real.faith blog

Looking to start a new church or grow your mega-church? Do you feel your sermons aren’t tired enough, cliche’d enough or stale enough? Do you just need a break from sermon-writing? If any of this describes you, then Uncle Luther’s Boilerplate Pop-Christian Sermon template is just what you need to have church like the stars. Simply follow the template below for an awe-inspiring sermon that will be a blessing to both your congregation and your free time.

Scripture Reading: Try not to pick anything your congregation isn’t already familiar with. We recommend Jeremiah 29:11.

Sermon:
Step 1: Start by making small talk with your congregation. Keep it light, make a few jokes. Don’t forget to stay relevant by mentioning your newly acquired Starbucks addiction.

Step 2: Tell a story from your most recent trip on an airplane. The story doesn’t have to make sense to your congregation, it just needs to relate somehow in your mind.

Step 3: Pick a point so obscure from the day’s Scripture that it is almost irrelevant. Then, inform your audience that this was just an introduction to a three-part series that you will flesh out over the next few weeks.

Step 4: Drive home your point by re-telling an inspirational nugget you received in a forwarded e-mail that is new to you, but has been going around the Internet for ten years. Pass it off as your own.

Step 5: Issue a challenge to your congregation. This will make both you and your audience feel a sense of accomplishment. It will also provide a great opening question for the start of next week’s sermon.

They say common sense ain’t so common these days and it seems this adage couldn’t be any more true than in the church. Fear not though, in response to the overwhelming lack of understanding that has led the misguided among us to take their right to bear arms to mean they have a right to play God and commit other less serious but equally embarrassing acts, I have decided to offer an eight-week seminar this summer called “Common Sense for Christians.” Here is our course outline:

• Week 1: Being Pro Life- Believing that life is precious and has value means all life is precious and has value. You cannot bolster your shiny new gun and go out killing people you disagree with. You also shouldn’t blow up their places of business. Also, if you believe in protecting the second amendment, that’s great—but you might want to consider why a person who is pro-life would want to own a device that can take life. Oh, and if you are pro-life, you may want to really look into the annoying contradiction of calling yourself pro-life while supporting the death penalty.
• Week 2: Marriage- You can’t go around telling homosexuals that marriage is a sacred spiritual bond between a man and a woman until you start treating it as sacred. Fix your own marriages and bring your own divorce rate down, have fewer broken families than the rest of the world and maybe the rest of the world will be more apt to listen to you. Change always comes from within.
• Week 3: Poverty- Politically, you may have a point about it not being the government’s job to meet everyone else’s needs. However, as a Christian, Christ has commanded you to give your money to the poor. So, whether you give in the form of taxes or donations, you’re giving. Hoarding is not an option that is available to you.
• Week 4: Stewardship- All you have belongs to God. All you have is going to burn one day to make way for a new Heavens and a new Earth. When Jesus says don’t store up treasures on earth, there is a very good chance He means that if you have two houses, one of which you only use for a few weeks out of the year and there are people in your community who don’t have any houses, you may have a bit of a stewardship problem.
• Week 5: Politics- Jesus did not come to set up an Earthly kingdom and He didn’t send you into the world to set one up either. We serve an eternal Heavenly Kingdom. Political involvement is important, but it is always secondary to the Kingdom of Heaven, which operates under completely opposite and paradoxical rules than the Kingdom of this world.
• Week 6: Judging- If God had appointed you as the judge of the world, you’d have been born with a black robe, an tacky wig and perfect. If you didn’t pop out of your momma’s womb with these three attributes, then you are a worker in Christ’s field, which means you must sow the fruits of the spirit. In case you forgot, those are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.
• Week 7: Sin- It does exist, and you do it too. If everything in life is a psychological problem we have no control over, or if everything we do wrong is just something society needs to learn to accept, then there is no need for a Savior. If there is no sin and there is no Savior, then we really don’t need to read the Bible or go to church anymore. We could instead devote our lives to debauchery, which is much more fun.
• Week 8: Unity- We don’t have to agree, but we should get along. Somewhere in the New Testament we’re told that we are all parts of one body. A body doesn’t function well if the hand is continually punching the nose or the right foot won’t stop kicking the left behind.

Get it? Got it? Good. Class dismissed.

• Walk around the sanctuary with a microphone, spot unfamiliar faces and ask, “And you sir, why do you only attend church on Christmas and Easter?”
• Have an invitation at the end, but keep holding out for “one last sinner” until the nice restaurants have stopped serving brunch.
• Announce that we are going to continue our yearly tradition of crucifying one attendee. “We’ve been successful at raising them from the dead all but twice. Any volunteers?”
• Deliver the entire sermon in a bunny costume for no apparent reason.
• Throw the offering money back, angrily denouncing it as “blood money.”
• Refuse to begin preaching until the Holy Spirit shows up either as a dove or as tongues of fire.
• “Ladies and gentlemen, our Sunday school teachers have hyped your kids up on sugar. They’re outside paving the parking lot and will be released to you very shortly. Now you’ll know how their teachers feel the Monday after Easter.”
• Have an Easter egg hunt in the middle of the service.
• Lock all the restroom doors in the church and inform the congregation that the church is under budget and we would appreciate their help watering the lawn.
• When a parent is unable to control their small child, accidentally let it slip that the Easter Bunny isn’t real.