Free Text Series or Lectionary Preaching?

The essential element that makes preaching worth anyone’s attention

A common sentiment among my fellow preachers suggests that the lectionary-based approach to preaching has become unsuitable for contemporary ministry. The thinking is that an occasional, topical approach—typically called series preaching¹—is better than following the liturgical church year with its one- or three-year cycle of pericopes used in common across an entire community of churches. This opinion appears to be particularly pronounced in missions to the unchurched and in parish settings self-consciously characterized as visionary or innovative.

This is the first part of a three-part essay in which I will enter this simmering debate. I will analyze and comment on three subtle but significant criticisms of lectionary preaching. I intend to offer meaningful resistance to what strikes me as a largely unexamined assumption: that series preaching is the way of the future because it somehow offers unique advantages for ministering to the kind of people shaped by contemporary American culture. I will work to carve out some much-needed common ground even as I make the case that lectionary preaching remains the best preaching paradigm for Lutherans in our time and place.

Perhaps I will be able to convince some of my fellow preachers to return to the shared heritage, common good, and creative strength of lectionary preaching. But if not, then the series preacher might at least rely less on unwarranted assumptions to justify the practice and become more sensitive to the realistic pitfalls in series preaching.

Effort isn’t the issue

Last year I participated in a conference discussion on how best to contextualize worship to today’s culture. The conversation inevitably turned to contextually relevant preaching. A clear sentiment emerged: lectionary preaching was said to be the easy way to preach because the lectionary has already been planned for you. The topical series, in contrast, was said to be the hard way to preach because a good series requires a significant amount of advance planning. The resulting benefit of all this hardness was said to be a corresponding increase in homiletical relevance. In other words, “The topical series is hard to do because relevance is hard to come by.” By the end of the discussion the matter was even cast in moral terms. One pastor called the lectionary not just the easy option, but the lazy option!

No doubt he was overstating the case. Nevertheless, it seems clear that the lectionary has acquired a reputation as little more than a time-saving table of texts instead of an atlas showing the way to the kind of seriously relevant preaching that ministers of the gospel are called to deliver. Many preachers are setting lectionary preaching aside on the grounds that it is simply too weak of a tool to till the fields where they have been called to gather a harvest.

I will wholeheartedly agree that series preaching takes more effort to do well than most lectionary preachers probably realize. I once had to plan and preach a brief, occasional series and I found the process to be quite unpleasant. Maybe the difficulty arose from working against the grain of so much training and so many years of practice. Regardless, my point is that, yes, it does take serious effort to do series preaching well. I hope any preacher who preaches serially always gives the job the full beans it requires.

Persistent misuse of a preaching paradigm does not prove the paradigm is faulty.

I will also agree that many preachers have used or continue to use the lectionary lazily. The point is well taken that the specific value of the lectionary is not that you can arbitrarily (and at the last minute) grab a text from a table of pericopes and preach as if every sermon is isolated from what has preceded it and what will follow it. But at the risk of offering what amounts to a playground retort—“I’m not lazy, you’re  lazy!”—what is the lectionary preacher to make of the many websites trafficking in ready-to-preach series kits? A clever programmer could probably code a bot to compare the social media feed of every WELS congregation to what’s trending on the most popular sources of series kits and find no small number of matches.

Both lectionary preaching and series preaching have well-known and well-worn ways of taking shortcuts, the habitual use of which should be unwelcome in a virtuous professional culture. Persistent misuse of a preaching paradigm does not prove the paradigm is faulty, rather it bears witness to an ethos short on rigor and lacking in integrity. Excellent preaching of any kind requires significant foresight, careful planning, and all-around effort. The lectionary is not the easy option because preaching is not the easy option. All preaching is hard when practiced seriously and sincerely.

