You Are Not the Best Judge of Your Preaching

The chairman of a pastor search committee once told me why he would never inform a candidate that his team was coming to hear the man preach. “Every pastor has at least two good sermons,” he said with a grin, “And if he knows you’re coming, he’ll pull one of them out and use it on you.”

I knew there was something wrong with that thinking, but at the time could not put my finger on it. In time, I figured it out. While it’s true that every pastor has at least two good sermons, the problem is he doesn’t know which two they are. He thinks it’s these, his wife thinks it’s those, his church members and the Lord may have an entirely different group in mind.

The fact is, none of us are very good judges of our own preaching. And yet, most of us persist in assessing how we did last Sunday and letting the final grade we award ourselves hold our emotions hostage for the first 24 hours of the week.

Jesus had something to say that relates here. “Shake the dust off and go on to the next town” (Matt. 10:14, paraphrased). Granted, He was talking about something entirely different, but the principle is a good one: when you finish in one place, even if it was a bad experience, shake it off and go forward. Whether it was stardust, gold dust, or the garden variety, shake it off.

Sales managers will tell you one of the hardest skills for beginning salespeople to acquire is the ability to walk away from a bad experience, close the door on it, then pull themselves together and get ready to face the next customer with a smile and a warm greeting.

Young preachers sometimes put their wives in a difficult position. “Honey,” the pastor says in the car on the way home from church, “How was the message today?” Not good. Every pastor is at his most vulnerable in the hours following a sermon. You have opened your heart and bared your soul. You have offered to the Lord and His people the effort of all your study and prayer and reflection this week. That one hour is the most important aspect of your entire ministry. Your survival and your achievements in that church hinge on how well you do in the pulpit. With everything in you, you want to preach well.

Anything negative from anyone—particularly your wife—is sure to cut deeply and hurt badly. She does not need to be put in this position. The truth is, if you feel badly about the sermon, nothing she says will touch that pain, so don’t ask. Give it to the Lord. Either you did the best you

could or you didn’t. If you did, that’s all that matters. If you didn’t, then learn from that and resolve to do better next week.

Anxiety before preaching and self-recriminations afterwards seem to go with the territory, many would say. The best cure for the anxiety, I eventually came to find in my pastoral ministry of 42 years, was to ask: “What’s the worst that can happen?” When I could not think of a bad outcome other than that the sermon would be fuzzy or boring, it relaxed me. The remedy for the self-recriminations (“Why did I tell that story?” “I shouldn’t have done that!” “It was too long.” Too short, too deep, too shallow.) is to start practicing what you preach.

Give it up to the Lord as an offering. It was not perfect. But He has never required perfection from you; otherwise He would accept nothing you do. “He Himself knows our frame; He is mindful that we are but dust” (Ps. 103:14).

Try this scenario and see if it speaks to you. After church, you take the family out to a restaurant for a nice meal. You are seated, you study the menu, and everyone makes their selections. The waiter brings the dishes, you have a nice lunch, and you sit there in quiet conversation before leaving.

Suddenly, the kitchen door opens and the chef walks out. “How was  it?” he asks. “I labored all morning on that lasagna. Oh, I hope the steak was not undercooked. And I may have put too much spice in the catfish picante. Was the bread pudding too dry?” You try to assure him it was fine, that everyone enjoyed their lunch. But he goes on and on about his fears that the dishes were done poorly.

As you exit the restaurant, you wonder what that was all about. Frankly, you didn’t need that little drama. The meal was not perfect, but it was fine. You got your money’s worth. The chef should have relaxed and partaken of the food himself.

The last thing diners want from a restaurant is a neurotic chef. There may be self-appointed “food critics” in your congregation next Sunday, pastor, but that’s their problem. Just don’t join them.

Before you begin preparing, during the preparation, throughout the delivery, and especially afterwards, keep reminding yourself, “This is not about me. It’s about Jesus Christ. Lord, help me do my best for Your sake. And then, please use it for Your glory. Amen.” After all, He is the only Judge who matters.You would be surprised what the Lord Jesus can do with the simplest of food from even a child. Oh, perhaps you’ve heard that story?

Joe McKeever is a retired Southern Baptist pastor from New Orleans, Louisiana. He blogs regularly at www.joemckeever.com.