As we “seed” the sermon, we see week-by-week how the creative act is finally not ours at all. Though we can do our level best to prepare the soil, the words and thoughts and ideas take root and bear fruit according to gracious forces well beyond our control.
Those fifteen minutes in the pulpit are a labor of love on behalf of God’s people. You are trying to cook up something that will satisfy, if not delight, and not just homiletic milkshakes but solid, Scriptural steaks.
In the pulpit a preacher who is making eye contact, preaching by heart, speaking “to” you and not merely “at” you, you feel like you can trust this guide.
The castaway senses he needs something more. And what he needs more, much more, than mere help with acclimating himself to life on the island is a message which transcends the island.
Too often sermons are like treadmills: Lots of work that takes us nowhere. Better for your sermon to be like an escalator: Move your people onward and upward in faith.