Opening the Sermon's Doors

I am always amazed at the amount of time the clergy spends each week thinking, preparing, writing and delivering their sermon. All that time spent, and how few receivers there are for the message. Shouldn’t a sermon be available to all the members of your synagogue? Those who benefit are those who come to Shabbat services, and hopefully retain the essence of the message. But what about the other members, or if you miss a Shabbat? The weekly sermon is often a foundational building block to greater outreach. Rabbis do not leave us with dead ends--they leave us with the possibility for more. How can your community use the rabbi’s sermon as a key foundational outreach opportunity?

Why doesn’t the rabbi offer the sermon on the website?

Why doesn’t the rabbi blog about his/her past sermon, or maybe the sermon coming up this Shabbat?

Why doesn’t the rabbi tweet?

And here I need to stop for a moment and own up to the fact that I am one who regularly attends Shabbat services. I attend for many reasons: 

my need to honor our tradition

my need to honor my family that gave so much

my need to replenish my soul

my need to take time out from the madness and chaos of the world around me.

Most often I find Shabbat sermons to be meaningful soul searching opportunities. And yet, most often when I go to revisit that state of reflection, or the parts of the sermon that were meaningful for me, I have trouble remembering what was said. There is an unfortunate clash when the power of the sermon’s message meets the power of my personal world. No matter how hard I attempt to take the essence of a sermon with me into the coming week, it is inevitably confronted by a bulldozer of the day-to-day realities. And if anything, those day-to-day realities are coming at us quicker than ever before; ironically providing us with an ever greater need to find that personal reflection time.The rabbi’s sermon can become one of the foundational components to the synagogue’s website, providing members and prospective members with a library of the philosophy of the synagogue. And what a wonderful opportunity for someone searching for reflection or greater knowledge, to know that they can easily turn to one of them on the website to fulfill a need they have at the moment.

Most sermons are rich with many connection points for greater learning and study. Most of us in the blog world start with a potential readership of zero, and moving from there forward is a long hard road. Yet, a rabbi starts with a readership base filled with many who would be interested in reading and reflecting on their thoughts, and a readership base that is inclined to share the rabbi’s thoughts with others, both in the community and outside. What are the possibilities for your community if the rabbi blogged twice a week? A Sunday blog sharing the key idea from the past Shabbat sermon that links back to the full sermon on the site. And a Thursday blog that shares the key idea that will be in this Shabbat’s sermon linked to further Jewish study on the topic. An early Friday tweet could provide a message that brings members into Shabbat. We all know how important the rabbi is to the success of a synagogue. And each week the rabbi does the heavy lifting of the sermon. We need to put together a team that helps spread the rabbi’s message to the rest of your membership and the Jews who are window shopping. The next time you hear an inspirational or meaningful sermon, think about how you could take it a step further. Would re-reading it deepen the meaning? Would a discussion thread allow others to participate in the conversation? Would a pre-Shabbat tweet encourage more listeners? And for members who do not make it to services this week, would access to the rabbi’s sermon benefit them? How can the sermon serve the community?