Reading Improves Creativity

The delivery of a sermon hails as the most important thirty minutes in the preacher's and listener's life. Why? Because what is said as Gospel and shared as Good News about Christ has the power to change both the preacher and the listener. Dull preaching trivializes these precious thirty minutes. Uninspired preaching accounts for no more than a political speech urging voters to get out and vote for a candidate who will do nothing in the next four years.

Sharing Christ through preaching demands urgency and creativity. Reading improves creativity. The preacher's narrow world involves interests: the William Carey story on missions; the quips of Charles Spurgeon; the commitment of Jim Elliot; the intellect of John Calvin; baptism stories of the reformation; the sacrifice and faith of George Mueller; the salvation experience of Billy Graham and how he learned to preach by talking to the trees.

The stories interest preachers, but seldom interest a hearer who struggles with getting the laundry done or the dishes washed or the bills paid on time or the kids off to college. Life's little things, even simple things become the fodder for making preaching come alive.

Think of Jesus. He spoke of landowners and lamps out of oil and fig trees and destitute stragglers beside the road and bearing fruit and borrowing bread and lights illuminating cities on a hill.

Reading spotlights the world people live in. The characterization of novels reminds the preacher and hearer of someone they know. Fiction illustrates personality. Reading what your congregation reads steals boredom and delivers life. Heads turn. Eyes open. People sit up and take notice. All the while, you keep telling the Gospel story amid the stories of life.

Creativity may be the single defining factor of interesting preaching. Interest heightens listening. Uninteresting sermons fall flat. Strangely, though, the preacher who works at creativity rarely becomes creative. The preacher who reads leisurely and in a wide variety almost always comes up with creative ideas that both instruct and apply the sermon.

I subscribe to a different magazine each year. I subscribe in an effort to broaden my general knowledge of different topics. One year I subscribed to Consumer Reports. Another year I subscribed to Popular Mechanics. This year my choice is Prevention. I am finding out that sickness and the prevention of sickness is on people's minds as well as being very big business. If for nothing else, reading these magazines lets me know what interests the congregants.

Every weekend I look at the New York Times best seller reading list. Granted, most of what's there isn't for me, but I'm amazed at the variety of authors, interests, and styles. I attempt, with discretion of course, to read a book from that list periodically.

I always travel through the children's section at bookstores. A Dr. Seuss book or another children's book assists my creativity. It helps me to know that I am not only preaching to adults but children as well. A good quote from a children's book always involves the whole congregation because parents know what their children read.