So what do you do when you cannot preach the sermon you prepared?

[Hans Deventer]

This morning I was in our church in Nijmegen, where fellow NazNetter David van Beveren is pastor. We had arranged this because he'd be present as well, and since he's my mentor as a preacher, that would allow him to give better feedback (I usually preach when a pastor isn't there, of course)

But things went a little differently than expected today. People shared some personal situations that deeply impacted the service, and after David had led the pastoral prayer at the altar, I felt I could not preach what I had prepared. So I went to Romans 8 and Phillippians 2 and gave whatever words of hope and consolation I felt was contained in those chapters. And finished the service with the blessing from my wedding text: "And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age."

This was the second time I've had to preach another sermon, though the first time this happened, years ago, I made that decision before the service, in the prayer meeting, and I still remembered another sermon I had preached a few weeks before. This was different. I had nothing else on my mind.

The encouraging thing though was that less than 2 weeks ago I had this dream that I had to preach but didn't have a sermon. But God told me it was okay to go ahead, He'd give me the words. With that dream in the back of my mind, I felt I had to do this.

After all, speaking the word of God is never outside a context. You can't just pick any Bible verse and say, "Thus sayeth the Lord". The word of God is only the word of God if it is the right word in the right context. Let's face it, even the devil quoted the Scriptures. That certainly didn't make them the word of God in that context.

But glory to God! And gratefulness because He's been willing to even use this broken vessel.

[Dennis M. Scott]

As challenging as this experience is, it reaffirms our belief that the Lord still works significantly among us. He not only leads us in what to say and do, but sometimes what to not say, or do. My hat off to you for recognizing His voice. There have been over the years several times when the Lord seemed to have at the last moment changed what He wanted me to preach. It always makes me a little uncomfortable. If we're prepared to preach something, the Lord can at least change direction. I guess if we don't prepare, it would always be an adventure.

The Lord one time while I was preaching stopped me in mid-sentence. I just knew that He wanted me to stop. I did, and waited a moment - being sure He would tell me what to say. After all, I didn't want the people to think I was some sort of idiot. The Lord, however, didn't do what I expected. He impressed me to send the people home, so I thought, "Ill dismiss them in prayer." The Lord, however, said, "No, just send them home." So that's what I did: after looking around the sanctuary, I said, "You are dismissed." I was sure that an airplane was going to crash through the roof, or something similar, and I would have been seen as some sort of spiritual giant for heeding the Lord's directive. However, to this day, as far as I know, nothing happened. The sound technician thought something had gone wrong with the microphone. I have never understood it, and confess that I feel a little uncomfortable recounting the story. It would seem that either the Lord is weird, or I am weird: I guess we all know how that contest turns out.

[David van Beveren]

Hans, just say thank you is not enough.
Our worship leader had her part prepared last Monday and she told me that the order of songs to sing flowed out of her on the paper. And she had this strange expectancy about this service.
In the service the brokeness in several lives in our church came open in this service, emotion struck the congregation. And although I had it not before me the Spirit led me to allude to the common confession of Mosaic Washington DC:

Everyone is broken and is in need of healing.
Everyone is lost and in need of a home.
Everyone is tempted to fake it and needs to become real.
Jesus offers us healing for our brokenness.
Jesus offers us a home in the heart of God surrounded by a faith family.
Jesus invites us to face the truth about everything.

People came forward and surrounded those who witnessed of their brokeness.
And we prayed..., and the Spirit of God ministered to the hearts of the people, for the revealed brokeness, as well for the brokeness that we carry all inside of us.
After the prayer when people went back to their place I looked at Hans, he had his head down, praying for wisdom. I invited him to come forward, to share the words God gave him. He put aside what he had prepared, and he spoke encouraging words to the church, as he wrote above.
Hans, again, thank you for your submission to the leading of the Holy Spirit.

David,
your brother in Christ,

[Kevin Rector]

I have found that when God interrupts me, more often than not what comes out of my mouth is far better than what I had prepared earlier in the week.

