94: Surviving the Highs and Lows of the High Holy Holidays

And just where did all the people go???

Let's chat honestly about the dip in attendance after the high holy holidays. One minute the throngs are there and the next... nada! Once those crowds disperse, reality sets in. One key reality is that we are only human. Proof: how our emotions deal with reality.

Give a listen!

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

Hey there, margie Bryce here bringing you the Krabby Pastor podcast, and I don't think you're going to be too surprised to know that it's too easy today to become the Krabby Pastor. Our time together will give you food for thought to help you be the ministry leader, fully surrendered to God's purposes and living into whatever it takes to get you there and keep you there. So we're talking about sustainability in ministry. Here's a question it's Saturday night and your message just isn't working the way you'd like. Well, what happens then? And I will say this a temptation is great just to swipe something online. I know of people or maybe I should say it like this I've heard of people who do that kind of thing. Now you can borrow that's borrow other people's thinking, as long as you say you are doing that. And yes, that means in your message as well.

Speaker 1: 1:22

So this episode is dedicated to what I'm calling the Advent Challenge, and I know you're thinking Good heavens, we just finished Easter. Will you just back off on this? Yeah, I'm sticking with it. I'm saying it's the Advent Challenge and we're going to talk about your sermon planning process, your sermon planning process. So you can borrow other people's thinking, right, as long as you say that's what you're doing in your message. But, on the other hand, I think it's tricky for people to listen to a sermon that is chock full of other people's ideas and I know this from grading papers where people I call it a quote collection. It's one quote after another and I say to them hey, hey, hey, I need to see your thinking here, I need to see you show up here and I'm going to get into that later, where I have been influenced by Dr Dan Boone and I'll say more about that in a minute. But if you go from Fred said to Alice, said to Lois, said to you know, throughout your sermon, it's too easy to lose the spine of your sermon. That's your one sentence, main idea that you want to get across, and you don't want it to get lost in a sea of other people's thinking. You don't want that to happen. So so there are lots of sermon services out there, from full manuscripts all the way to outlines. I am not advocating the use of someone else's manuscript whatsoever, really, I mean it. Just I would say that's a no, that is a no.

Speaker 1: 3:13

Now, one thing I did use and this was free, f R E E is Life Church. That was Craig Groeschel's open source. Well, it's resources. Actually there's lots of artwork there that I was always interested in and I was always interested in how they packaged sermon series. So you would have a three or four week series on something and I guess in some cases you can hear Craig preach the sermon. But I never did that, you know. I knew I would be too influenced by someone else's words and that would make me lazy to find my own words, I have to say that. So I I really was very cautious about it, but I was in it for the artwork. I think I said that already. But on occasion when a sermon series did fit, I would use an outline, but I would edit that to suit my own purposes and really make sure I made them mine. So the artwork there, as I have already said two times, is done for you and it's free because it's mainly the mega churches who have creative departments that do all of that kind of work for their churches. The average smaller church does not have that.

Speaker 1: 4:34

Although I will say this, I did ditch the church secretary notion at my church. At the last church I served at, you know, the phone barely rings in there. I would say that to people. They would say, oh, you have to have a secretary, the phone's going to ring, and I'd say you're welcome to come in here during the business day and sit here and listen for how many times the phone actually rings, because it barely rings, and when it does, it's quite often people who are trying to sell you stuff. So I opted instead for an administrative assistant with some graphic design experience, and that I felt was, and will be more useful for the church in the coming days.

Speaker 1: 5:17

But going back, the sermon, sermon services you know whatever you want to call that. You know if you're going to do that, you can get an outline and work from that. I would say a scant outline if you're going to do that. But I felt like, too, that what Dr Dan Boone provided for me and I believe he does I have that material in a book form. I can check that and put that in the show notes that sermon forms were actually much more useful than an outline. They sort of function the same way, but not exactly, so I'll say more about that in a second too. So the bottom line, though, with all of this kind of stuff, is what I learned from Dr Dan Boone, who taught preaching at Nazarene Theological Seminary and I sat under him two different times. His teaching was wonderful and now he's president at Treveka Nazarene University and, like I said, I'm sharing some of what I learned in his class and just other stuff I've learned from real life ministry leadership.