I suggest that we settle on this common ground and focus on more fruitful ways to analyze and compare series preaching with lectionary preaching. We must still discern a credible path from the premise, “series preaching requires more planning than lectionary preaching,” to the conclusion, “therefore series preaching yields greater contextual relevance compared to lectionary preaching.” Is such a path possible or plausible?

Relevance is at stake

Differences over lectionary preaching vis-à-vis series preaching seem to arise most frequently in conversations about what makes preaching relevant to a particular cultural demographic or cultural moment. It seems that context and relevance, not ease or difficulty, are the real points of contention. This is significant for understanding and addressing the issue. The assumption appears to be that the lectionary cannot reliably engage the context of the congregation or the community in which the congregation operates. The question, then, is why anyone thinks this.

One commonly-held answer seems to be rooted in the static nature of the lectionary. The lectionary tells and retells the account of a God who promised (and subsequently accomplished) to become our human brother in order to decisively redeem mankind from its entanglement in the cords of death and to definitively raise us to new life in a God-owned identity and vocational purpose that stretches from this moment through eternity. And because these things happened in the past there can never be new things that happened “once for all,” as the writer to the Hebrews puts it. The core story in the lectionary is static in the same sense that history is static.

This means that the lectionary cannot know who was elected president or what progressives want to teach kids these days. The lectionary does not react to the latest ministry blogs, nor does it comprehend that superhero movies are a big deal. The lectionary hasn’t been imbibing the latest pop psychology and religious self-help. The lectionary doesn’t know any memes. The lectionary hasn’t reviewed the latest Barna studies. Therefore, the thinking goes, for preaching to be relevant to a contemporary setting (as opposed to flowing from a historical consciousness) there must be an intermediary individual or group, like a pastor, group of pastors, or a planning committee, who regularly surveys the surrounding culture anew to discern what topics need emphasizing for preaching to enjoy relevance in the coming months.

This is, to say the least, an extremely popular approach to preaching. Aside from the expository model in which a congregation will work through whole books of the Bible over lengthy periods of time, the entire Evangelical industrial complex appears to be geared toward the task of churning out series after series. Such an approach thrives in the theological framework governed by the presumption that if the church and her ministers will only just embrace the surrounding culture with gusto, then the surrounding culture and its denizens will be more open to the church’s message in return. In this dispensation it seems the concept of relevance is meant to mean the task of calibrating preaching to harness the most engaging subjects or styles of the times, even if it means making heroic leaps of logic to somehow connect intellectual fashions and cultural fads to biblical theology.

This is not the relevance that Lutheran preachers ought to seek.

I am unconvinced that this is best described as relevant. Predictable may be a better word for it—and not the good kind of predictable, like Christmas coming every year. The point at which the series approach as commonly practiced could be called innovative appears to be in the rear view mirror. Whether it’s the barely camouflaged fundraising effort (#generosity) or the soft-core commentary on sex (#intimacy), series preaching as a trend appears to have become a rote procedure by which a cultural product of some kind, like a fascinating book, hit movie, major event, or social trend becomes the catalyst for the question, “How can I preach a multi-week series on this subject?” Indeed, some such books come with twelve chapters, which—voila!—become twelve sermons.

This is not the relevance that Lutheran preachers ought to seek. Unless the goal is to communicate that the church’s message is a Christianized expression of the surrounding culture, it’s an awfully big assumption to think that what’s trending in culture or what’s on the pastor’s Kindle is also genuinely relevant to the actual predicament of particular people in the padded seats, to say nothing of relevance to the formation of thick, resilient, long-term Christian communities. In fact, a serious concern to consider is whether by focusing on cultural relevance the preacher is directing the eyes of his people away from where they need to be focused, that is, preachers can easily point people away from the Person in whom genuine relevance is found. To answer this concern with, “Jesus is in every one of my sermons,” is, frankly, inadequate. Jesus is in an awful lot of hip-hop tracks, too. The heart of the issue is what role Jesus plays in preaching.