[Bob Sugden]

Years ago, I was asked to preach for my pastor who would be out of town. I spent two weeks preparing. I arrived at church that morning and had no clue what God wanted me to preach. As the service progressed, I became even more uncomfortable because I still did not have a clue what God wanted me to say. Finally, I was the only person left on the platform. I breathed a prayer as I walked to the pulpit--my mind still a blank. As I opened my mouth to speak, a woman stood up, apologized for the interruption, and proceeded to testify to the blessings God was pouring out into her life. That prompted another testimony, and then another, and then another... Finally, after 45 minutes of fantastic worship and praise and tears, we closed the service knowing we had been in the presence of the Almighty. I hadn't preached at all. As I left the sanctuary that morning, I looked to heaven and said, "You couldn't have told me that would happen ahead of time?!?" God is God and we are simply His humble servants. :-)

[Hans Deventer]

Bob, that's a beautiful story! Thanks for sharing.

[G R 'Scott' Cundiff]

An old preacher's joke (not necessarily just for "old preachers")

Every Monday a group of pastors met for coffee and to talk about the previous day's church service. The young pastor kept hearing other pastors talking about how God gave them messages as they got up to preach so he thought he'd like to try it. He told his pastor friends that this would be his week to let God give him a message.

He spent the week fooling around with other stuff, playing golf most every day, going fishing, etc., making no preparations to preach.

The next Monday, his fellow pastors wanted to know how it went.

He told them that all through Sunday School he prayed that God would give him a message, but nothing came. Then, as the worship service began, he sat on the platform praying, but still, he said, he had no message.

Then, it was time for the sermon. He reported to his pastor friends, that, as he stepped to the pulpit that God spoke to him giving him a message.

"What was it?" his friends asked.

The answer, "God's message to me was that I wasn't prepared to preach."

[Susan Unger]

This reminds me of when I was teaching. My first year, I spent all my evenings preparing for the next day/week. When I was done, I had hardly any time left over for God. Finally, God impressed upon me the verse Seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things will be given to you. I believed that he was telling me that if I put him first each evening by Bible reading, prayer, reflection, etc, he'd give me the lessons that I needed. I did and he did. I never lacked for ideas for lessons plans. Sometimes ideas would come to me as the kids would be walking into the classroom while other times he'd give them to me several days in advance. Sometimes I would have such non-Susan-like creative ideas come to me that it would impress a fellow teacher.

After awhile, I became very used to hearing God speak about other areas. The most interesting one to me would occur on snow days. I lived the farthest away from the school. Basically, on a day that looked like it might turn into a snow day I would still have to get up early because I wouldn't have time to get ready if I waited for the phone call telling me school was canceled for the day. But, I noticed very often that on days that ended up being canceled, when my alarm would go off, I would hear what I thought was God telling me to keep resting cuz the call would come. Sure enough....every time that happened, I would get a phone call telling me it was either cancelled or a delayed start.

[Gina Stevenson]

Bob, I had to click on the "laugh" button, not just the "thanks," because I was reminded of a time I was to give a report from a weekend seminar several of us went to. I prepared so much, but felt a bit uneasy, asked a gal to record it ... figuring if I sounded at all like someone who'd put me to sleep, or nearly so, that weekend, I'd never do that again.

Well, it ended up surprising them and me ... making both of us wish there had been a recording. OH, well ....

[David Troxler]

Hans,
I think I would do and have done exactly the kind of thing you did.
It has happened on various occasions when I was prepared to preach on a particular passage, and the Lord changed the service. It is exciting to sense God has something great in store.

On another occasion, I was present for a service NazNetter Oliver Philips was preaching. Not sure what he had in mind, but my daughter had also been scheduled to sing a special in that service immediately before Oliver got up to speak. He changed his sermon based on the words and response of the special song she sang. It turned out to be a wonderful message. Wish I had a recording of that.

[Mike Wooldridge]

I'm reminded of the three preachers talking about their sermon preparation.
The first saiid that after taking Monday off he spent the rest of the week studying, praying and was always ready on Sunday morning.
The next said he spent all day Saturday studying and praying and was always prepated on Sunday.
The third preacher asked, "What do you guys do during Sunday School?"

