Responding to tragedy

When a tragedy occurs, either locally or globally, the preacher has a choice to make:

1. Stick with what I've prepared - Sometimes what you've got will work for the present situation. Sometimes you stick with your prepared sermon and address the tragedy through another aspect of the service, for instance, a special time of prayer.
2. Alter what you've prepared - Maybe all your sermon needs is some alteration to be appropriate to the moment.
3. Ditch what you've got and go with something totally new - This has its challenges, especially if the tragedy occurs close to Sunday.

How do you decide what to do? I think the decision process involves listening to the Spirit and gauging how close to home this tragedy has hit. Will the people in the congregation be able to think about another topic on this Sunday or will their attention be limited to their own questions concerning this recent event? The closer the tragedy is to home, or the more prominent the tragedy is in the news, helps me determine whether or not I need to alter my sermon for the upcoming Sunday.

I have altered sermons on three occasions that I can remember: The Fort Hood shootings; The Newtown shootings; and the recent tornadoes in Moore. Three sermons out of a decade of preaching is not a lot. So this is not something I do easily. For one thing, I am not an off the cuff kind of preacher. I like to be prepared. But on occasion, I have felt the need to make a change.

In the case of the Newtown shootings I actually re-preached a sermon from the year before acknowledging that that was what I was doing. That took care of the issue of preparation. On the other two occasions, I ditched prepared sermons and preached an entirely new one. In each case, the sermons have been well-received. People are filled with questions during such times and want their pastors to say something. While we may not have any answers to their questions, we can point people towards the God who cares for them in times of great trial.

I'd love to hear from you. When have you made a last minute sermon change? What led you to make that decision? How was that change received? Is there a time you chose to stick with what you had? How did you come to that decision? What are other ways we can acknowledge a tragedy has occurred without altering our sermon?

Preaching familiar texts.

As Easter approaches, we are confronted once more with the challenge of preaching from familiar texts. Matt Skinner, in an interview with www.workingpreacher.org, reminds us that these texts aren't familiar to everyone and that even the most familiar text, when given room to speak, can give a fresh word for today.

find more Preaching Moments at http://www.workingpreacher.org

Links of the week

Over at the Pangea Blog guest blogger Rachel Blom asks an important question for all preachers: Do you preach to your whole church? How do your sermons and illustrations within those sermons sound to singles, teenagers, etc.? Excellent post to get you thinking about who sits in your congregation.

On Leadershipjournal.net David Slagle shares three irrational beliefs that too many ministers buy into.  He identifies the reasons and provides healthier alternatives.  A good article that might serve as a good discussion for church staff.  One of the better lines, "Expecting messed up human beings to treat us nicely at all times is, well, messed up."

Mark Roberts, director and scholar in residence of Laity Lodge looks at how the web empowers gossipers. He concludes that while the web probably doesn't make us meaner - he thinks we're pretty mean already - the web does allow us to get away with more meanness. Read more.

Preaching Quote of the Week

"The supreme work of the Christian minister is the work of preaching. This is a day in which one of our great perils is that of doing a thousand little things to the neglect of the one thing, which is preaching."

G. Campbell Morgan, Preaching (published in 1937)