In Genesis 15, the story is told of when God took Abram outside and showed him the stars. He said, “Look up at the sky and count the stars—if indeed you can count them.” Then he said to him, ‘So shall your offspring be.’ Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness” (Genesis 15:5-6). From that moment on, Abram carried a vision for what could be, and he was given the responsibility for casting that vision among his people so a community would begin to form around that God-given vision.
What an incredible calling, to so bear a message and to be faithful in carrying it forward, that over time the world is changed by it. Abram’s faithfulness to that vision is our inheritance. We know the one, true God today because Abram caught a vision and stepped out on a promise.
We who accept the prophetic task of preaching have Abram’s spiritual DNA coursing through our veins. It is as if God takes us outside and shows us the stars and dares us to write that big — to dream dreams and see visions and proclaim potential. And we who are called to the prophetic task are challenged to carry this discipline with honor and humility.
I am convinced that all good preaching begins right here, with learning to listen for the voice of God and catch his vision. That’s the foundation. Once that foundation is laid, we build upon it to fulfill Jesus’s commission to make disciples by teaching them all he has given us.
In the most practical terms, what does this look like? My process begins with a theme for the year (side note: I am not currently serving a local church, but I am writing this in the present tense for clarity’s sake … and because I’m still preaching every week somewhere). Around September, I begin to focus on the word God has for the year ahead. I listen for the Spirit’s voice and spend time journaling and paying attention to recurring themes around me. This is my way of “looking up at the sky and counting the stars.” What does God want to say to this people in this moment? As I listen for the voice of God, I trust him to give me the prophetic word for the people in my spiritual care.
Once I receive that word from the Lord, I listen for how it should be taught and preached.I listen to the voice of the Holy Spirit for themes and scriptures. I listen heavily to the scripture. I also listen to the team that will preach with me during the year, and to the other leaders in our community. And I listen to the larger community. What are the felt needs? Tod Bolsinger asks two crucial questions in his book, Invest in Transformation, that resonate with me in this process: What is the pain point? And what is ours to do? A third question is a great litmus test: The world needs this message … for what?
Let me be clear. I do not advocate for starting a preached word from the felt needs of people. I am committed to “Kingdom-down preaching,” not “people up.” But I do believe the preached word requires the preacher to get his heart broken for what breaks the heart of God. As my own pastor has said, Daniel mourned before he spoke. Nehemiah cried for the souls of his people before he cast a vision. That’s a good pattern to follow.
Listening in this way, a preaching plan emerges for the year ahead. I have always made it a practice to plan for the whole year before it begins. By the middle of December, I usually have in one document at least the series titles, scriptures, a thumbnail summary for each series, and the focus for the year ahead. The first week of January, I share a message about the word God has given us to focus on. By the middle of January, we’ve scheduled our preachers for the year (I use both lay and clergy on our preaching team; we operate according to gifts and call, not paycheck!). Because we have a plan in place, changes during the year aren’t stressful. We remain flexible and continue to listen for the Spirit, recognizing that this is more of a conversation than a test we have to ace.
I have always been a series preacher rather than a lectionary preacher, but I’m convinced these principles can work with either option if we are open to the leading of the Spirit. Our series are anywhere from three to eight weeks long and are a mix of books of the Bible and topical series. I usually start the year with a couple of four-week series, then build a series around the season heading toward Easter. After Easter, another series before summer. We typically spend our summer in one book of the Bible, or sometimes just one chapter. The fall will be patterned similarly. I’m not good at themes like parenting or “five steps to a better you,” but I’ve discovered that if I do a series on the minor prophets, parenting will show up. There is a dance to this kind of planning — a flexibility and a listening and a timing — as we let the Holy Spirit teach us what these themes mean and how they speak to the felt needs of our people.
I am jealous of those who can write messages weeks in advance. I do not have that gift. What I usually give to each message prior to getting to the week that it is preached is a scripture to focus on and a title (I give that to our worship team well in advance). On Monday of the week I will preach a message, I start reading. I always begin with the scripture, reading whole sections aloud (bigger chunks than what I’m preaching on) so I can hear it the way a first-century audience was hearing it. I make a lot of notes in the margins of my Bible and circle words that stand out. By the time I’m done, I usually hear the theme and know the direction to take.
