This is the on preaching podcast with H.B. Charles Jr.

The podcast dedicated to helping you preach faithfully, clearly, and better.

Good day and thanks for listening to the podcast.

In this episode, I want to talk about overcoming sermon writers block.

You know what writers block is, don't you?

You've heard of composers, artists, or authors who suffer or struggle with writers' block.

It's the struggle to get the work going or make progress in the work or to complete the work.

It can happen to preachers too. There is a sense in which the production of sermons

week in and week out is a creative process. And the same struggles that authors, composers,

et cetera, go through, preachers can find themselves facing as well, except ours has the

added dimension of having spiritual implications to our pulpit work. We can struggle with sermon writers block in several ways.

We can struggle to prepare the text. This is not a suggestion that questions the perpiscuity of Scripture, nor am I talking about being

confused about what your doctrinal or theological positions are. But there are just times where

you can find that a text is a hard nut to crack. You find yourself struggling to work through what the author is saying

in the text or what the author is doing in the text. So you may be able to, may find yourself

that is struggling with getting, with getting your arms

around the content of the passage or struggling to get your arms around the meaning of the

passage. All of that to say that you can struggle in interpreting the text. You can also

struggle in crafting the message, which is totally different

from interpreting the text. That by itself is its own assignment. The word work is its own labor.

But just because you have rightly understood the text doesn't mean that you are ready to preach.

The exegetical material and the theological reflection must turn into a God-given message.

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