Everyone
knows good preaching - when they hear it. The problem often is, "good
preaching" is rarely defined, but is almost always based upon each
person's preferences. The pastor, who normally has to go through some
sort of training, whether Bible school and/or seminary, is taught how to
preach. The problem there is, "good preaching" is defined by the
instructor and the books he uses as references.
I had three
professors in seminary, and two in my doctoral program, who taught
preaching (homiletics is the technical term). Each of the three seminary
professors had quite different philosophies and methodologies for
preaching. They did, however, agree on the basics of communication
(voice projection, speed, volume, posture, eye contact, etc.).
In
three of the churches I served there were many armchair professionals
who insisted on critiquing (sometimes not a bad thing), criticizing
(always a bad thing), or telling me how I ought to preach - and this
coming from those who never studied the subject of preaching, or learned
the art of communication, or had any experience in either!
About
seven years ago, armchair professionals who were also elders, embarked
on a mission to make me the best preacher ever. Problem was, they had
not defined what good preaching was, let alone what best preaching was,
and they had no training in either preaching or communication. They did
know that they wanted me to preach like their favorite preacher; and
they each had one who were about as different from the others as you
could get.
They did me a favor, though. It provoked me to go back
and get my doctorate, take additional classes in preaching and
communication, and embark on a three year mission to learn all I could
about both subjects and perhaps improve in the skill and art of "good"
preaching.
By the end of those three years, I had read well over
fifty books, subscribed to several magazines, evaluated famous and
popular preachers, read well-known sermons of those good but dead guys
(and some living ones too), and kept notes and journals. I can say that
there was indeed improvement! About a 5% improvement, if one could
actually measure it that way.
From this rigorous time of
training I put together all the main points from all the resources.
Thankfully there was quite a bit of redundancy, otherwise this blog
would be about a thousand or so pages.
Well, the first point of
all this is to relate how difficult preaching really is for the majority
of pastors (and other ministers). It's tough! The second point is to
share what things a person is supposed to consider when putting together
a sermon or message, and what is supposed to be done while
communicating the message. So, with that, I give you a summary of those
must have considerations:
1. Read the Scripture with expression
2. Read the Scripture with clarity
3. Give an introduction:
a. That engages and gets the attention of the audience
b. Lays the foundation for the sermon theme
c. Makes obvious the sermon theme
d. Arouses their interest
e. Touches upon a need directly or indirectly
f. Is it relevant?
g.
Does it have a ministry sentence (summary and main point that includes
what the expected response should be and an element of appeal or
challenge).
4. Make sure this is expository preaching
Which
is “Bible-centered preaching. That is, it is handling the text ‘in such
a way that its real and essential meaning as it existed in the mind of
the particular Biblical writer and as it exists in the light of the
over-all context of Scripture is made plain and applied to the
present-day needs of the hearers.’” (S. Greidanus)
5. Concentrate on the original message, but recognize the discontinuity of progressive revelation, kingdom history and culture.
6. Does the sermon recognize the overarching continuity?
a. One faithful God
b. One covenant people
7. Focus upon the goal of the text
8.
“To understand a text is to understand the question behind the text,
the question that called the text into being” (Richard Palmer)
a. Redefine the specific issue
b. Search for the underlying principle
9. The form of the sermon
a. The main point of the sermon is clearly derived from the main point of the text
b.
“An oral topical sentence must do far more. It must state the idea
clearly, tersely, descriptively and formulaically so that not only does
the thought become memorable by being part of a larger pattern; it must
also have an intrinsic memorable quality in its own right, such as
sharply descriptive nouns and verbs that make the milestones of the
speech’s progression stand out clearly.” (Wilbur Ellsworth)
c. The
sub-points of the sermon flow naturally from the main point and
coordinate with each other? Are the transitions fluid, clear, obvious
and helpful?
d. The content of the sub-points are adequately developed?
e. The content includes:
i. The person and work of Jesus Christ
ii. Salvation by grace in Christ alone
iii. An appeal to the conscience about sin and guilt
iv. A focus upon eternity
v. Accountability to God
vi. A call for a specific response of repentance and faith
f. The biblical passage is explained adequately?
g. Is it obvious that good exegesis has taken place?
h.