Jesus is essential, not instrumental

The series paradigm too easily positions Jesus as instrumental instead of essential, that is, when a congregation’s preaching is presented as a species of cultural commentary, religious therapy, or intellectual inquiry, Jesus must inevitably come across as one of the many great minds that people could choose to follow for good advice. In this paradigm the preacher can really only recommend Jesus, and because he can only recommend Jesus he must go to great lengths to present Jesus as the best way to accomplish whatever the stated goal of the sermon series is. The preacher may say something quite biblical, like Jesus is the only way to salvation, but such a message, while technically true, is overwhelmed by what the medium says. Things soon start to sound less like preaching and more like motivational speaking or life coaching. After all, if this month isn’t “The Greatest Month of Generosity Ever,” then what was it all for?

Things soon start to sound less like preaching and more like motivational speaking or life coaching.

The underlying logic of an instrumental deployment of texts tends to create people who hear only way as better way—and even then, it’s only the better way for now, that is, until they discover an even better way. This underlying logic of instrumentality is subtly implied if not explicitly stated in the form of advice-centric series themes and topics. “Come to hear how Jesus makes blank better,” is the main message, even if a few sentences of gospel are sprinkled in to rescue the sermon from formal charges of legalism. The fact is that there are other great minds out there and many people who recommend them as the good, better, or even best way to get after your goals. Only Jesus asks his followers to bear a cross. At some point following Jesus does not make everything better, it makes many things quite a lot worse. If Jesus is offered to people as relevant insofar as he can be a means toward some other end—especially a self-directed end—then he is not relevant at all.

The psychological captivity of the church.

I file this entire tendency under a concept described as the psychological captivity of the church.² The notion that the most relevant pastor is the one who looks to the world around him to determine where to head with his preaching has probably ceded any remaining position of strength against profoundly strong cultural currents. The church and her preachers are mired in a trade deficit of sorts; we import more ideas than we export.

None of this is to say that good preaching won’t engage with the cultural context of the congregation in significant and meaningful ways. It is to say, however, that it is too simplistic to think that the series paradigm is itself the engine of relevance. Quite often the result is literal irrelevance, especially if what’s on offer is merely a Christianized version of what others offer. People will go elsewhere to get the same practical benefits but without the Christian cross. Can we blame them?

The gospel is relevance incarnate

A helpful way to understand the issue of relevance is to analyze what kind of communication the gospel actually is. Christian doctrine is clear that salvation comes “from hearing” and what’s heard is a “message about Christ.” Here it is not pedantic to point out the plain meaning of the word gospel, that is, “good news.” Because the gospel is a report of an event or state of affairs, we must understand our preaching as the delivery of news. If we are not preaching news, then we are merely hosting a speaking event. Whether this event takes the form of a droning lecture or a trendy TED talk is immaterial. Both manifestations are the same—devoid of the distinctive power at our disposal to call lost souls from death in sin to life in Christ.

What does this have to do with the question of relevance? Everything. A sermon that offers commentary, advice, or application about the world that someone could, in principle, come upon elsewhere and apart from the Christian gospel is, by definition, irrelevant as news. It may be good and useful information that everyone is glad to have heard, but it is not, in the final analysis, news—and certainly not gospel.

Nothing ever will be as relevant as the words and works of Jesus Christ.

What animates the lectionary paradigm is the insight that nothing is or ever will be as relevant to as many people in as many situations as the words and works of Jesus Christ. The relevance people need most comes in the form news, an announcement of events that no one could come upon by any amount of their own thinking or choosing, events that happened “once for all,” but must be proclaimed again and again, generation after generation.

This is why I suggest that Lutheran preachers be less concerned about the quest to make their preaching relevant in culturally conditioned terms and to work instead at saying what is genuinely relevant to people living under the effects of sin and death. You can be sure that everyone will one day find themselves facing a deadly spiritual thirst (indeed, they face it already). Your task is to ensure that they have been drenched with words that point to the one who can and does quench their thirst. Aim your preaching at the moments when people will need to have heard good news, not endless therapeutic applications of biblical proof passages. Aim your preaching at relevance worthy of the word.

