Creativity in the Moment

When I first started preaching, I would write out a manuscript every week. I would carefully figure out how I wanted to say things, I would tweak a phrase just right and it would be a finely crafted sermon. Then I was appointed as an associate pastor for 2/3 of my appointment working with Cole. Now, I was fresh out of seminary and about a foot and a half shorter than Cole. Well, Cole never used even a note, much less a manuscript when he preached. He would walk out of the pulpit and just start preaching. It quickly became clear to me, that if I wanted to even hold my own with that congregation, I was going to have to preach without notes. So that's what I started doing. Truth be told, I have a bit of a competitive streak that got tapped into. The surprising thing for me, is that I found preaching without notes enabled me to connect more fully with the congregation. For years now, this is how I have preached -- doing all the preparation ahead, letting it incubate and then on Sunday morning, preaching. Recently in reflecting on the process of preaching and how I go about this weekly task, I realized that this way of preaching takes the creative aspect of preaching right into the worship time and moment. When I prepared a manuscript for a sermon, the creative aspect of preaching happened when I was alone with pen and paper or keyboard and screen and what I did in worship was a presentation of something that had been created earlier. When I preach without notes, the creative moment and presentation moment and the hearing moment are all one and the same. The congregation becomes the context where the sermon creation takes place. So, I do not have files of old sermons to pull out and present again. Each sermon is an "in the moment" experience. It means that each sermon is a fleeting thing -- a creation for a particular time and place. Sometimes I feel a tinge of regret that I do not have a written record of this life's work, but most times I feel a certain sense of contentment and appropriateness that each sermon is for a moment -- created in worship and set free.