What you preach on in your ministry diapers will shape your future

Over their career, ministers deliver thousands of sermons.

Having only worked as a youth minister for over a decade, thus not preaching weekly, I gave around 200 sermons.

But, not every sermon is equal.

Your first sermons are special.

You are extra nervous.

You are extra prepared.

You invite guests.

But, most importantly, your first handful of sermons will be further spaced out.

This is why you can be more prepared.

This is why you can sit with the passage longer.

This is why you can ruminate on your points.

This is why the message can soak deeper into the one giving the sermon.

For, as time goes on and you gain both trust, experience and responsibility, the sermon treadmill will restrict this depth of impact.

When you preach weekly, the time a sermon has to soak in will get squeezed out.

There will be another sermon the following Sunday. And then another. And another.

With this timetable, your first - intermittent - season of sermons will leave a greater impact.

So, I wonder, how many ministries have been shaped by these embryonic homilies?

How many decades of serving have been shaped by the point they were able to sit with for a few weeks?

How many ministers have been moulded by the sermon on evangelism, or social justice or deliverance because that - by coincidence - was what they spoke on and stewed over as a young minister?

I suspect, many of the things an experienced minister is passionate about have a direct connection to something they said in their early wadings into the pulpit.