5. You neglect community.
One rut I found myself in was my prep time increased to an unreasonable level, and to compensate for this, my sleep time decreased. As a result, whenever we’d have people over or visit with others, I’d be losing focus, dreaming of sleep, and not paying real good attention to people’s needs.
Not only does this rob others of fellowship with their brother and pastor, but it sets a lousy example to my wife, kids, and church. And frankly, I need community. I need to hear fresh stories of God’s triumphant grace over sin, I need to hear how prayer is answered, and I need to hear of people’s struggles. I need to hear stories of how people can’t housebreak their dog, I need to hear stories of workplace conflict, and I need to hear stories about visits to Mom and Dad’s house.
This is the sharing of life together. Sadly, my preaching idol was blocking my view of this.
Conclusion
I know someone is going to ask how many hours I was spending in my sermon prep. The time is not the big issue—it is the imbalance. In my view, I was not effectively doing these other items because of my emphasis on preaching. If you must know the time, it was between 20-30 hours a week in sermon prep. I am now down to about 10-15, and it has helped in so far as it has also allowed me to focus on these items above (and some other things).
Pastors have a huge weekly burden; every week, we walk up to the pulpit, and that 168-hour clock starts ticking down again. There is work to be done. At the same time, there is more to it than that. The pastoral ministry was more than just a sermon each week. It was an idolatry of preaching that was preventing me from seeing it.