Speaker 1: 6:25

But here's the key the preacher has to show up in the sermon somewhere. You have to connect with your material in a verbal way, not just you know in your heart when you're preparing it, but you know you're going to say when I was little I struggled with this idea and when you do that in your sermon in some really important way, this is called incarnation. The gospel shows up in you as you deliver your sermon. So I would always ask myself where am I showing up here? Where am I showing up here? It's a point of connection that you're going to make within your sermon, so that, my friends, is a key part of why it is a dicey deal to ever use someone else's sermon, unless there's some crazy circumstances like you're preaching a funeral for a different pastor that couldn't make it and he said here, do this something, some crazy kind of thing like that. I would really steer away from that because you have to incarnate, you have to show up in your sermon, and that gives it a strong legitimacy as you're delivering it.

Speaker 1: 7:53

So I have to say this though I never encountered a Saturday night writing my sermons. I never did that. I knew I could not do that. I knew that if I did that I'd be super stressed and then basically my creativity would go down the toilet. And I also know this I write best in the morning. Some of that I learned from writing for marketing, communications processes, my business, where I did that and for journalism and all this kind of thing. So I knew a good deal about the writing process and some of that was just very helpful in sermon creation. However, I want to talk about your sermon prep process, and this goes into self-care because of how your mind works, and this will help make you not be crazy and that will help you not become the cravey pastor. So that is why I'm talking about this both sermon prep process, both on a weekly and, here you go, yearly basis.

Speaker 1: 9:09

I would begin writing my next sermon on Mondays. I took Fridays as my weekday sabbatical day, so I would preach on Sunday and then Monday. I would do a good share of the plopping ideas down at that point. Notice that I'm not saying I would begin praying about what my sermon should be about. So the about piece actually was already handled elsewhere. Okay, so what I'm doing on my Mondays would be to take out my Happy Excel spreadsheet that had the information about the theme and the angle that I was going at and probably the Bible verse. All of that was already filled out in the Happy Excel spreadsheet. So what I'm dealing with on Monday mornings is how I am going to deliver that message.

Speaker 1: 10:12

So, in just as a point of importance here I want to stress, the Happy Excel spreadsheet was also greatly appreciated by my music people, who then had the theme of the Sunday well ahead of time and they could, you know, have a heyday looking at what I was doing for weeks at a time and and look at the music and how they were going to approach music from that standpoint, as well as the tech people and anybody else that you felt needed that kind of thing. But the happy Excel spreadsheet came into existence because at least twice a year I would take three or so days to do nothing but work on the big picture of what my people needed to become better disciples of Jesus. Sometimes I would go off-site, you know I would more than likely go to the library or go to a coffee shop or go out of town or something, so that I did not have the day-to-day stuff Hitting me and I could just focus on the big picture of what my people needed to become better disciples of Jesus. And and I say twice a year because two times a year are the big events, right, christmas and Easter. I mean, you can always say your church has 52 events a year. They do.

Speaker 1: 11:36

Every Sunday is an event, but the two biggies are Christmas and Easter, and If you follow the Christian calendar as opposed to you know the Hallmark calendar Then you know that those Sundays are already blocked out. Okay, so you're gonna put put that in there. Now, if you're following an Adventish kind of approach, you know, maybe you light advent candles, or even if you don't, maybe there are some topics that are gonna help lead your people Towards Christmas and the same thing for after Christmas. Both of those high holidays Christmas and Easter have larger number of visitors and occasional Attenders there, and so the question is, what can you offer to them that might help them take the next steps with Jesus Through what your sermon content might be, either during, at the Christmas service or after, and and, and. Then you can say that at Christmas and next next month, we're gonna talk about how to build Godlike habits into our lives. So join us in January or something like that.

