Issue 7 – Preaching—A Beginner’s Guide (1)

 

Dear Tim

You asked me to write some Letters on preaching. Here’s the first.

Getting To Grips With Preaching

Preaching has been a major part of our faith story since NT times.

John the Baptist and Jesus both came preaching (Mt 3.1, 4.17,23). Paul charged young Timothy to preach the word and be urgent in season and out of season (2 Ti 4.1-2 RSV). Martyn Lloyd-Jones, the great British preacher in the middle years of last century, said the greatest need in the Church and the world today is ‘true preaching’. Decades ago, Thielecke said the decline of the Church in Western Europe in his day could largely be traced back to the horrendous decline in preaching. Preaching is at the heart of what ‘church’ is about. When preaching (in its various forms) dies, the Church dies.

Indeed, if you lead a church, your two primary responsibilities are to ‘lead with all diligence’ (Ro 12.8), and ‘preach the word’ (2 Ti 4.2)—or to ‘feed and lead’, as Rick Warren puts it.

Several parties are involved in preaching—marking it off from every other form of public speaking. There’s the preacher who preaches the sermon or message. There are the people who are preached to—who play a far bigger part in the preaching than many of us realise. There’s the Holy Spirit who does the empowering and applying. And the focus of preaching is Scripture and its call to know God and live for Him. Only when all these things come together will we say with Paul, ‘For our gospel did not come to you in word only, but also in power, and in the Holy Spirit and in much assurance’ (1 Th 1.5 NKJV).

However, despite the differences, great preaching has much in common with great speaking outside the Church—seen at its best last century in the national, outside-the-Church, speaking of Martin Luther King. In his great speeches, he aims to inform and persuade. He has one main idea—eg, to get his people to their Promised Land. He connects well with his hearers at the start of his speeches, develops momentum as he speaks, and moves towards a strong and convincing conclusion. His speeches are crowded with people to drive his message home. He has excellent delivery. And the high points of his great speeches will be remembered till the end of time—having a Dream, and seeing the Promised Land.

However, the challenge to lift our preaching has been put best in the Willow Creek flier announcing their October 18-19 2004 Preaching and Teaching Conference.

The flier said, ‘You carry the only truth capable of altering a human destiny, healing a wounded heart, or challenging a believer to a new level of devotion—God’s truth. You need to do more than preach or teach. For the sake of those listening, for the sake of the Kingdom, you must communicate’ (their emphasis).

And that’s the challenge we address in these Letters on preaching—looking first at ‘classical’ preaching, as it’s practised in most churches on Sundays. Then we comment on variations of it.

Preparing You Sermon—In General

So you’re going to preach on Sunday—where do you start?

1. You start with the big idea, with knowing what the idea is and being mastered by it—what some here call the ‘The Haddon Robinson principle.’ Dr John Henry Jowett, a predecessor of Martyn Lloyd-Jones at Westminster Chapel, said that no sermon should be preached, or even written, till we can express the theme in ‘a short, pregnant sentence’—he found this the biggest challenge in his preparation. He’s right; because if we’re not clear about the main idea, our hearers certainly won’t be!

2. Stage 2 is to create the skeletal shape, or bones, of your sermon—yes, you need a skeleton even in a postmodern age. In fact, you may need it more, so you don’t wander from your subject and waffle!

W. E. Sangster, the great Methodist preacher of the middle years of last century, said that for a sermon to be without form and not utterly void (cf. Ge 1.2) borders on the miraculous; so no sermon is really strong which is not strong in structure too. And John Stott, Martyn Lloyd-Jones’ Anglican counterpart in Britain, said, ‘Just as bones without flesh make a skeleton, so flesh without bones makes a jellyfish. And neither bony skeletons nor jellyfish make good sermons’ (I Believe In Preaching, p. 229). So stage 2 is to fill out your dominant thought, or main idea, with a compelling structure.

Preparing Your Sermon—The Main Points

With the skeletal shape of your sermon (or message) clear, you’re now ready to shape the main points of your skeleton. Here are a few tips to help you.

1. Go for a clear emphatic start to each point, so you build momentum as you move through your points. This tells your hearers two things—you at least know where you’re heading, and they’re ‘in for a good time’ (to quote Spurgeon). So when I’m preaching on the Sower of Lk 8.4-15, I begin by saying that the first thing we notice about the Sower is that he was a man with a great personal vision for the future—to sow so diligently that he would feed his (presumed) wife and children the following year.

