Logistics > Sermon/Preaching Record

by Rick Labate rickl@pcsda.org

Picture the following. You are preaching in a church you have preached in before sometime in the last one to three years. All of a sudden you have a flash of memory that makes you think that you may have preached this same sermon the last time you were at this church! The sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach won’t go away. The looks on the faces of your listeners are hard to discern. Are they listening out of politeness? Do they remember? Did I really preach this sermon here before or is it just my imagination? What you are preaching is one of your favorite and most effective sermons but now you can’t concentrate anymore on the message because your mind is just consumed with trying to figure out the truth of the matter. This is a situation that no one wants to be in.

As a ministerial director it is probable that you are not writing that many sermons any longer. There is no need to feel guilty about this. Your workload and what you do on a weekly basis has changed. You are no longer a pastor speaking to the same group(s) of people week after week. Therefore you have entered into the “land” of preaching the same sermons multiple times. This is often one of the occupational “hazards” of being a conference office employee.

A simple way of making sure the above nightmare does not happen to you is to keep a simple database with entries for the date, the church and the title of the sermon. If you do anything else at the church such as conducting a seminar or something musical you can enter that information as well. Another helpful hint is to write the names of key leaders you meet so when you go there again you can call them by name even though it has been many months since you were there before. This is always a special moment for people and not only show but indeed prove that you care.

So establish that database with all the necessary information. The temptation will be that you’ll somehow remember. Who knows? Maybe you are someone with a phenomenal memory. But for most of us, an ounce of writing down is worth a pound of embarrassing apologies!

Note: If you use a PC computer, contact Mic Thurber at mic.thurber@maucsda.org for software he has written that he will give to you free to help you track your sermons, books, and other resources.