacher, especially a preacher who is their pastoral leader, in more than one direction on a Sunday.
Some weeks, a sermon allows for an aside. A homiletics teacher might reduce a sermon grade for such detours, but these digressions can be meaningful for a congregation. A preacher can, in effect, say, “Let me pause for a minute to look at something else that I think is important.” If the main sermon can be tied up seamlessly around or in spite of the diversion, a congregation is probably willing to listen. Such asides can also happen at the beginning of a sermon in ways that do not interfere with the structure and impact of the week’s message. I have frequently opened a sermon by saying that before I begin to talk about this week’s gospel, I want to look at a particular thing that happened that week. When the introduction connects to something else in the parish or in recent sermons, such homiletical preludes can work. One effective technique is highlighting something in the parish that happened over the past week that embodied part of the long-term sermon theme. When the congregational activity corresponds to a point preached over the previous couple of weeks, finding a way to mention it is essential.
A final way of integrating part of the long-term sermon focus with the scriptural readings of the day is by preaching what amounts to two shorter sermons on the same morning. I have explicitly explained to the congregation that I was doing this on some occasions, while on others I have made a rather abrupt pivot using an admittedly inadequate segue. While this may seem to break all the rules, preaching two sermons backto-back has a number of advantages. Primarily, such practice treats the biblical text with integrity while also honoring the need to deal with an important aspect of the congregation’s life. The sermons need not be equal length, and I have done them with either sermon first. I can see how long I need to talk about something contributing to the long-term focus, and then start with those points or end with them, depending on the week’s theme. Usually the biblical text either lends itself to a more expository sermon that I would more likely put first, or it has a strong application that I would want to end with.
Some of you may be horrified by reading the above paragraphs. I admit that I would have been extremely skeptical of these techniques before I was the senior pastor and primary preacher of a parish for an extended length of time. What I have found is that structuring sermons in these creative ways has allowed me to provide the congregation with the information and encouragement needed to move them forward, and to repeat that movement over a number of cycles. Rarely, if ever, have I personally been able to achieve those kinds of results by focusing exclusively on my weekly preaching message.
Scripture, the Lectionary, and Long-Term Sermons
Scripture has its own integrity, and that integrity must be honored. Therefore, one important aspect of preaching that I do not advocate changing is how we deal with the biblical text. Certainly, preachers preach sermons that move in different directions from the same text. The needs of the congregation are important in determining which direction a sermon will take. The polyvalence of the text does not mean that any sermon can be preached on any text, however, nor does a long-term sermon focus provide an excuse for isogesis or sloppy scripture study. As preachers, we need to engage the text on its own terms before we bring our own needs and the needs of our congregation
