For reasons that were absolutely nobody’s fault, I ended up preaching an impromptu sermon yesterday. I had to channel my former Brethren, or work up a latent Gospel Standard, stand before the church and preach a passage I had not prepared to preach. I suspect (in fact, I know) I am not the first person called upon to do this. I strongly suspect I won’t be the last either.

If you are, by nature, a planner and you tend to preach (as I do) from more fulsome notes, it is not a comfortable experience. The extempore sermon is not my preferred mode of delivery and is not one I recommend to anyone else. Nevertheless, needs must and all that. So, what do you do when it becomes apparent, fairly late in the day and with little time to do much about it, that you will be preaching? Here, in no particular order, are some things.

Pray

Of course, you pray before every sermon – even the ones you have well prepped. You would never get so comfortable with your mode of preparation and delivery that you sometimes just don’t bother praying. I, I admit, am clearly not so godly. I sometimes don’t pray as I ought over my sermon prep and delivery. But you can bet your bottom dollar I was praying when that need for an extempore sermon reared its head! It may not have done much for anyone else, but you can be sure it gave me a bit of a kick up the backside so far as my pre-sermon prayer preparation goes ordinarily.

The best thing you can do in that situation is pray. Pray that God would give you something helpful to say. Pray that, even as you come to the passage without prior preparation, the Spirit would help you understand it’s main point and that you might be able to apply it in some way. Pray that you would be at all useful. Pray that, whatever you say, the Spirit would undertake to do his work in God’s people and the Word would accomplish what God intends for it to accomplish.

Remember God is sovereign

Whilst I think it is possible to so emphasise the sovereignty of God or the work of the Spirit that one can fail in their duty to properly prepare and thus prefer extempore preaching on that basis – ignoring that God is also sovereign and the Spirit similarly moves during preparation as well as delivery – where needs must, it is perfectly legitimate to remind ourselves of these two truths. God is sovereign and we are in the position we are in because he has determined it would be so. Similarly, the Spirit blows wherever he listeth and so we don’t have to hand-wring too much about our sub-optimal sermon that we had to deliver extemporaneously, as if some of the ones I prepared diligently aren’t also sub-optimal in their own way much of the time. God is bigger than our less than excellent sermons and he is sovereign over the state of affairs that came about to necessitate extemporaneous preaching.

Remember, everybody knows not all passages are equal

There are, of course, passages of scripture that might land in your lap last minute, and the lot falls to you to preach it extemporaneously, that are definitely harder than others. Some of the wilder bits of Ezekiel might be more of a stretch than the Parable of the Sower, for example. You might get one of the harder bits of Revelation that is not immediately obvious or you could get a fairly straightforward ethical passage in one of the letters. Not all bits of scripture are equal and just about everybody recognises it is so. People will understand the situation and will also recognise that some passages might be considerably easier to say something about then others.

Remember, you’ve probably done more prep than you realise

I was once called upon to deliver an talk on the doctrine of the Trinity in front of a group of Muslims in which my notes were not available to me and even the ability to use the powerpoint had failed. It’s not my go-to subject; I am not an expert theologian or apologist. But up I got and delivered my talk. I had enough residual knowledge from what preparation I had done, and enough broad knowledge of the subject at hand, to be able to stand up and deliver an effectively extempore talk without notes, props or any other apparent prompts. I had done more prep than I realised I had done.

As it happened, yesterday I was due to lead the service. So, I had done a bit of reading in the passage and thinking about it’s main themes in order to prepare the service adequately. I had also forgotten (though my wife reminded me part way through the service and loaned me her phone on which I had sent her some key points) I had also done some thinking about the passage for her so she could prepare the Sunday School lesson. It wasn’t a great deal of thinking. It certainly wasn’t a full sermon level of thinking. But I think it was enough thinking that I could say some true and broadly helpful things about the passage that centred on its main point. I had, in the moment, largely forgotten I had done any of that prep. Faced with an extemporaneous sermon to deliver, I just felt unprepared. But actually, I had done more than I realised I had done to prepare.

But perhaps you aren’t in that position. You were neither due to lead and you haven’t spend any great time looking at the passage (perhaps another wake up call for those of us prone not to bother reading the upcoming passage at all before Sunday morning so as to listen to it as best we can!) But even in this scenario, you have done more prep than you think. Just the years worth of sermons you have heard, the years of theological study and understanding you have accrued, you have prepped more than you realise. Those things will give you some buffers and guidelines even as you stand up and look at the passage for the first time. Even that preparation, though it may not feel like it, will help you more than you realise.

Have some perspective: it is only one sermon

I don’t know about you, but I have definitely heard bad sermons in my life. Sometimes, these bad sermons are the result of somebody’s hard work too! But guess what? Nobody died. The sermon might have said very little, or not been interesting, or – in the worst cases – been bang wrong. But at the end of the day – whilst nobody should be aiming for it and it is not ultimately a good thing – it is just one sermon. If you have been a preacher for any length of time, you know anybody can have an off week. Your extemporaneous sermon might well be one such off week. Worse things happen at sea as they say.

I remember, as a child (and even as an adult), I missed meals. Indeed, it happened more than once for a variety of reasons and has continued to happen throughout my life. Sometimes it was for reasons beyond our control, sometimes it was for inherently bad reasons, sometimes it was just my own fault. But nevertheless, I missed a meal. But guess what? I didn’t die. I did not become malnourished. I didn’t even get ill. I got a little bit hungry and sorted it out by tea time. Obviously if I repeatedly missed every meal, I’d be in trouble. But missing a meal here and there; I lived to tell the tale. In fact, I didn’t get sick or anything. In truth, pretty much nothing happened at all. I just ate a proper meal later.

I think our sermons can be a bit like that. We don’t want to aim for them to be less than excellent. We don’t want to serve up bad meals or the equivalent of causing people to miss meals altogether. Sometimes that will be our fault for not preparing properly; but sometimes it may be for reasons beyond our control that mean we have to do an extempore sermon. Now, oftentimes, even badly prepared meals actually have more nourishment in them than we realise. I might do a student special of beans on toast, but it’s still food and it will fill you up. Some of our extempore sermons will be more like that; sub-optimal but still enough to nourish someone at least a bit. But other extempore sermons may be more like missing a meal altogether. They are just shoddy and bad. But nobody died because they missed a single meal; they just fill up on the next one instead. None of that is to excuse poor sermons or encourage us not to bother, just to say sometimes they aren’t what we might hope, our people have missed a meal, and that in and of itself won’t really damage anyone.