The lectionary does make one thing easier

I want to be clear that my claim is not that the series preacher never preaches the gospel, but that the series paradigm as a medium, with its reliance on a culturally-conditioned definition of relevance, makes genuine gospel proclamation either more difficult to accomplish or makes the gospel into an instrumental footnote attached to what people otherwise sense is the obvious goal: religious therapy, cultural commentary, intellectual inquiry, or spiritual motivation.

For example, one Sunday after Easter I was enjoying dinner at a neighbor’s house. Our host, knowing that I am a pastor, asked, “What was your sermon about today?” I briefly summarized the thrust of my sermon on the appointed gospel in which the recently-resurrected Jesus shows his wounds to Thomas. Then, knowing that our host attends one of San Diego County’s largest multi-site Evangelical churches, I asked, “What was your pastor’s sermon about today?” The answer: “How to lead like Moses.” I have little doubt that Jesus was mentioned in that sermon just as I have little doubt that the Lord was mentioned mainly as the means to a practical end.

I am not saying that everyone who follows the series approach to preaching does that, but I am saying that the lectionary makes it a whole lot harder to traffic in legalistic life lessons. It would take a monumental effort to somehow feed God’s people leadership training seven days after Easter while preaching the lectionary. If the lectionary makes one thing easier it’s this: maintaining focus on the words and works of Jesus and delivering the good news in a way that is—as I will argue in the following parts of this series—uniquely poised to matter most in our cultural moment.

There are almost limitless opportunities to engage contemporary culture within the lectionary preaching paradigm. It’s still hard work, too; but where it matters most the lectionary may really be the easy option.

Written by Caleb Bassett

Caleb serves as pastor of Redeemer Lutheran Church in Fallbrook, CA. He was a member of the Executive Committee of the WELS Hymnal Project and chairman of the project’s Technology Subcommittee. He has been a frequent guest panelist on The White Horse Inn, a nationally syndicated radio program and podcast on theology and culture. He is a fellow of the International Academy of Apologetics, Evangelism, and Human Rights in Strasbourg, France and a member of the WELS Institute for Lutheran Apologetics.

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¹ This article is the first in a series of three that evaluates free text series preaching, not the kind of lectionary-based series featured in the new hymnal’s Commentary on the Propers and offered in The Foundation at welscongregationalservices.net/the-foundation.
² This concept was coined by academic theologian L. Gregory Jones, former dean of Duke Divinity School and provost of Baylor University.

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Preaching with Outsiders in Mind

Insights from Being Open to Feedback

Editor’s note: This issue concludes our series on preaching with those outside our church membership in mind. Since 2011 Pastor Caleb Kurbis has served at Living Savior Lutheran Church in Asheville and Hendersonville, NC. Living Savior has two locations as one church in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Western North Carolina. In this mission setting there is never a shortage of opportunities to interact with numerous Sunday visitors and other outsiders. Living Savior’s ministry context includes a majority of members who have never been Lutheran in a region that is less and less Christian with hardly any Lutheran presence.

Introductory thoughts from Pastor Caleb Kurbis

“Pastor, did you know that A.I. could write your sermons for you?”

I had to smile and nod a bit even if my poker face hid the fact that it sounded stupid. Then again, should we be surprised when technology starts to do things that we thought were off the table? I guess I should be thankful that this kind 20-something didn’t tell me this on a Sunday morning. I could have inferred more: “Hey Pastor, maybe you should have artificial intelligence write your sermons.” (Or maybe he was saying that? Shoot!)

“Pastor, did you know that A.I. could write your sermons for you?”

