Day 37 of 365: Sermon Prep and a Team

Something I have been milling around lately is how many of today’s worship songs are written by 2, 3 or more people. This takes songs like Rich Mullins’ Awesome God and makes it a rarity. I am not saying this is a bad thing but I feel the days of one artist writing a song might very well be a thing of the past. Now you get chart toppers like Oceans, etc. There are countless other songs that are sung all across the world in churches that were written by many different artists. What you get is churches dropping songs of the past that may have “run their course”. Kind of makes you wonder how a worship song can run it’s course but perhaps that is for another blog. 

This same thing happens in larger churches regarding the sermon. I have colleagues at other churches (and I can only speak for Assembly of God churches) where the pastor comes up with the direction in which he wants to go with his sermon. This is then put before the “imaginative team” or whatever catchy phrase is used for a think tank of staff members. They will take the pastors message and essentially tell him what is lame, what is good, what could be reworked and where a human video might fit into it (sorry being a little snarky on that last point). What they end up with is a message melded together by many people weighing in much like a worship song that I mentioned in the previous paragraph. 

It really is like an indie (independent) artist gigging at bars, etc. playing their own music and singing their own hand-written lyrics versus the likes of top 40 radio. I won’t make a comment here of how the better music really likes with the indie artists. 

A pastor of a small church is much like that indie artist. From message content to the artwork for that message series…many pastors do it all when it comes to crafting a message or message series. What you get is a well prayed through and put together message. Sure there might be a thing or two that will cause others to judge but that happens in any church. 

Bottom line, the craft of putting together a message by one pastor is slowly becoming a thing of the past in the larger churches. We ought to celebrate the pastors of both smaller and larger churches that put their own messages together. The creative genius and time spent in prayer is to be honored.