Proclaimer Blog
How to be a sermon hack
Enjoyable day yesterday when I gave the East Anglia Gospel Partnership meeting my top ten tips for "how to be a sermon hack and other ministry shortcuts." One minister said to me "that's a very appealing title." Quite. My Alice was a little worried for me. "Dad, what happens if they don't realise you're being serious?" I confess that up to that point I had not thought that very likely; however, her words shook my confidence so I made sure that I prefaced my talk with the encouragement that my sermon shortcuts would enable them to spend more time on important tasks such as admin, committees and pastoring through Facebook. Although, on second thoughts, perhaps that latter suggestion was not immediately ironic either!
The truth was that it was relatively easy to come up with ten tips. I also asked Christopher and Robin for theirs – and we could have based a whole Cornhill term around them. That's not surprising of course. First, the negatives are simply the corollary of the positives. One necessarily follows from the other. If we have thought through carefully the positive exhortations about preaching that we value, it's not too tricky to come up with the opposites. But, more profoundly, the truth is that our list of tips had a ring of familiarity about them. It was not difficult to come up with them because, though we are loathe to admit it, they are all things we've done from time to time.
The slightly nervous laughter at the EAGP meeting gave away that we were not alone! I've written them up for this year's brochure, so you'll have to wait for June to get the full lot. In the meantime, I'm sure you can come up with your own list.