35 Years of Sermons

Mel, you only have 35 years of sermons? I have 64 years of preaching at least 3 sermons a week.

All my sermons are in a filing cabinet complete with study notes and sermon outline notes (which is what I take into pulpit). I believe it is possible to take these outline notes and preach the same topic, but a completely different sermon.

Unless you are like my wife who walked out of one service just as I rose to preach. Another person asked her why she was leaving. Her immediate answer was, "I heard it before!" She was actually going down to kitchen to help prepare the meal for the congregation.

I never preached the same sermon in the same church, but have repeated a few sermons in other churches.

Cheers,

Jim

 

I agree with Jim, I have taken the same text and even used the same subject but it never equals the same Sermon. The Lord speaks to you differently each time you preach it and it is good for you to let go and let God.

I preach the same sermon generally for easter, thanksgiving day service and my 3 part Christmas series. I also have a sermon I use if I install a pastor but that is a rare occasion. I usually preach the same sermon when I do a funeral for someone not saved. I use the 3rd chpt of Ecc.. and when I get to the time to die I skip to "it is appointed to each man to die and after etc..." which leads to my appeal for them to come to Christ.

I like to preach series at revivals for ex... putting on the whole Armour where I put on a piece each night. In some form I generally preach the same revival series all year since the Church you're going too never heard it before...

 

"If a sermon is worth preaching once, it's worth preaching more than once."
I don't remember who said it, but it's true. So I have preached the same text with the same thrust and aim before. I would be hard pressed to say I've preached the exact same sermon because I always try to make the illustrations more relevant or use better wording. I've done conferences, revivals, and so forth where you can preach a sermon you perhaps preached in your home church. Once every eight weeks, I do a week's worth of 15 min broadcasts as a service of a local radio station (each week is a different local minister). these are almost always condensed versions of a church sermon.

As far as repeating a sermon in your own church, that's difficult. I am usually in a series so that wouldn't be opportune. However, I have preached similar sermons before because of yearly vision checkups, ordinations, etc. And let's not forget Christmas, Easter, etc., where you're going to be eventually somewhat repetitious. Let's not make the mistake one pastor I know made: he decided to stop preaching the resurrection on Easter or Christ's birth at Christmas for fear of being repetitive. Moron.

If I couldn't repeat it, I wouldn't preach it to start with. However, this is no excuse for laziness or lax preparation. Quite the contrary.

 

Mel, My first sermon was designed to last a full twenty minutes. The church had a desk with a portable lecturn on the top. I tightly gripped the sides of the lecturn, sped through my sermon and was finished in just over 5 minutes. My hands held on so tightly I couldn't let go, turned to the left to pick up a hymn book and dropped the lecturn onto the floor.

I was paid a full £2.00 and invited to preach again the following Sunday. That was in 1945 and my first month of Bible College.....

It was Isa 6: 1-13

1-4 The vision of God
5 Isaiah's response
6,7 Isaiah's cleansing
8 Recruiting Isaiah
9 Commissioning Isaiah
10-13 Length of service, message and results

That is the outline I took into pulpit. An excellent passage to preach from sometime.

Cheers,

Jim

 

I have been preaching for 35 years, too. I have all my saved sermons filed in 3-ring binders according to text. Many of them are saved on my computer.

I confess that I have used the same sermon at times, but not often. I agree, if it is worth preaching once it is worth preaching again. I have even preached the same sermon twice in my present church where I have served for over 13 years. The funny part is that 98% of my people didn't know it...or at least didn't say anything about it. lol. I said "funny" but it may actually be sad.