In Marilynne Robinson's wonderful novel "Gilead," the retired pastor, John Ames, looks at a box of old sermons and calculates for his son how many sermons he must have preached over the years. Ames figures he's preached some two hundred and fifty sermons and at some thirty pages a sermon he calculates, "Then I've written two hundred and twenty-five books, which puts me up there with Augustine and Calvin for quantity." I look in my file drawer of sermons and wonder if there's even one novel worth of good words in there. It's certainly a bounty of words.
My sermon writing has gone through a lot of transitions through the years - smaller font to a font big enough for old eyes to see. Manuscript to outline to manuscript. From portrait to landscape. From longer to shorter...but never all that long...long sermons were never much of a temptation for me.
I think I probably only ever preach about 6 different sermons - coming up with endless variations on those themes that seem to occur over and over no matter how creative and bold I think I'm being. But for the most part I love this part of my work. I find great joy and challenge in constructing a verbal piece of art every week, hoping that at least some of the time it's worth a look.
You're above average if you have 6 -- I've heard that 5 is typical.
ReplyDeleteKaren Kelley