An Experiment in Collaborative Preaching
September 8, 2007
I have spent the better part of the past few days staring at Deuteronomy 30.15-20 and James 1.29-25 and trying to think of something to say about them. Like I mentioned a few days ago, I haven’t preached in over a year and so getting back into the rhythm is something I’ve found to be very difficult. A few months ago, Neal wrote on Presbymergent about Collaborative Sermons. Open-sourcing sermons. Now, this is not like Sermons.com where you could just go and download a sermon to preach that wasn’t yours. But Neal asked some good questions - what would it look like if sermons were written by the community?
I have just finished my sermon, and I am made a wiki (this was my first wiki, so I apologize if there was a better web application I could have used) for the sermon. If you work on it today, I may consider some of the changes for my sermon tomorrow - but otherwise, let’s take the next week and use this as an exercise, an experiment in collaborative sermon-writing, collaborative preaching. The sermon title is (for now), “Partnering with God.” The wiki is located here. Once there, you’ll see the link for the sermon page - click that and go to the sermon page. Then at the top you can click “Edit Page” and then it will ask you for a password. The password is “sermon” and then it will probably still require you to put your name and email in, like you were leaving a comment. Then you can make any changes you want, and then click “Save” at the bottom. Let me know if you have any problems with the wiki.
I’m hoping that some of you will participate in this - and then we’ll see what we end up with.
Tags: Collaboration, Collaborative-Sermons, Free-Sermon, Preaching, Sermons
Posted in Emergent, Presbymergent ShareThis
Adam Walker Cleaveland: I am a 28 yr old 
September 8th, 2007 at 8:30 pm
Adam,
The collaborative wiki-sermon is an interesting idea. Sorry not to contribute… at 8:30 Sat. night with my own sermon to preach tomorrow, it was too much to think about.
But, a thought… rather than have collaboration on the actual sermon (which I think would vary greatly depending on the “audience”)… this seems like a fantastic idea for about one week out for a couple of folks working on the same text (lectionary?) or just some friends who wanted to give you input.
i could see putting the text up and a rough outline or main theme and then folks tweaking direction, main theme idea, illustrations, commentary notes, etc… until you are left with a kind of uber-outline for the text. I’m great at generating questions that a sermon should answer, but less helpful putting words in your mouth for a congregation I don’t know.
I’d be willing to be a part of that if you want… maybe for that Miller Chapel sermon I think i saw something about.
Robert Austell
September 8th, 2007 at 11:47 pm
I’m actually a part of a community that practices collaborative preaching and it works out beautifully. Each week about 8-10 or even more people get together and think through different ideas for the sermon. Then 3-4 people write different sections of it and it gets weaved together. Over the course of the next 4 weeks it goes through various edits by the teaching community and comes out at the end in brilliant fashion. This is an amazing way to do prepare sermons for a community in community and I highly recommend it. We’ve been doing it this way for about 8 years now and the collaborative process continues to grow and change.
September 9th, 2007 at 11:45 pm
Hey, Adam — sorry I didn’t see this until Sunday night! Still, count me in for this and any future collaborative sermon stuff (you already know my thoughts on this one). I’m writing this on my cell phone browser right now, which unfortunately butchers wikis, but I’ll check out your wiki tomorrow morning (left my laptop at church) and add to the conversation. Oh, and welcome to the wonderful world of wiki! I’ve been using my personal wiki a lot lately. Shawn Coons has one too, I think.
September 10th, 2007 at 6:40 am
How did the sermon go?
September 10th, 2007 at 9:52 am
We have an Episcopal priest in our community called Peacemeal. Actually, she is married to the guy who really got it all going. Anyway, since we meet each Friday for dinner and worship, on weekends when she is a “supply priest” (she doesn’t work for a parish but rather as the Youth Missioner for the Diocese of Bethlehem, PA) she often says that our discussion-based Response to the Word during our liturgy inspires her writing and helps her through difficult passages. I think she read Pagitt’s Preaching Re-Imagined (or she hopes to after having read a synopsis), and she’s really loved the aspect of discussing a text in the context of community in preparation for a sermon.
Here’s the text she posted on our blog for her most recent sermon-in-light-of-Peacemeal’s-discussion.
September 12th, 2007 at 7:09 pm
A wiki is one of the greatest things to happen to sermons in a lonnnng time. Awesome work!
Have you explored Len Sweet’s wikiletics?