If you want a rabbit hole, search “A.I. and sermon writing.” You’ll find everything from interesting to entertaining to absurd. We could enter some key words, the proper for the day, and some sources. Then we could read through to double check for heresy. Voila! And all that time saved could go toward more ministry and reaching more people. Right? Ha! Of course not. We would miss the benefits of wrestling with the Word. Worse yet, A.I. can’t process the people we’re thinking about and the souls sitting in God’s house. And what about the conversations we’ve had with prosects, considerations for reaching the searching, and wrestling with nuances for those who aren’t only new to our church but even new to the faith?

This series is about preaching with outreach and outsiders in mind. It probably goes without saying, but these articles on reaching the unchurched have some basic assumptions.

• We want to preach to outsiders and the unchurched.
• We are doing what we can to reach the unchurched to bring them closer to the Word.
• We recognize that worship, although maybe trending less today than with previous generations, is a great avenue to bring people closer to the Word and to God’s people.
• We want to make sure that they get “every good and perfect gift from above” as we ask God to help us communicate his truths clearly.

That last point is the basis for much struggle for me personally. Over the last couple of years, I have grown to feel dumber and dumber as I wrestle with this question: “Am I sure that these people, especially new people, are hearing what I want them to hear?” That’s not intended to sow self-doubt in every corner. It’s intended to encourage double-checking the sermon preparation and communication process. The more I think, the more I wrestle. And the more I wrestle, the more it makes me want to talk with people and work on the “stuff” that makes a sermon.

Am I sure that these people are hearing what I want them to hear?

Four ideas to help connect what we say with what they hear

1. Speaking of “stuff,” there was a young couple with two little kids who wanted to talk about “church stuff” as they just started attending Living Savior. He was Catholic before he became “close to nothing.” She described herself as having an “eclectic denominational path.” It was the season of Easter. They kindly emailed a question ahead of time. “We heard you say that we have this ‘life’ right now and not just eventually in heaven. That doesn’t make sense. And this world? Ugh! We may have missed something. Can you please explain?”

Thank the Lord for people who ask. (And imagine the many who don’t!) I looked back at my sermon on Revelation 21. I was trying to make the point that this vision of heaven is not only for the future; the life found in and through the Lamb belongs to us right now. But what questions would newbies ask? My sermon draft might say “life” after hours of work. But do I think deeply enough about the questions they (might) have? The more we ask about what specific people might think, the better we become at speaking clearly. And whether we know or think that we know or don’t know at all, it’s always helpful to ask. If we ask what someone thinks about a challenging subject in our sermon, would they refuse to answer? Who says they have to be members of our church? I was once encouraged by a wiser, older pastor to ask for feedback from outsiders in order to make my sermons better for outsiders. That starts with me seeking them out. Whether they become prospects is irrelevant for my feedback goal. Then again, we may be given the blessing of new people who will ask us on their own. “Can you please explain?”

2. I’m kind of a fast talker. I’ve slowed down over the years, but I need more work. Especially when I talk with sooomme of myyyy olllder suuuthrrn’ fooolks. Okay, not that bad. (Or fake!) But I remember many years ago when a very intelligent and emotionally sharp woman in my church told me, “You’ve been thinking about this a lot! Can you give us a little more time to think about it too?”

I had just preached on Luke 15 in the middle of Lent. Does it get any better? The challenge isn’t finding meat in that text. Rather, the challenge is to select and prepare small, choice cuts in a way that’s easy for God’s people to savor and digest. It seems that my sermon came across more as force-feeding. Yikes! She was right. Add that to the reasons that we pray with Luther, “… if you had left it all to me, I would have ruined it long ago” (Luther’s Sacristy Prayer). It gets better (read worse).

There was already an appointment on my calendar that week to grab coffee with a prospect that I had been working on for a long time. The conversation eventually got to the sermon the Sunday before. He said, “I need to go back and listen again.” The translation in my head sounded like this: That is a really nice way of validating what that lady said. You’ve got some work to do.