Are the big themes of the Bible (God’s rule, covenant, grace, people,
plan of redemption, His glory and the fulfillment of all these in Jesus
Christ) reflected upon or touched by the sermon?
i. Does the original message to the original audience inform our current circumstances?
j. Use illustrations that help the audience get the point
k. Don’t use illustrations that detract from the main point
l. Does the sermon reflect the dialogical nature between God and his people?
m. Does the sermon convey the sense that the audience is one with the original hearers of the Scripture passage?
n. Does it employ gracious invitation?
o. Does is admonish with sober warnings?
p. Will it preach perseverance to believers?
10. Application
a. Is application spread throughout the text or is it placed at the end?
b.
“What application does, then, is to “attach” to the simple
interpretation of the passage the meaning for the congregation today in
the context of their modern life situations…[w]hat this means is that
not only must the preacher study the passage for its
historical/grammatical meanings, but he also must:
i. Study the present situation(s) that the congregation faces,
ii. Study the various members of the congregation, who are facing it,
iii. Abstract the truth or principle that the Holy Spirit intended to teach from the passage,
iv. Discover how the writer applied this principle to his readers, and
v. Do the same today for his own congregation in their modern setting.” (Jay Adams)
c. Does the application flow from the text itself?
d. Does the application address people where they live?
i. Is it interesting?
ii. Is it for today?
iii. Does it address issues of the day?
e. Is the application evangelical (not moralistic), flowing from the grace of God in Christ?
f. Is the application specific, pointed and aimed at the conscience?
g. What difference will this sermon make?
h. Does it commend the Good News of God’s grace to the hearers?
i. Does the sermon take into consideration the various needs of the hearers in the congregation?
i. Unbelievers who are both ignorant and unteachable
ii. Some who are teachable, but yet ignorant
iii. Some who have knowledge, but are not as yet humbled…
iv. Some who are humbled
v. Some who believe…
vi. Some who have fallen…
vii. That the congregation is made up of mingled people (William Perkins in the Art of Prophecy)
j.
Be careful not to communication that only the application of the text
is relevant. “…[A]pplication is based on a proper comprehension of the
passage’s meaning and they will probably not take the application to
heart unless this is clear to them.” (Stuart)
11. The conclusion
a. Does it flow from the sermon?
b. Is it a well-rounded wrap-up of the sermon?
c. Is the purpose of the sermon obviously achieved?
d. Is the focus of the conclusion appropriate to the sermon?
e. Does it challenge the audience to think or do something specific?
12. Delivery and style:
a. Will it be effective (what is said and how it is said)
b.
“Apart from life-related, biblical content we have nothing worth
communicating; but without skillful delivery, we will not get our
content across to the congregation. In order of significance the
ingredients making up a sermon are thought, arrangement, language, voice
and gesture. In priority of impressions, however, the order reverses.”
(Haddon Robinson)
c. Preach in understandable vocabulary (be careful about using difficult theological terms unless you define them)
i. Is there varied and imaginative language?
ii. Is there sense appeal?
1. Is it visually effective?
2. Does it describe and employ the senses of taste, smell, see, hear, or feel? (Jay Adams)
3. Is there a vivid description?
4. Does it paint a picture for them?
d. Are the verbs active or passive? Is there action?
e. Consider verbal aspects:
i. Use good voice inflection and clarity
ii. Make sure the volume is varied and appropriate
iii. Is the voice clear and easy to listen to?
iv. Are there fresh or abundant metaphors, similes or good use of pictorial language?
v. Is there unnecessary verbiage?
vi. Does it respect everyone in the congregation, all levels of physical, mental and spiritual maturity?
f.
