A few weeks ago, it was a Saturday evening around dinner time when I received a text message from my Lead Pastor. In his text, he said, “Hey, I’m not feeling well. I might need you to preach tomorrow. I’ll touch base with you first thing in the morning.” And, at 6:00 am, he called me to confirm that he was indeed sick and needed me to preach. So, with very short notice, I found myself on stage delivering God’s word to our people.
Now, to be clear, I love to preach… but I also love to be prepared. I don’t ever walk onto our stage without being fully prepared (whether it’s for a sermon, a business meeting, or even doing the announcements). For many people, receiving a text like that with less than 24 hours to prepare would cause major stress. But that was not the case for me. I prepared for this moment years ago, and all I had to do was execute my plan.
When I joined our team as the new Executive Pastor in 2018, one of the first things I did was I asked all of our pastors to prepare an Emergency Sermon. I told them, “The day is going to come when our Lead Pastor is going to get sick on a Saturday night or a Sunday morning, and one of us will be asked to fill in at the last minute. When (not if…) that day comes, we need to be prepared.” Simply put, I believe that all pastors should have at least one bullet in their preaching gun at all times.
So, all of the pastors on our team prepared their Emergency Sermons. Everything is ready, from the sermon, to the sermon outline with the fill-in-the-blanks, to even the artwork for ProPresenter. It’s all ready to go. That way, when someone is asked to fill in at the last minute, we can have confidence that everything is ready to go for a wonderful Sunday morning of worship.
If you and your team haven’t prepared your Emergency Sermons yet, let me encourage you to do so. I promise, you will be grateful you did.
