Preparing sermons

I've never been able to re-use a sermon of mine, let alone one written by someone else. They can help in the sermon process and there are some that I think are wonderful, but they aren't in my voice, even the ones that I've written are no longer in my voice. I've changed, the congregation has changed.

I once served a three point parish. The sermons ended up differently in all three congregations even though they were preached in a four hour period on the same text and on the same day. Even when I used a manuscript, the sermons were different.

There are certainly weeks when my preparation time was shortened considerably, but if I didn't take the regular time to study scripture, to study commentaries, to pray and reflect, to look at like and unlike passages, then my sermons and worship presence suffered. It may not have suffered for a month or two, but eventually the lack of both prayer and study that goes into a sermon became clear to me.

There's a pianisst who once said if he didn't practice one day, then he heard, two days and the critics heard it, three days and everyone knew.