I do not pastor a church, but I do preach quite a lot. I preached seven times in a recent nine-day stretch. That is not normal, but it is not uncommon for me to preach most Sundays and often on other occasions during the week. I preach at least as often as I did when I was serving as a local church pastor.
People have historically referred to a person who does this type of pulpit ministry as an “itinerant preacher.” An itinerant preacher, according to one online source, is a “Christian evangelist who preaches the basic Christian redemption message while traveling around to different groups of people within a relatively short period of time.” Not all itinerant preaching is evangelistic preaching, but it does involve traveling from place to place to deliver a biblical message.
Pastors who have never done itinerant preaching find it can be both rewarding and challenging because they are addressing a different group of people each time they preach. They soon discover they must introduce themselves to a congregation, make a personal connection with them and then preach a biblical sermon that they hope will impact lives.
How can those who preach from place to place each week make the most of these opportunities and steward well their preaching ministry? Listed below are five best practices I have learned in the past 12 years of itinerant preaching that have been helpful to me.
1. Determine the purpose of the assignment. Why are you being invited to preach? Are you preaching a revival, an evangelistic message, filling the pulpit while the pastor is away or while the church is without a pastor or are you being invited to represent your convention, association or ministry? Determining your purpose will help as you prepare your sermon.
2. Determine the most appropriate biblical text. What would the Lord have you preach? While many pastors preach through books of the Bible over a period of time, those who preach from place to place will not have that opportunity. Therefore, they must pray, ask good questions of the one inviting them to preach and then settle on the biblical text that best fits the occasion. The single requirement for faithful preaching is that we preach the word (2 Timothy 4:2).
3. Determine to deliver a fresh message. How will this message be relevant to these people? While many itinerant preachers will preach the same biblical text several times, it is important that we keep our preaching fresh. The best way to do this is to prayerfully work through the text each time we preach it — aiming to refresh our study and add fresh applications and illustrations that will best serve the congregation to whom we are preaching. If we continually select an old message from a file and go deliver it, our preaching may get stale.
4. Determine to do your very best. How will you give this assignment the attention it deserves? Often—as in my case—an itinerant preacher has a full-time job and may not have a full week to prepare for the preaching assignment. We can still determine to do our best work by praying, preparing, practicing our message and then going to deliver it for the glory of God and the good of His people.
5. Determine to stay fresh in this work. How will you deliver fresh messages each time you preach? To stay fresh in itinerant preaching, the preacher must continually read and meditate on God’s word, read good books, listen to preaching and walk with God. I would add one other thing: practice personal evangelism each week. We do not practice personal evangelism to refresh our preaching, but you will discover that when you are witnessing to lost people regularly, your preaching will have a greater sense of urgency.
Itinerant preaching is different from the pulpit ministry of a local church pastor, but it can be very satisfying and helpful to advance the gospel of Christ. If God has assigned this work to you, then make it your aim to do your very best and be faithful to the One who called you.
Dr. Todd Gray 