Announce your points in the sermon only if is will help the audience
understand or more clearly remember the Holy Spirit’s purpose of the
text (Jay. Adams).
g. Is the sermon animated conversation?
h. Use appropriate body language
i. Do not lean on the pulpit
ii. Do not use any habitual physical actions that can be distracting
i. Is the overall appearance attractive or distracting?
j. Use facial gestures and expressions that are appropriate
k. Have good eye contact with the audience
l. Have a commanding presence in the pulpit
m. Is the sermon oral English or written English? (re: Jay Adams)
i.
Oral English is more concrete, looser, less grammatically exact, more
repetitious, more limited in use of vocabulary – especially in terms or
jargon. It must be comprehended at the speaker’s rate – the first time
over.
ii. Written English can be more compressed and concise, more technical.
iii. Is the sermon going to be presented in oral English or bookish English?
n. Consider the length of sermon (25-35 minutes):
i. “The true way to shorten a sermon is to make it more interesting” (H. W. Beecher)
ii.
“Brevity may be the soul of wit, but the preacher is not a wit. A
Christianity of short sermons is a Christianity of short fibre.” (P. T.
Forsyth)
o. Is it relevant? Is the congregation involved?
i. Address general needs
ii. Address the whole person
iii. Use dialogue
iv. Use concrete and vivid language
p. Is there a love and zeal for preaching that at times can be described as a mania? (Acts 26:24; Jn. 10:20; 2 Cor. 5:13)?
q. Are you being authentic or trying to mimic someone else?
r. Take into consideration the manner of power preaching (Acts 4:29; 20:31)
i. Submit to the Holy Spirit in prayer
ii. Be full of zeal, intensity and boldness
iii. Proclaim with fear toward God and fearlessness toward man
iv. Anticipate God’s protection in the midst of suffering and opposition to the Word
v. Expect the Word to grow by God’s sovereign appointment
vi. Preach with compassion and tears (Acts 20:19,31)
13. Effectiveness
a. Speak with confidence and boldness
b. Speak with fire, conviction and unction
c. Will the sermon move or persuade the audience?
d. Was the audience taken into consideration? Think analytically about the audience:
i. How much do they know about the message?
ii. What, if any, are some misconceptions and/or prejudices that they may hold?
iii. What are some of the obstacles that may intrude in:
1. Communicating the message,
2. Persuading people of its truth, and/or
3. Motivating them to act on it?
iv. Are there any reasons why I might turn them off?
v. What technical terms will I need to use and to explain?
vi. How would I best illustrate the truth to this group?
1. What are the best areas from which to draw illustrations?
2. What sort of language should I use with this group to make my illustrations clear?
vii. What do I need to say in order to demonstrate how to implement the action(s) required?
viii. Is the audience varied enough in the above matters that I shall have to approach the question from more than one angle?
ix. Given the general spiritual condition of the congregation, how much truth can I communicate, and to what depth?
x.
Is my problem with this group fundamentally to give them information,
to persuade them to believe or disbelieve something (or both), or to get
them to do what they already know and believe? Or is it a combination
of two or more of the above? (Jay Adams)
e. Does the sermon consider
that the people might be expectantly waiting for God to speak to their
problem from it, or does it merely analyze the scriptural passage? (Jay
Adams)
f. Will the sermon teach anything?
i. It is good, solid doctrine?
ii. Does it touch the mind?
iii. What will they know they did not know before?
iv. Will their faith be challenged?
g. Will the sermon offer hope?
i. Will it touch their lives?
ii. Will the sermon awaken wonderment?
iii. Is the preaching fresh and in a surprising way?
iv. Does it underscore the victory of the Kingdom of grace in our moment of time?
v. Does it tell them what is expected of them?
h. What kind of emotional response might the sermon evoke?
i. Is it warm or cold?
ii. Is there a sense of trust, courage, peace or guilt?
iii. Does it convey trust, assurance, confidence and love?
iv. Does it convey a sense of intimacy?
v. Does it speak to their personal relationship with Jesus Christ?
vi. Is it moving?
i.