Once I have a sense of the message I must decide how to preach it. When a message has one very clear word, I tend to craft it like I’m looking at facets of a diamond. It is the same diamond, but every angle gives a unique perspective. This is my approach to prophetic (or visionary) preaching (and this, by the way, is my favorite kind of message to preach). I think of prophetic preaching as “counting the stars.” It is looking for where God is at work so we can join him. Thinking bigger than ourselves.
A teaching sermon is different. It usually has points and a practical application and is often designed for the concrete thinkers in the room. When the topic is contemporary, it is my least favorite message to preach but the easiest to write. When the topic is theological it is the most challenging, but also very rewarding. Messages that teach or clarify theology are an important part of shaping the community so they are necessary. We need to roll up our sleeves and teach the theology of our tribe.
A pastoral word is for the people in the room dealing with something specific to that community. Those words rise up out of the moment and out of the scripture and have a very personal and encouraging tone. They are from the heart of God to the heart of the people, to comfort or care for them or help them make sense of things.
Once I have discerned the way this message should be preached, I do the exegetical work. I read commentaries, listen to other people’s sermons, comb through the scripture, do word studies, ask questions of the Word. I write a full manuscript for every message — 3200-3500 words. I have never been gifted at preaching without notes. I’ve tried it over the years and have had some limited success but I’ve come to terms with the fact that God works with each of us as he sees fit. With me, he seems to prefer a manuscript.
The whole time I’m doing all this work, I’m listening and praying for the voice of God. What does the Spirit of the Lord have to say to His Church? The world needs this message … for what? Every message preached in the name of Jesus Christ ought to carry us to the cross and assure us of the empty tomb. There is no passage in the Bible that doesn’t point to the work of Christ. Likewise, there is no message that ought not focus on the Word, take us to the cross, and stand us up at the resurrection.
I want to tell you about two sacramental things I do every single time I preach. Before I preach, I always wash my feet and repeat the line, “Blessed are the feet of one who brings good news.” And just before the worship service, I wash my hands and pray, “Lord, give me clean hands and a pure heart.” Those are two very personal things I do to remind myself that I am a priest and when I stand to speak, I do so incarnationally, as an agent of Christ. I am not my own. I have been bought with a price, and I owe everything to Jesus. Consecrating my work in these tangible ways helps me to approach the work with a right spirit.
We don’t make the stars … we just get to count them. As it turns out, the world needs more people who know the value of counting stars. Not just good wordsmiths or clever marketers of “big church” ideas but visionaries, prophets, those who can count the stars and see what God sees. Because all around us God is doing things. Someone has famously said, in fact, that “God is always doing 10,000 things in your life, and you may be aware of three of them.” Prophetic preaching operates on the theory that this is actually true, and that we can know (and share) far more than a handful of what God is doing if we will only learn to see the stars as more than just … stars.
A. W. Tozer writes this:
“If Christianity is to receive a rejuvenation … there must appear a new type of preacher. The proper, ruler-of-the-synagogue type will never do. Neither will the priestly type of man [or woman] who carries out his duties, takes his pay and asks no questions, nor the smooth-talking pastoral type who knows how to make the Christian religion acceptable to everyone. … Another kind of religious leader must arise among us. He must be … a man [or woman] who has seen visions of God and has heard a voice from the Throne. … This is only to say that we need to have the gifts of the Spirit restored again to the Church. And it is my belief that the one gift we need most now is the gift of prophecy.”
What work could be more profound, more fulfilling, more honorable, than the holy practice of speaking prophetically, casting God’s vision for a preferred future? To count the stars and believe God for what he can do among us? Every time we do that work, we step into that abundant stream that flows through our fathers’ faith, through Jesus himself, through this generation and on into the next as it heads toward the realization of the Kingdom of God on earth.