It reminds me of what a good pastor friend once said. “We slave over our sermon all week. Every sentence, logical structure, and sound. But the people? They have one second to get a thought, or they don’t.” Add to that listeners who don’t know context or terminology or Bible history or inside jokes or Lutheran-ese, etc.

Think about how new listeners process deep content, logical leaps, and a speedy pace. When we slave over what to say, we need to remember that how we say it happens quickly to the ear. That doesn’t just mean that we need to slow down. That leads to other questions. If I heard this for the first time, would I get it? If I summarized my last several paragraphs with one sentence each, is the logic simple and clear? What would I change if I had to explain this to a child?

We need not shy away or be distracted from saying the simple things.

3. A young man in his early 30s had been an atheist. Now he’s more of an agnostic. He said that he relates to the Stoics quite a bit. He doesn’t want to come to church quite yet because he doesn’t know much. He doesn’t want to sit there and have things sail over his head even though he is intelligent. I assume that you, like me, start thinking about how simple and clear the gospel is and how hard we work (and we must) to keep it simple.

Our professors encouraged a serious and robust devotional life. One professor at the Seminary said, “If you don’t have a personal devotion first thing on Sunday morning, what are you doing? Truly, what are you doing?” True, wise, instructive, and beneficial. But one Sunday hit me upside the head.

The sermon was done. First things first, a devotion from Our Worth to Him by Mark Paustian.¹ The one on Easter. He notes that maybe on Easter we could avoid getting into all the apologetical tidbits of the resurrection and simply focus on the true blessings and eternal benefits of Easter for God’s people. In short, it’s okay and maybe even often preferred to say the simple truths. It hit me because I read these words on the Third Sunday in Easter, and I had erred in the other direction.

Of course, Prof. Paustian isn’t suggesting an either/or scenario all the time. Anyone who has heard him speak or read his writing has witnessed the benefit of weaving together both clear biblical truth and apologetics. It is an art worth aspiring to. Rather, when it comes to the truths that matter most, we need not shy away or be distracted from saying the simple things.

It shouldn’t go without saying that simplifying our preaching is not just for newbies but also for those who have been in church almost every Sunday for their entire lives. (On this point Nathan Nass’s Preach the Word series is worth rereading.²)

We need to say the simple thing as clearly as possible. Of course, we want to give our people meat. We also want them to have milk. But nothing says we can’t communicate steak-like truths in a milky way. Truths that are out of this world can be shared on a rudimentary level. Sharing the simple truths leads to deeper applications. In other words, think not either/or but both/and. It will benefit regular members and certainly also outsiders.

Some further questions pertain to resources. What devotional resources do you use? How do you view yourself as a listener to the author/speaker? What resonates with you? Maybe you prefer deeper devotionals like The Daily Exercise of Piety by Johann Gerhard. Or maybe you like what fellow brothers write in NPH’s Meditations. Or you’ve found treasure in Paustian’s Our Worth to Him. What is there in the simplicity of our devotional resources and lives that can easily translate into our sermon preparation and even our preaching?

4. I recently got back into officiating high school basketball. No, I don’t like getting yelled at and called names for fun, although there is something to be said for testing the thickness of our pastoral skin in some ways. But this outlet and pathway for connecting in my community can get serious. The supervisor provides critique. And it’s really interesting seeing how people receive it, or not. The supervisor confided in me about pushback from someone by saying, “Reffing is very subjective. Subjectivity is personal. So, people either take it personally or they improve.” Would you agree that preaching is highly subjective? Do we welcome constructive criticism to improve? Or do we take it personally or avoid it altogether?

A member in my church works in an economic realm of our world that is way beyond me. He works with elite people who exhibit the highest levels of professionalism. But you wouldn’t know if you met him because he’s a very gracious man. Years ago, he asked me who I’m trying to reach with my sermons. I said they’re for everyone. I waited, knowing he had more to share. He asked, “Pastor, do you pursue constructive criticism on your sermons?” I told him that I have a couple of guys whose feedback I seek. And sometimes I’ll hand members an anonymous feedback form. Notice he asked if I pursued it, and not just received it. Why? We’re always improving.

