Often, when people hear that I am a preacher and have been preaching for the past twenty years, they will say something like, “Oh, you must have a lot of sermons in your files. Surely, it’s easy enough at this point just to pull out an old sermon and preach it again.”
In fact, I am rarely able to re-use a sermon, and certainly not the entirety of a previous sermon. I can sometimes use pieces perhaps but not the whole thing. And the sermon always must be shaped especially for each occasion.
There are good reasons for not re-using the same sermons. First, the preacher is not the same person the second and third and fourth time around. The preacher will be older, ideally will have read more widely, will have gained more experience, and will be deepened in his faith. It is a different preacher from the one who preaches initially from the Scriptural text. Read more…