Is this an oral speech, a sermon? Or is it reading literacy? “Orality
requires more use of illustrations, comparison, contrast and figurative
language to stir the imagination and set up mental pictures in order for
the listening ear to take in and process what is being heard.” (Wilbur
Ellsworth)
j. If after people have listened to the sermon, will they
come away anxious about themselves or reflecting on themselves? (D.M.
Lloyd-Jones)
k. Does the sermon address the total person, so that the
hearer becomes involved and knows that he has been dealt with and
addressed by God through the preacher? (D.M. Lloyd-Jones)
l. Will this sermon humble the sinner?
i. Will this sermon exalt the Savior?
ii. Will this sermon promote holiness?
iii. Does this sermon glorify God?
14. Other considerations:
a. Does this sermon have the three essentials of truth, clarity and passion? (Dr. G. Campbell Morgan)
b. Does the sermon do justice to and profitable for the whole counsel of God (Acts 20:20, 27)?
c.
Be sure that in all the sermon, from Old Testament and from the New –
Christ and His death and resurrection condition everything else that is
said. (Jay Adams)
d. Is the sermon Spirit-guided? (Jer. 1:9, 17: 26:2)
e. Is the sermon faithful to God (“…let him who has my word speak my word faithfully” Jer. 23:16, 28; Ez. 13:2,3).
f.
Does the sermon “disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed?”
(Rev. Chad Walsh) or “break a hard heart and heal a broken heart?” (John
Newton).
g. Does it add to God’s Word (like the Pharisees) or subtract from it (like the Sadducees)?
h.
Is there exposition, application and exhortation in the sermon (ex:
Deut. 31:30; 32:44; Deut. 1:5; 4:1; 5:1-21; 8:1; 10:12ff)?
i. Does the sermon aim for corporate edification, unity, maturity and growth (Eph. 4)?
“…the
explanation and application of the Word to the congregation of Christ
in order to produce corporate preparation for service, unity of faith,
maturity, growth and upbuilding.” (Rev. Peter Adam; p. 83).
j. Is
this sound preaching or sound doctrine? “To be sound is to be healthy;
healthy doctrine is doctrine which is not only true but also productive
of godliness. Sound doctrine is healthy teaching; that is, it changes
people’s lives.” (Peter Adam, p. 84).
k. Will this sermon help people to understand and receive Jesus Christ and Him crucified?
l. Recall that preaching well is not the objective, but rather the means to the end.
m. Is it theologically weighty and also pastorally appropriate?
n.
Is the sermon tied to literacy or orality? “…when a listener to a
speech or sermon is compelled to take careful and copious notes to
comprehend and retain what the speaker has said, the result, whether
consciously or not, is to return communication from orality to literacy
as quickly as possible.” (Wilbur Ellsworth)
o. Don’t make the mistake
of preaching the Gospel and hardly anything else but the Gospel, nor
preach the rest of the counsel of God as if it were unrelated to the
Gospel (Jay Adams)
p. Don’t preach in a way that resembles the
lecture format by which aspiring young theologs almost exclusively are
trained in seminaries. It may be fine for theological halls (at times),
but it is not fine for the pulpit – IT IS NOT PREACHING! (Jay Adams).
q.
Be careful not to “inadvertently convey the impression that the key to
understanding the mind of God is found in the acquisition of an arsenal
of highly technical and scientific skills. Over time men may come to
regard the scriptures the way a biology student regards his proverbial
frog; as a thing to dissect, rather than a source from which to hear
God’s voice.” (A. G. Azurdia III)
r. Has regard been given to the
“three essential principles of apostolic ministry…: the message, method,
and means for ministry ordained by Jesus Christ? The divine message?
Jesus Christ. The divine method? Authoritative proclamation. The divine
means? The power of the Spirit of God.” (A. G. Azurdia III)
s. Which style of preaching is this: Reformational or Puritanical?
i.
