A sermon is a divinely authorized announcement of God’s truth. It is a proclamation of the great history of redemption as much as it is the transmission of data. … If a term paper fails to meet its goals it might result in a poor grade or a re-write. If a sermon fails to do its job (to announce the bad news and the good news) there is much more at stake.

Time was that church historians also taught church polity and what is sometimes called pastoral theology. This was, I suppose, because we used to recognize that the study of the history of the practice of the church gives a certain insight into how ministry should be conducted.

I mention this to apologize (i.e., defend) the propriety of historian-pastor (or pastor-historian) to give advice to young preachers. By “young” I mean seminary students or those just out of seminary. This is a talk I’ve given informally to many students individually and it seems like a good idea to write it down—before I forget it.

I. A Sermon Is Not A Term Paper

Seminary students spend proportionally more time writing term papers than sermons. As a result, sermons can become term papers especially if one is writing a sermon manuscript (see below). It is difficult to shift audiences and modes of communication. The audience for a term paper is professors and perhaps other students. Academic writing can be dense and full of technical code in order to save time and space. Good preaching is neither of those.

There are similarities between a sermon and a term paper, however. Like a term paper, a sermon involves learning new stuff. Like a term paper, a sermon has a central, organizing thesis. Like a term paper, a sermon is making a case for something. Students (and recent grads) should transfer those skills to the sermon but they need to take an additional step or two.

You need to recognize that writing a term paper, as it were, is the first step of writing a sermon. The research behind this “term paper,” however, might result in multiple sermons (see below). Further, the audience for a sermon is much more diverse than the audience for a term paper. A congregation is composed of 8-year olds and 80-year olds and the preacher has to announce God’s good news to all of them, at the same time, in the same sermon. Thus, a sermon is a much more complex act of communication than a term paper. Where a term paper might use code to save time, a sermon must explain almost everything.

A sermon is a divinely authorized announcement of God’s truth. It is a proclamation of the great history of redemption as much as it is the transmission of data. A term paper doesn’t necessarily have to distinguish law and gospel but if your sermon doesn’t, then your it is a failure. A sermon must capture the attention, inform, illustrate, persuade, and exhort. The preacher has a much bigger job before him. If a term paper fails to meet its goals it might result in a poor grade or a re-write. If a sermon fails to do its job (to announce the bad news and the good news) there is much more at stake.
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