2. Develop movement and sequence of thought, within each point, almost as though each point is a little sermon on its own. So when I’m preaching on the Sower, I open point one with the Sower needing to provide for his wife and children the following year; so he sows because he has a personal dream. Then I go on to say that every Christian, and every church, and every group of churches needs a dream—because dreams lead to action, dreams change behaviour, dreams break bad patterns, and dreams enable us to reach new goals. Then I tell them about a NZ church that did this, with astounding results. There’s movement and sequence of thought within the point.

3. Where appropriate, use telling illustrations about people, to reinforce your points. At the Willow Creek Conference here last November, Rob Harley described the predicament a South Auckland leader faced as he tried to motivate his colleagues for another year of ministry to their 300 children. He tried challenging them with a lot of Bible verses on commitment. But that didn’t work. Then later, encouraged by Rob, he told them some South Auckland stories—especially one about a young ‘homeless’ girl whose school friend brought her along to church, where she met Jesus and became so happy. You guessed the outcome; the team signed up for another year, and it was the stories that did it!

Martin Luther King put people in his speeches all the time—and here’s the communication principle. When you put people in your sermons, it’s your listeners’ interaction with the people in your stories that often persuades them to buy into what you’re saying. Putting people in your sermons is an absolute requirement for great preaching.

4. Grab every opportunity to tie what you say back to your church’s dream—to its Mission Statement, Vision, and Core Values. Remembering that vision dies in 30 days, use every opportunity to say in your sermons, ‘so that’s why at this church, we’re so strong on such and such’, tying it back to the dream. Or, you may say, ‘that’s why this Core Value is so important to us, because it’s here in our passage today’, and so on. So use every opportunity to tie what you say back to your church’s dream.

5. Apply and conclude each point well—so you drive it home to your hearers before you move on. So I close the first point of the Sower sermon by saying, ‘So that’s the first thing; he had a vision—and every church meeds a sharply focused vision so it reaches its potential.’ Then I conclude, ‘The 21st century belongs to churches with new dreams. Go for yours!’ The point ends decisively, and we all take a second or two’s breather before the strong launch of point 2, which will take us further into the subject, or main idea.

6. Build in movement, development, and increasing tempo and finality, between points. Dr Martyn Lloyd-Jones says that as the sermon unfolds, there should be progression in thought, that each point isn’t independent or necessarily of equal value with all the others, that each is part of the whole and in each we should be advancing and taking the matter further on. Then he says, ‘So in this matter of the form of the sermon, the progression, and the advance, and the development of the argument and the case is absolutely vital’ (Preaching and Preachers p. 77).

Yet such progression is now comparatively rare in NZ preaching, and hence our struggle to persuade people to respond to our sermons—and we never will persuade, till we learn to develop the thrust of our main idea. But first we must have a main idea to develop—because even having one is fairly rare today!

7. Finally, repeat, where appropriate, key phrases and statements of the text (or main idea) at the start of each point. I remember two sermons from my childhood, and the verses the preacher preached on. In the first, the preacher spoke on Ge 26.3, ‘Sojourn in this land and I will be with thee and will bless thee’. In the second, the preacher spoke from Ge 26.18, on Isaac digging again the wells of his father Abraham. And I remember their texts and sermon drift because they repeated the text at crucial points in their sermons of 50 years ago. Where possible, I do the same, especially when I’m preaching on Isaiah 54.2-3—repeating v.2a at the beginning of each advancing main point.

Concluding And Introducing Your Sermon

The introduction, and especially the conclusion, requires great skill if you’re to preach well—so they’re best crafted after you’ve developed your main points.

1. We struggle greatly with our landings, or conclusions—and this is undermining our effectiveness. In I Believe in Preaching (Hodder and Stoughton), John Stott says that conclusions are more difficult than introductions. Then he says, ‘Some preachers seem to be constitutionally incapable of concluding anything, let alone their sermons. They circle round and round, like a plane on a foggy day without instruments, unable to land. Their sermons "are nothing less than a tragedy of aimlessness"’ (p. 245). But then he adds, others stop too abruptly. So what should we do?

One prominent NZ Salvation Army leader put the answer well when he said, ‘The landing of the message at the end needs to be in such a way that there is resolution and completeness about the sermon and that the sermon leaves the listener with a compelling response demand.’ Bill Hybels likewise says we shouldn’t end a sermon till we’ve told people what they need to believe and what they need to do.

