Pastors: Don’t panic, but Advent season is just around the corner. If you aren’t quite ready for the extra amount of preaching, services, lesson plans, etc. that come with this time of year, fear not… Sunday Sermon has some valuable tools to help.
“The Holidays especially are exceptionally busy times. You have extra services, extra family commitments, extra everything. You want to get out and see all those shut-ins before Christmas, and it never fails that someone heads into the hospital. Sunday Sermon gives you a head start on your sermon writing,” noted Rev. Phil Brandt, who authors the website. “With all that going on in the background of your life, you can come to some dedicated sermon writing time and just be blank. You stare at the text and have no idea what to say. Sunday Sermon can get you some starter ideas which will let you write a sermon.”
Sunday Sermon originally began as a partnership between LAP/Mission Training Center, the Northwest District, and Concordia University, Portland. For more than a decade, it has supported preachers in the task of writing and proclaiming Scripturally-based sermons (LSB pericope) which seek to bring the Good News of Jesus to the people whom He has led to worship.
“Sunday Sermon really is designed to serve the Church,” Brandt said. “All the archived materials are free to anyone to use. Because the website costs a little money to maintain and produce, I have a subscription for the new materials, but if you just want to try it out for a while, navigate to the archive and see what is there. It is all free to you, including the devotions.”
Sunday Sermon is a great place to go when you want something that quickly inspires your writing; you can also trust that the content is rooted in scripture. Brandt said the commentary and sermon development on the Sunday readings have been popular features of the website, as well as the daily devotional that pastors sometimes cut and paste into emails for their congregations. Around 500 pastors from across the District and the United States (and several international as well) use Sunday Sermon.
It’s also important to note that Sunday Sermon does not offer sermons to preach; you still have to preach your own sermon. But it will help you write the best sermon you can. And this could be a key help during the very busy Advent season.
“Advent really is a moment for a new beginning. If you are preaching out of the three-year cycle of readings, we will start on Matthew again,” Brandt said. “What I have done throughout the year is tied together many of the themes of this wonderful account of our Lord’s life, passion, death, and resurrection. Matthew often is constructing wonderful messages of hope and peace for the hearer over long passages which are chopped up by the pericope system. Sunday Sermon will allow you to tie these together for the blessing of your hearers.”
See more at sunday-sermon.com.
