To complicate the problem further, most churches are small, understaffed entities of one or two. How does a small church with a solo pastor and a part-time assistant begin to find resources to "produce" a sermon every week? Most pastors have attended conferences in which they see the fabulous way the message is enhanced by a staff of twenty and by multimedia equipment. When they return home, they are faced with their own reality: a pastor, an assistant, and not a whit of the latest technical support. Discouragement is common after attending such events.
There is an answer! Creative, multifaceted sermons can happen without extravagant resourcing! It takes more creativity and more "outside-the-box" thinking, but it can happen in a small church. This book is intended to stir your own creative juices within the boundaries of your own reality and to remind you that everything does not boil down to finances! God made us as creative beings! So as you read the outlines of sermon ideas, let your imagination flow, use whatever bits and pieces you need from this book, and build upon the creativity that has been offered to you in these pages.
I am admittedly a novice in the areas of pastoring, sermonizing, and creative arts. But being a novice has its advantages. After all, novices are more willing to risk failure. Find your areas of newness, tap into the Creative Genius of All-Time, and have the fun of your life!
Happy storytelling!
CHAPTER ONE
CREATIVE SERMONS
JEREMIAH: THE CREATIVE PROPHET
Creative sermons are not new. In fact, they are as old as they come! It started with creativity in worship (something we must also learn from, btw!). In Genesis we see the first musician, Jubal, who is the ancestor of all who play the harp and the flute (see Gen. 4:21). The artistry of the Ark of the Covenant and the Tabernacle, and the craftwork of Bezalel and Oholiab, is described in great detail in Exodus 25-31. King David brought music and dance to the people, bringing the soul's language to the forefront of worship. Solomon worshiped in the creations of fabulous architecture. Isaiah used vivid imagery to get his message across (e.g., in Isaiah 31:5, God is compared to an angry bird). And Jeremiah brought it all together to become "The Creative Prophet." (Most remember him as "The Weeping Prophet" but there's more to old Jeremiah than that!)
Jeremiah, if we really look at him, was a rather outrageous fellow. A priest and a prophet in Judah, he spoke to five kings of his day (Josiah, Jehoahaz, Jehoiakim, Jehoiachin, and Zedekiah) and three different empires (Judah, Babylon, and Egypt). He was an emotional guy, not holding back on the feelings that come when living for God. He spoke messages of hope for transformation from the doom and gloom, wishing God would occasionally give him a kinder message. It was the doom and gloom that got him in trouble. He made many enemies because of his harsh words. He was thrown in prison many times, taken to a foreign country against his will, and probably died in Egypt, far from his beloved homeland. He was a writer who used prose, poetry, parable, lament, biography, and history. The Hebrew title for the book of Lamentations is "How," which is a guttural cry of grief. 1
Against that backdrop, I want to point out how creative Jeremiah was in getting across the awful and wonderful messages of his day. He describes the terror from the north as a "boiling pot," ready to boil over in anger (Jer. 1:13-16). He sees Israel following after other gods and says, "You are like a restless female camel, desperate for a male! You are like a wild donkey, sniffing the wind at mating time" (Jer. 2:23b-24a). He moves on to more concrete metaphors when he illustrates how Judah's pride affects their relationship to God by burying a linen belt in the Euphrates River. When the belt was dug up, it was mildewed, falling apart, and really useless (Jer. 13:1-14). He is taken down to the potter's house, and God speaks to him through the work of the potter (Jer. 18:1-10). He smashes a clay jar at the Potsherd Gate to illustrate how the people would be shattered by their sin (Jer. 19). In chapter 24, Jeremiah describes a vision of how God would deal with the good and the bad in the same way we deal with good figs (useful to feed and well received) and bad figs (rotten and rejected). He gives a message of submission to the rule of the Babylonians (Jer. 27-28) by living his life while wearing an ox yoke (some heavy babies for sure!). Jeremiah buys a piece of land, obtains the deed of purchase, and hands it to Baruch in the presence of the people, asking that he keep it in a pottery jar where it will be well preserved. This is the message of hope that God will someday bring the people back from Babylon to the place where they can buy and sell property, houses, and vineyards in their own land (Jer. 32). And at Tahpanhes, Jeremiah gathers together the people and buries large stones between the rocks at the entrance to Pharaoh's palace as a concrete description of the way God would let the Babylonians have control over Egypt (Jer. 43:8-13).2
Jeremiah had a message to tell, and he wanted it to be so memorable and vivid that the people would hear it and be transformed. He wanted the words to change hearts and ways so that the people would return to God. And that is our place in history. We have a message to tell, but not many are listening. Perhaps one part of our problem is that we are not memorable enough.
It was Jeremiah's passion for the lost people of his tribe that brought him to a place of willingness to be used by God in these unusual ways. And it is our passion for the lost of our communities that causes us to look at the delivery forms of our message.
GOD THE CREATOR
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So God created people in his own image; God patterned them
after himself; male and female he created them (Gen. 1:27).
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We were created in God's image, in the image of The Creator of the Universe. It boggles my mind to think that I was created in God's image, but the part that is most amazing is that I was created to be creative. When I was a young girl, I used to think that I was the one in the family that missed out on the creative genes. My mom could write and recite poetry and stories, my dad could fix anything out of nothing, and I had sisters that could paint and dance and brothers that could write and make things work. But I couldn't see my own creativity. So when I began to look at doing sermons creatively, I felt out of my league. I tell you this only to present you with the idea that you are creative even if you don't know that about yourself yet. After all, you were made in the image of the Creator! You might have to do some digging to find the ways you can be creative, but I can assure you that you won't have to dig far. It might be just below the surface of your selfunderstanding.
Look at what our Creator God did! God made the universe and the stars and set the planets in motion and timed things according to the moon's cycle. God put a whole bunch of water in the boundaries of sand and gave it a back and forth motion. God made a world where raindrops have