We can land the sermon in many different ways. We can invite people to become followers of Jesus, encourage seekers to take a further step to find out more about Jesus, encourage those who already believe to take a further step in their journey with Jesus, and so on. Some churches use ‘Response Forms’ very effectively—so people can record their decision on the day, find out more about journeying with Jesus or get information on church activities, record comments and prayer needs, and pass on information about themselves. And the form is just one of several response mechanisms they use.

If I were still in pastoral ministry, I’d vary the way I presented the sermon challenge at the end, so the hearers would never guess what’s coming—because stereotyping kills response. But however I did it, I would certainly encourage multiple responses every Sunday.

2. The final preparation challenge is launching, or introducing, the sermon you’ve prepared—best done after you’ve crafted the rest of the sermon. Here the challenge is to capture the hearers’ attention quickly and securely, and you can do this in many ways. Rick Warren’s advice is, ‘If you want to capture the attention of an uninterested group of people you must tie your message to one of three attention-getters: things they value; things that are unique; and things that threaten them.’ But however you do it, keep it brief and interesting.

With the Sower message, I start with the crippling droughts on my Dad’s farm when I was a boy—and how they nearly broke his spirit, teaching me how vulnerable we all were on the land. Then I quickly mention that when I got on the road with World Vision 20 years ago, I came to see this as one of the most important parables of Jesus, because it’s about how things are out there in the work of the Kingdom. Then I move into my first point on the Sower. People find it interesting, because it’s about life as it really is, just as the parable itself is. So go for a nice, warm and relational start to your sermons, and you’ll win your hearers over for the big challenges later in the sermons.

Preparing Your Sermon—The Surprise Factor

I’ve saved till last, one of the most subtle and important factors in your preparation—building in the element of surprise as you craft your sermons.

Put simply, the more your hearers can guess what’s coming, the less impact you will have. Frank Tillapaugh taught me this years ago, when he said, ‘The less anticipated the message, the greater the impact’—and he’s absolutely right. Spurgeon, the great Baptist preacher of the late 19th century, gave the same advice when he advised his ministry students to cultivate ‘the surprise power’, avoid saying what people expected them to say, and keep their sentences out of ruts.

Today, overuse of the data projector (an otherwise very valuable tool) can turn the sermon into a lecture—and even create a sideshow on its own, with all sorts of gimmicky things popping up on the screen as the preacher preaches. And all that distracts them from the ultimate impact of the message, because preaching is truth through personality, not a screen.

So build the element of surprise into your sermon—and it will have a far greater impact on your hearers.

I Believe In Preaching!

Tim, I hope these few brief thoughts help you with your preparation. But a caution. Don’t be discouraged if you haven’t been doing many of the things I’ve mentioned in this Letter. We all have to start somewhere, and as we practise crafting sermons we get better and better—and you will too.

So start with what I’ve shared here, and you’ll be amazed how quickly you progress. And your people will love your effective preaching too. Of course, preparation is the hardest and most demanding part of preaching. Preaching what you’ve prepared is the other big challenge, and we’ll look at that next month—and I promise you, we’ll have a good time!

Go well till then—and goodbye.
 
Gordon Miller
Church Growth & Development Consultant

For You and Your Leaders

• Give yourself a score out of ten (ten being excellent) for how well you’ve been following each of the main principles I’ve shared; then jot down the ones you’ll now work on to improve your preparation and preaching.
• Discuss with your leaders where you all see the sermon fitting into your services, and what steps you should take together to lift the impact of your preaching. Include things like, using a Response Form, and crafting the landing—so your ministry helpers can connect better with those who come forward or respond in other ways. That is, discuss the whole response ‘deal’ and its environment, so you and your church make the greatest possible contribution to the growth of God’s Kingdom.

Download

Download Issue 7 of the Salvation Army Leadership Letter (PDF, 73KB)

Book Notes

I’ve quoted from the following books in this Letter.

D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Preaching and Preachers (Hodder & Stoughton), 1971. Although this is now out of print, Manna Christian Stores, (09) 529 2361) have located several copies in the States of the 1972 Zondervan printing of this book—ISBN 0310278708.

John R W Stott, I believe in Preaching (Hodder & Stoughton), 1982 & 1985—ISBN 0 340 27564 2.

Helmet Thielicke, The Trouble With The Church (Baker Book House, reprinted 1978)—ISBN 0-8010-8843-7.