The Preacher's Urban Legend

I heard it again this week at a lunch with other ministers. One of them was reporting that the church secretary said that all the former minister did was close his office door and pull out an old sermon and say this will preach. Other person said well now all you have to do is download it from the Internet.

Now I will confess that there were a few special services like Ash Wednesday and Maundy Thursday when I told a story of grace and over the years I was a pastor I told the same story several times at those special services. One year I read an article that Fred Craddock wrote that said congregations like to hear sermons repeated, they can kind of preach along as people sing along with songs they know. "Here comes the good part." So for a six week period during one summer I asked the congregation to tell me some sermons they knew and I would "re-preach" them during those weeks. Most members said they didn't remember any, but a few gave me some titles and we got through the summer.

Professor Tom Long, a widely known preacher in Presbyterian Church who does about 3 guest visits to churches each month, reported to me that he usually took three sermons he had used often and one he was working on to each place where he was doing a guest visitation. So indeed some sermons get preached again. A friend of mine early in my ministry put it this way:"Every sermon that deserves to be preached once, is worthy to be preached again and often. The problem is most sermons do not deserve to be preached the first time. We just preach them because we have to have something to say on Sunday.

But most of the local pastors and preachers I know, and I am in this group, work very hard every week to have something ready for Sunday morning. It is never as good as they hoped. They, and I, never preach it as well as they would want to, and it if it was prepared for this week's people, it is never appropriate for next week's or next year's people without extensive work. It is one of the stereotypes and myths that preachers just have to live with.