[Larry Parsons]

My wife used to tell me I preach better when I was force to preach off the cufff.
lARRY

[G R 'Scott' Cundiff]

My approach is this: "Preach what the Lord gave you as you prepared." I'm a real believer in the Lord's ability to inspire the preacher as preparation is being done. Don't prayerfully prepare beforehand and then toss it out to follow some emotional moment in the service. From my experience, when God is working in a specific way, the prepared sermon will help and not hinder that move of the Lord. Remember, the Spirit is at work and is translating the sermon into the listener's lives anyway. Trust him to know what he's doing, both in your study and in the service.

Now, having said all that, of course, we have to live in the moment. The leader in a church service needs to be spiritually alert and use common sense as well.

My general approach is to acknowledge the situation and respond to it but not to toss aside what the Lord already gave me. So...we might suspend the order of the service to pray with some hungry person or to pray for a family that has just received bad news. We respond, and then, we return to the sermon the Lord gave us earlier in the week...howbeit, with possibly a different emphasis than was originally planned.

Of course, there's the extraordinary. If glory falls and heaven breaks out, I say, let go and let God. The preacher doesn't need to preach at all because the Lord is handling the service. I love it when that happens and, from my point of view, it's all too rare.

[Hans Deventer]

My approach is this: "Preach what the Lord gave you as you prepared."

Scott, trust me, I don't make a habit of this. I haven't kept track but I think I've preached some 150-200 sermons. This was the 2nd time this happened. My take is, God is God and all I need to do is listen. He's been known to change His mind himself, so I'm not the one to tell Him that He cannot. It might actually happen that I prepared A under His guidance, and am guided to preach B in the service. My only responsibility is to listen.

[G R 'Scott' Cundiff]

Scott, trust me, I don't make a habit of this. I haven't kept track but I think I've preached some 150-200 sermons. This was the 2nd time this happened. My take is, God is God and all I need to do is listen. He's been known to change His mind himself, so I'm not the one to tell Him that He cannot. It might actually happen that I prepared A under His guidance, and am guided to preach B in the service. My only responsibility is to listen.

I think you have great spiritual discernment Hans. I actually waited for the thread to grow cold to do a serious post because I didn't want to take away from what the Lord did in that particular service.

[Hans Deventer]

I think you have great spiritual discernment Hans. I actually waited for the thread to grow cold to do a serious post because I didn't want to take away from what the Lord did in that particular service.

No problem! You are right, the issue is a spiritual one. Somewhere in between sticking to what you prepared no matter what and having emotions change things all the time, we're trying to listen to the Spirit. I agree though that the Spirit should also be a big part of the preparation of the sermon and we should therefore not easily throw that aside, you very rightly made that point.

Perhaps the point here is that to prepare to preach is most of all to prepare the preacher. And to the extent that we've allowed the Spirit to guide us in the preparation, we're open to His guidance in the service as well.

[Roland Hearn]

Just an added thought because I agree with you Scott and think you made your point tentatively enough to cover all the basis, sometimes in the real world preachers prepare stuff based on their discernment of what is needed. God is pretty happy to go along with it for the most part 'cause He has invested Himself in our life journey to the point of our preparation. However, given that we may not be aware of the issues involved at the time God may very well step in at a given point and direct us to say something completely different from what we have discerned.

After 25 years behind the pulpit, as a figure of speech (I've used an actual pulpit for only three of those years, a lectern for seven and nothing for the rest), I haven't got much new to say anyway. I prepare a message and then commit the overall scheme to memory. I'm thinking on the fly as I preach. It gives God plenty of room to inspire a thought or line of reasoning in a message. It happens most weeks that I end up saying something that I hadn't prepared. That usually is the best part of my message.

[Randy Wise]

Well after going through this thread the humor side of me wants to state move to something on orderly worship. (just kidding)

I believe a answer can be derived in part from some of the answers from the weekly pros. That is have a shortened backup sermon on hand that has been "practiced and practiced" and put in memory. When I learn new software its fresh in my memory but if I don't use the software for a while I may have to look something up so when I read looking into a mirror and forgeting or putting into practice in scripture I can understand the statements. There is something to this "practice" theme.

Randy

3Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror 24and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. 25But the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it—he will be blessed in what he does.