Playoff Fever

It is playoff time in the NFL and so naturally my thoughts tend to be influenced by that. Yesterday morning however my thoughts were much more focused on my sermon and how it just did not feel like a good one. One of the first things I learned in seminary is that no matter how good or bad a sermon is, you can never know if it is going to make a big difference or not for people. That is not to say that as a pastor I do not strive to preach the best sermon I can, but I do so knowing that there are a lot of factors outside of my control (thank goodness).

Some of what made it hard for me was that my sermon was basically the first thing I did after coming back from vacation and so it did not get the full week of attention a sermon usually does. The bottom line is that it was easy to come up with excuses for why this would be an off week, but it raised the question in my mind, is it ok for a pastor to have an off week? Is it really possible to avoid it? Which brings me back to the playoffs and football. Football, like preaching has one big day, Sunday, with everything else as prep leading up to it. Football has a lot of regular season games that lead up to the playoffs. Each of these games on their own means less but combined determine a teams fate, will they make the playoffs or not. For this reason coaches often talk about the one game at a time strategy, getting their players focused and ready to play each and every game, never looking to the next week, approaching each game with the same level of passion and intensity. I feel like preaching is similar. Each week is not likely to make or break a church, though I was reminded this week by my relatives that a bad sermon really can set the wrong tone. Also in preaching there are some obvious "playoff" games, things like baptisms, confirmation, Christmas, and Easter, times where you have lots of people and often more unaffliated people than usual in the congregetion. These are really the sermons you want to come out strong on. I guess my real question is can a team, or a preacher really keep the one game at a time, every sermon is a playoff sermon, mentality up or does the mind simply adjust and still takes those less important games/sermons in a different way than the really big ones? I was hearing on the radio today about how we build up tolerances to drugs, can we do the same to that playoff style pressure, so that eventually we are just as lax as we used to be, despite our best efforts.

Maybe there is that other question, should every sermon be preached like it is a Christmas sermon? I was taught in fencing to always lunge at about 80% of my maxium range, so that I could lunge further if needed. Should I be preaching at 80% so I can preach better if needed? Does preaching at less than 100% do the congregation a disservice or does it keep me from burnout and from my 100% being closer to what was once 80%. Just some thoughts.