Don’t preach your best sermon on your first Sunday

One piece of advice we got at the meeting for the pastors who were moving was, “Don’t preach your best sermon on your first Sunday”.  I guess that’s because the congregation will be disappointed the second Sunday.  In addition, the first Sunday is probably a little more discombobulated than the second Sunday.  I’m embarrassed to say that when I started putting my sermons on the internet at Mason UMC that I would put a star beside the sermons I thought people should listen to.  Obviously the sermons that were not starred – I was implying they should not listen to.  God convicted me about that.  If I didn’t want the people on the internet to listen, what about the poor people who came to church???  The HAD to hear it.  They were a captive audience.  At least the people on the internet could ‘X’ out of it!  I started putting more time into sermon preparation.

I hope and pray that I do my best every week.  God has given me the ability, only requiring some research and effort on my part.  If I do my part, He will surely do His part in preparing the hearers.  That makes every sermon, every week my ‘best sermon’.  If it’s not a ‘good sermon’, it’s almost certainly because I’ve failed to do my part.

All this to say that God simply expects us to put forth effort for His glory — and not just in sermon preparation and delivery, but in all we do.  1 Corinthians 10:31 says, “So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.”  (And I won’t even play the Cain and Abel card about giving God less than our best.)