“For the Reformers, the whole sermon was application; what was added,
attached, or folded in was done naturally, organically, as an integral
part of the whole. From start to finish, as they interpreted the
Scriptures for the congregation, at the same time, they preached what
the text had to say about the people sitting before them. Application
was made all along.
ii. In contrast, the Puritans exposited the
text…they tacked on at the end of the sermon various and sundry ‘uses’
or ‘improvements on the text’ by way of application.” (Jay Adams)
iii.
The form of the Puritan sermon would be Declaration, the Explanation,
and the Application. The first two divisions were to convince the
reason, while the last division was aimed at warming the heart’s
affections into accepting the doctrine of the first division… The
preacher’s aim should be first to convince the understanding and then to
engage the heart. Light first, then heat.” (R. Bruce Bickel)
t. What
is the aim? “If the aim of Christian preaching is more than
intellectual enlightenment and moral reformation, but is, instead, the
thorough-going transformation of people dead in trespasses and sins,
then Christian preachers must rest their dependence solely upon the
Spirit of the living God because such a transformation requires a power
of an altogether supernatural kind. Stated simply, the power of the Holy
Spirit is the sine qua non of gospel preaching, the one thing without
which nothing else matters.” (Azurdia III)
u. Is the sermon merely expounding the text or does it preach Jesus – a living person with a living voice? (Wilbur Ellsworth).
v.
Is the sermon a dissected transcript of the Biblical text rearranged
into a lawyer’s brief with propositional truths? If so, is this faithful
to the Scripture? (Don Wardlaw)
i. “If the text ‘makes its point’ in
story form then we ought to seriously consider constructing a sermon
that is faithful to the content and the form of the biblical text…” (D.
Wardlaw)
ii. “…the goal is to study carefully the form of the text
and how it, in its literary context, plays its part in carrying the
message to its intended effect with the hearers…the example of miracle
stories which ‘were designed to evoke a wow! from listeners. The wise
preacher will guess that a turgid apologetic for miracles or, worse, any
rational explanation of miracles may scuttle the sense of wow and,
therefore, be homiletically inappropriate. If a passage wants to provoke
amazement, it would seem homiletically respectful to aim at the
effect.” (David Buttrick)
w. Don’ts:
i. Allegorize – searching beneath the literal meaning of a passage for the ‘real’ meaning.
ii.
Spiritualize – discarding the earthly, physical, historical reality the
text speaks about and crosses the gap with a spiritual analogy of that
historical reality.
iii. Imitating – seeing biblical figures as
merely individuals whose qualities we are to shun or mimic. It “tends to
transform the biblical author’s description into prescription for
today.” (S. Greidanus)
iv. Moralizing – “…means drawing moral inferences, usually things to do or become.” (Keck)
v.
Apply “[u]nless you are convinced that it is the intention of the
Scripture that it be applied in a certain way, no suggestion as to
application can be confidently advanced.” (Douglas Stuart)
15. Personal considerations
a. Do I through this sermon serve God in Christ and the people well?
b. Is there humility, recognizing that in myself I am unable to speak for God? (Ex. 4:10ff)
c. Am I serving biblically?
d.
“The Lord God has given me the tongue of a teacher, that I may know how
to sustain the weary with a word. Morning by morning he wakens, wakens
my ear to listen as those who are taught.” (Isa. 50:4)
e. Am I aware that it is God who makes me competent and sufficient to the task (2 Cor. 2:16; 3:5-6; 4:7)
f. Do I recall that I am powerless and that it is the Spirit and the Word that is effective?
g. Is the sermon preached from the heart to hearts?
h. Am I preaching this sermon as never sure to preach again, and as a dying man to dying men? (Richard Baxter)
i.
Remember that “every passion in the preacher does not constitute
unction. While it does not expel intellectual activity, authority, and
will, it superfuses these elements of force with the love, the pity, the
tenderness, the pure zeal, the seriousness, which the topics of
redemption should shed upon the soul of a ransomed and sanctified
sinner.” (Dabney)
