I preached a bad sermon. I don’t really know what went wrong. I put in the work, the prayer, the preparation. I had the notes. I was eager to preach. Everything seemed fine until the moment the words started falling out of my mouth. And, almost immediately, I knew it was not good.
If you preach, it happens. Hopefully it is rare, but you are going to preach a bad sermon. If you are a young preacher, you are going to preach a lot of bad sermons, you just won’t realize they are bad until you look back on them in ten years.
Now, if you have sat through one of my bad sermons, it may not have even seemed bad to you–God has a wonderful way of working in spite of the preacher. He did after all, speak through a donkey one time. Some of you reading this have attended one of my bad sermons and have really encouraged me about the sermon.
I am grateful that the message reached you, or someone else. I am confident in God’ sovereign control, but a bad sermon just feels bad. You launch into the introduction and realize that you have stepped into quicksand and you spend the next 20-30 minutes trying to get out. You wrestle with your points, your notes seem to be dead, and the message feels flat. After the sermon, you feel like you have been in a fight, and not the kind of fight where you won. A bad sermon feels like losing a fight. It is physically and emotionally exhausting. It is depressing and frustrating and infuriating, all at the same time.
For a preacher, a bad sermon is often subjective–it just feels bad. Sometimes it is spiritual warfare. I preached a sermon once that resulted in a flooded altar and public repentance of sin, and afterward I hid in my office and cried. That sermon felt bad, but it wasn’t bad. My feelings were wrong and were the result of spiritual warfare.
Of course, sometimes a sermon is objectively bad–I heard of a guy who preached a funeral sermon and called the deceased the wrong name the entire service. A former pastor in my church preached a sermon in which he made several references to flip-flops, but instead of flip-flops he called them thongs for the entire service.
Regardless of whether your sermon was subjectively bad or objectively bad, here are a few things to keep in mind:
- Don’t quit. Just because you had a bad day, or a bad message does not mean you should throw in the towel. If God has called you to preach, keep preaching.
- It probably wasn’t as bad as you think. In all seriousness, most of the sermons that “feel bad” to me are not really that bad. Our staff critiques sermons every Monday. I rarely walk in after a bad sermon and have them tell me it was bad. It is usually in my head. Just yesterday, I was frustrated with my sermon, but a friend said, “That was a home run. I needed it.”
- Pay attention. If it felt bad, it may be that those bad feelings are there for a reason. Did you put in the work? Did you pray? Do you have hidden sin? Before you dismiss all your negative feelings, make sure that those feelings are not rooted in something else that you need to deal with. Use the bad feelings as a good reason to pray and ask God to show you the truth.
- Remember to be humble. One of the greatest things “bad sermons” do for me is to remind me how fallible I am. Preachers often have their egos stroked. People tell you how great the message was and how much they needed to hear it. Preaching a bad sermon keeps us grounded. Don’t preach a bad one on purpose, but use that bad sermon to remind you that you are a normal person.
- Don’t take it out on your family. After I preach, I go home. When the sermon goes bad, I’m tempted to be in a really bad mood and take that out on everyone else. Don’t do that. Go for a walk. Take a nap. Better yet, be honest with your family. Tell them that you are disappointed in the way you preached. They need to see that humility in your life and they need to know that dad can mess up too.
- Rest in God’s sovereignty. I have great news. God doesn’t need you. He can (and often will) work despite you and me. When all is said and done, just rest. Trust in the Lord. Pray for his hand to work and know that his Word will not return void.
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