Speaker 1: 12:46

But it gives you the opportunity then, twice a year, to take the sermon prep time and look at your and you don't have to use a happy Excel spreadsheet. And if you want a copy of a blank happy Excel spreadsheet, you can always email me, connect with me through the website, that's, you can go to crabby pastor calm and find a way on my website to connect with me and Ask for that, and and we'll work that through. If, if you want a happy Excel spreadsheet but maybe Some other mechanism works for you, whatever works for you. So then this also works for the lectionary, because what you get for versus to work through Gee, I've heard of people using all four in a sermon, which I think that is. That's gotta be some kind of spiritual gift there. But typically you don't use all four, but maybe use one, two.

Speaker 1: 13:46

Ish, because there's still prep work that can be done to bring your sermons to life by using some time away to look at the passages and Look at what kind of themes and things need to be brought out to your people to help them become better disciples of Jesus. So, either way, then you get to the place of Monday or the first day that you work in after delivering your sermon and you can spend that day writing instead of scrounging for your next sermon idea or Praying rather white knuckled and frantically about your next sermon idea. Because even though you create a happy Excel spreadsheet and you take the time away, or you take your lectionary and you go, spend that time Looking for themes or topics within the lectionary that you're gonna bring out, you have the opportunity to really digest the scripture that you're going to use and Really think through some big picture things. When you take the opportunity of twice a year Looking at the calendar in that fashion You're preaching calendar is what you're going to create, if not a happy Excel spreadsheet that has it all there. So I would set aside my Monday mornings and I would look at what I was going to preach on, what the overarching theme was. Perhaps I was working through several weeks on a topic or or not, or just working through scripture, and then I would set that aside Monday morning After I was done working on it.

Speaker 1: 15:30

I wouldn't look at, look at it again until, say, tuesday, because this is writing process as you go over and over what you've done and refine it, it gets better and better and better, and you're always keeping your one sentence in front of you. This is the one thing I want people to get. This is the message, the message. And then you have to be brutal, brutal, brutal To remove any material that does not support what you were saying. And I will tell you, this can be hard to do sometimes, man. That's just a great illustration here. Oh, my goodness, I gotta use it. But you realize that it really doesn't exactly fit in your one sentence. Well, hey, save it for another time, you'd be surprised.

Speaker 1: 16:21

Eventually, I did get to use some really crazy stories that I had stashed and I just waited and waited and waited and eventually, eventually there will be and there will come the moment for you to get to use that. But so you have to keep that one sentence in front of you at all times. Anyway, I would work on the sermon every day a little bit, knowing that for me, thursday was my last chance to make changes, really because I took Fridays off, usually Thursday was the fun day because I got to put the icing on the cake. That's what I would tell myself and do the visual PowerPoint that went with the sermon and that was kind of like my reward for getting to that point because it was fun. I want to add in here I rarely used video and if I did, it had to really, really, really work well with the sermon.

Speaker 1: 17:16

It had to do an exceptional job. I rarely used words on a PowerPoint and if I did, it was maybe one or two words or a short sentence or a question, just short. But I relied heavily on still images to help tell the story. And I really believe that church needs to function at a different pace than the culture and I remember one visitor, slash friend came to church and he remarked about how church really relaxed him and think about how many times you get to just stop. But the average person gets to just stop for a minute, get off the hamster wheel of life and really think about what's most important in life. So I intentionally kept the pace slower and different than what you're going to see, say, on the news, where it's one video after another or anywhere else that has that kind of thing going.

Speaker 1: 18:16

So I slowed the pace a bit, but I tried to be creative when I wanted to say how casual church people view our church setting that we just bomb around here like it's no big deal. I actually found a picture of dogs with pajamas on and I said that it took me a long time to get this picture. Guys here, I hope you appreciate it, but I would just kind of. It was a time where I could add some lightness when I was talking about a heavy topic, I could contrast my picture with what I was saying. It was just a very creative moment for me. So I really enjoyed putting that together. So yeah, I was pretty much done by Thursday at the end of the day, but think of how many times I had already poured over it.

