I love crock pot cooking. I love everything about it. But what I love most is that the gorgeous smell of whatever is cooking wafts through the house all day long. The anticipation is almost as good as the meal.

The sermons I have most enjoyed preaching have been in the crock pot for a long time. I can think of two in particular that slow cooked for six months. They may not have been my “best” sermons (Who decides?), but they were a delight to serve. One was on Matthew 25 (sheep and goats) and one was on Mark 14:51-52 (the naked guy).

When my sermons are in the crock pot for an extended period of time, they also have a longer time to work on me. Perhaps this is the greatest gift of all, that I find myself dwelling in the Word in different ways.

For me it’s the different between a taskmaster demanding that I produce an oil painting a week (though this artist does, and does it well) and having time to return to a canvas over and over again for several weeks.

Which is to say: January 1 is a great time to begin thinking about your Holy Week sermons. But have no fear: right now is a great time to think about your late April and Pentecost sermons.

What are your processes and practices to let your sermons cook slowly over an extended period of time?

Here are some of mine:

  1. Look ahead. If you use a lectionary to preach, there is no good reason why you can’t sketch out at least some ideas for the next six to eight weeks. If you craft your sermons based on a theme or a series, apply the same logic.
  2. Write it down. I don’t care if you use a legal pad, a Moleskine notebook, Evernote or a word processing document (Preachers tend to obsess about tools.), but open eight of them and begin taking notes, then return and add more notes.
  3. Dwell in the word. Let prayer do its wonderful work (on you). Read these texts with your homebound members. Talk about them when you are home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise (Deuteronomy  6:7).
  4. Memorize one verse from each text. Put it on a notecard. Allow it to be a touchstone for entering the text whenever you have some free time.
  5. Open your eyes. When you have the aroma of the text permeating the house of your mind and heart, you might just see things in the world in the new way. That looks like the Gospel! That smells like grace! That thing I just saw captured what Jesus says beautifully. Crock pot preaching, over time, invites us into a heightened awareness of the present moment.

Action step: Write down the probable preaching texts for your next eight sermons. Read each of the texts. Write down one idea for each text. 

“For we have this treasure in crock pots…” (2 Corinthians 4:7 alt.), with apologies to St. Paul.