I get this question alot. It seems that many traveling preachers, evangelists, and fellow Road Warriors have only a handful of sermons. Some of them only have 1 or 2 and they feel comfortable preaching them for life. I have no insight into what God has called other preachers to preach (as long as it is Gospel-centered). But for me, I have a few more than a handful.

This past weekend, a youth leader commented to me, jokingly, that he was impressed that I actually decided to teach the sessions for a DiscipleNOW weekend based on their theme from the book of Acts. In the midst of our casual conversation, he told me that most speakers he had heard over the years were not interested in the theme or direction that the church had decided on, but were bound and determined to preach one of their “canned” messages when they showed up no matter what. (2 notes: the leader was a weekend small group leader, not the youth pastor, and the term “canned” is an insider word that all us Road Warriors are familiar with. It just means a sermon we have memorized from preaching it so many times).

This stereotype is both accurate and unfortunate. Not every young evangelist sticks with a few rehearsed sermons, but so many do that the rest of us are grouped in with them. So it is accurate to an extent. But I try to dispel the stereotype, church by church and event by event, when I get the chance. At the same church this past weekend in Knoxville, the senior pastor of the church where I preached Sunday morning told me after the service that he enjoyed my expository message, and that he had heard few evangelists preach from the text verse by verse. How sad. It seems that so many Road Warriors are just so busy and tired from the road that it is easier to pull out an old sermon than do the hard work of working out a fresh one.

But back to the question…How many sermons do I have? Right now, sitting here at my computer, I could probably preach 30 different evangelistic messages and I could probably teach from another 50 passages of scripture. The evangelistic messages would be the ones I have preached before and that I will preach again, because those messages were given to me by the Holy Spirit and they are annointed by God (as a word of defense for those of us who DO preach the same messages frequently, the reason is often times that we see God used those messages to save souls and so we are going to keep on preaching them. I mean, hey, does the Sermon on the Mount still speak to people today? My point exactly!).

Over the years, I have spent hundreds of hours studying books of the Bible and the context of those books, so there are also maybe another 50 or so passages that I could teach a Bible study on. So the question is difficult to answer. But I have more than a few that I preach. And for me, the most important thing is that I am constantly in The Word, getting fresh inspiration from the Lord, allowing the message to saturate my heart before I preach it to others.

So bottom line? How many? OK, OK, I probably have between 100 - 130 sermons that I could preach at the drop of a hat (21 years of preaching adds up). But I would also say that there are at least that many new ones being developed in my heart and mind every single day as Christ increases and I decrease.

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