Speaker 1: 19:12

So you have the big picture sermon retreat thing where you establish what you're going to say and then by the time you get to your Monday, there's a lot of prep work the Monday, tuesday, wednesday, thursday stopping and spending an hour or two there, an hour or two here, an hour or two. That's a lot of prep work and a lot of time for me to connect with the material and have it register and put down roots deep in my heart and look at the flow of the material. I will also credit Dr Dan Boone here with the use of sermon forms, which really kind of set me free, because I had the big outline of what I was going to say firmly in my head and I can say more about that maybe in another podcast or maybe I'll get Dr Boone on an episode to talk to us. Wouldn't that be cool? I'll have to see if that can happen.

Speaker 1: 20:11

Anyway, the next time I engaged the sermon after Thursday at the end of the day was early Sunday morning. I would get up very early and go over the sermon one more time. I would look at my color coding. That I did and you know that might also be worthy of a podcast too, I think and I would transfer it then off my desktop onto my iPad. I know it's a, you know it wasn't very complicated, but when it was on my iPad then I could still go over it another time and actually draw with my finger on it. I would make stars or smiley faces or frowny faces or whatever I felt would be helpful to me. I don't know what kind of little hands-on learning thing that was. But again, this is more about me digesting the sermon again and again, and again.

Speaker 1: 21:09

So why do this? Why would you do this? Well, for one thing, brain science says that frantic and creativity do not function very well together, and so this kind of a process helps you to slow down. Knowing what you're going to preach about ahead of time, and then then, at the actual week before, working on how you're going to deliver that message, slows you down and helps your creativity to increase. So then, over the days of prep, you have leisure of visiting your message repeatedly and the ownership of it grows ownership in your head and ownership in your heart.

Speaker 1: 21:56

I want to leave this episode with the advent challenge, because I had somebody say to me in the summer I bet you already have your advent sermon planned, don't you? And I almost didn't want to say yes because of the way he said it to me, but I kind of went well, yeah, actually I do. I want to challenge you to start mulling over and scrounging around and looking for what kind of an advent either series, or what kind of a take you're going to give on your Christmas season sermons. So I will start with that kind of a challenge right now. Now, if you want to take the challenge of sitting down and planning, say, june or July through, let's say, july, july 1st through sometime in January, that's even a bigger deal, that would be an amazing thing. But let's start with this advent challenge, start thinking and praying about your emphasis and how you're going to help your people become better disciples of Jesus Christ.

Speaker 1: 23:04

And, as always, you know you can shoot me some information about that challenge and we can. We can unpack that more by going to KrabbyPastorcom and going to where the podcast is, the link to the podcast and there isa section. There where you can shoot me any kind of message that you would like about this, any kind of further question that you would like me to pick at. I'd be happy to do that for you and I've also be happy to hear any of your other challenges or burnout stories. Yeah, connect with me, will you, so I can make sure that what I'm doing and saying on here is not only helpful but it is becoming. It is becoming for you a resource so that you don't become the Krabby Pastor, and I already had one ministry leader say that to me. I was so excited, kind of it just made my whole day, she said I am. I am now becoming less Krabby or at least I look at it differently and think about it more because of this podcast, so that I felt like, well, I can just sit down and shut up now, although on the other hand, that just prodded me to say more about how to avoid becoming the Krabby Pastor Till next time.

Speaker 1: 24:25

This is Margie Bryce.

Speaker 1: 24:28

Hey friends, the Krabby Pastor podcast is sponsored by Bryce Art Glass and you can find that on Facebook.

Speaker 1: 24:37

I make stained glass.

Speaker 1: 24:39

That's part of my self-care and also by Bryce Coaching, where I coach ministry leaders and business leaders, and so the funds that I generate from coaching and from making stained glass is what is supporting this podcast, and I will have opportunities for you to be a part of sponsoring me and, as always, you can do the buy me a cup of coffee thing in the in the show notes. But I will have some other ways that you can be a part of getting the word out about the importance of healthy self-care for ministry leaders. Hey, thanks for listening. It is my deep desire and passion to champion issues of sustainability in ministry and for your life, so I'm here to help. I stepped back from pastoral ministry and I feel called to help ministry leaders create and cultivate sustainability in their lives so that they can go the distance with God and whatever plans that God has for you. I would love to help, I would consider it an honor and in all things, make sure you connect to these sustainability practices you know, so that you don't become the Krabby pastor.