Saturday Night Sermon Downloads - and other Heresy

Recently an “old time religion” type of preacher was heard railing against those wimpy preacher guys who “get them up a sermon” on the Internet.  I am tempted right now to go to www.downloadsermons.com and see if it’s a site (I just made it up).  Hang on a second and I will check…

No kidding!  Want to know what I got?  Here is what it said at that website: Site Temporarily Offline for Maint. Check back shortly. I suppose that’s good, right?  Boy, I hope it’s up and running by 9:00pm Saturday night when all us wimpy pastor types start our message prep!

In 200churches, there are lay pastors, bi-vocational pastors, young pastors and old pastors. Generally, we are called upon to "do it all".  At times we are very pressed for time to get a message prepared.  Suddenly it's Saturday night!

Honestly, have you ever just sat and stared at a blank Word document on a Saturday night and decided to go online and find a message? I don’t know about you, but I know I can’t just download a message and preach it.  No way. It’s not that I couldn’t live with doing it, it’s literally that I just cannot pull that off. It would be more work for me to do that than it would for me to just study, use my tools, and develop my own message. 

I have been presenting sermons, messages, and talks, whatever you want to call them, for over 25 years.  Here is what I have learned about using the Internet to help me.

1. There is no substitute for God’s power.  No matter if I sweat it out all week - just me and the Bible, or wholesale download a message manuscript (I never do either, for the record), without spending time before God and receiving his wisdom, insight, blessing, and power, nothing will come of anything I deliver to others. Communing and talking with God throughout the preparation of a message is the MAIN thing.  Keep the main thing the main thing.
2. If you can, watch messages from other pastors online. Watching good men share God’s word helps us to become better communicators.  We ourselves grow when we watch others preach. We learn from their good communication skills and we learn from their bad communication habits.
3. Use the Internet for researching ideas and sparking creativity. Someone once said that there is nothing new under the sun, right? So when we browse the messages and series that other teachers and preachers craft, we find topics and ideas that ignite our own imaginations. We all preach and teach from the same Bible, using common major themes.  As we all look over one another’s’ shoulders, we find inspiration to speak truth in innovative ways to our own listeners.
4. Use online resources to save time. Simply google “Bible Study tools” or “online Bible helps” for a multitude of resources. Software like BibleWorks , Logos, or Accordance are amazing time savers. Search for illustrations, pictures, quotes, or stats.  I will always value my books and commentaries, but online resources are here to stay.
5. Whatever resources we find online, we must learn ourselves, then rework and customize, in order to speak with confidence and conviction.  If I download a sermon series, I must spend hours reading myself, learning and applying it to me, then reworking it and customizing to the listeners in my context. I must own a message by studying the scriptures, using my own illustrations, and “changing all the furniture around in it” in order to make it my own.
   

The Internet is too great a resource to fear or avoid in message preparation. So is the Holy Spirit of God.  Let’s remember that after we have done all we can in preparation for a message, God is the one who can use our words to change hearts. Our confidence is in him no matter the preparation.  Let’s never confuse an abundance of sermon material with a message that originates in God’s heart, travels through ours, and changes both our lives and the lives of our hearers.

How do you use the Internet in your sermon preparation?