I don’t know of any line of work or any craft where someone can improve significantly without some form of criticism. That’s true for this man’s line of work with upper-crust business folks. That’s true for some bumpkin preacher in the mountains of Western North Carolina. And that’s true for you. Of course, the fact that you’re still reading this is one clear indication that you know this. Even so, when it comes to preaching with outreach and outsiders in mind, isn’t it worth pursuing feedback from fellow preachers and others whom we trust?

I wonder what it would be like if we started asking each other some of the following questions. If you brought your unchurched neighbor to my church, what is there about my recent sermons that I should keep doing? What would need improvement? Can you read/listen to/watch a couple of my latest sermons through the perspective of first-time guest and let me know what was clear, confusing, churchy, and/or comforting?

Don’t be afraid of criticism and feedback for the goal of improvement. In fact, be concerned if you resist it.

Applying the Word to people who are veterans and to those who are new or outsiders is worth our best efforts. We deeply desire for their hearts to gain clear insights from the Word. That’s not something A.I. can produce, much less bless. But that is certainly the area code where God works blessings and will produce growth for our good and for our people. He has and he will!

Don’t be afraid of criticism and feedback … be concerned if you resist it.

Timeless Reminders

Editor’s note: This issue’s timeless reminder comes Rev. Tom Jeske’s introductory article in Preach the Word: 8:1.

I like the advice of a classmate who endured a rough chapter of ministry. When I asked him how it was going, he said “Nothing I can’t handle with a good night’s sleep… and some devotion time in the morning.”

Lutheran Preacher, start your day by reading the Scripture! Set your alarm. Get by yourself. Graze like a sheep in the pasture of the Word. You can’t preach to anyone else if you are gasping for air. I try to read four chapters a day. I don’t always make it. (Especially for you younger pastors: Did you know that if you discipline yourself to read four chapters a day, you read through the whole Bible every year?) Isn’t that a worthy and reachable goal? No one has to be a great scholar or have outstanding gifts to do this. You put yourself before the living words of the Holy One of Israel. How can something not happen to you?

After I finish reading, then I pray. We all know that prayer is not a Means of Grace. First the preacher listens, then the preacher speaks. I made a little pattern to help me. Of course it’s not original with me—just ask Peter the Barber. And yes, I can actually pray without it. But I’m a person who easily loses his concentration. This little outline helps me in a way that I suppose is akin to how journaling helps some people think. I list four matters on my conscience and confess them. I list four specific gifts for which to thank God. I make myself write down ten names or initials. The last section is a hodgepodge of hopes, dreams, needs, and half-baked ideas. Brother, you do it your way and improve on my idea. But hear Luther:

“Whenever I happen to be prevented by the press of duties from observing my hour of [Word and] prayer, the entire day is bad for me. Prayer helps very much and gives us a cheerful heart, not on account of any merit in the work, but because we have spoken with God and found everything to be in order.”

You know that by “prayer” he meant “Word and prayer.” Preacher, your morning Word and prayer will serve you well as you present devotions in meetings of every type, hospital visits, confirmation Bible classes, unexpected phone counseling, difficult face-to-face conversations, and finding the love to make outreach a part of your week.

The best part of a morning devotion is the sweet experience of a clear conscience. “Let the morning bring me word of your unfailing love,” (Ps 143). Battered and fearful hearts know no finer way to spend time. Perhaps the second-greatest benefit of a morning devotion is its cumulative value for your preaching. Your preparation, your product, and your confidence to step before God’s people to preach are going to grow steadily.

Written by Joel Russow

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¹ online.nph.net/our-worth-to-him-devotions-for-christian-worship.html
² Vol. 23 at worship.welsrc.net

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