Most pastors have a healthy sense of self-worth. Otherwise, they would have chosen some other profession that would not require so much contact with people. It takes a person who has a certain level of confidence in order to deal with the kinds of issues that most pastors face virtually every day.

In the course of my own ministry, far too often I’ve observed an unintended consequence of the self-esteem that enables most pastors to fulfill God’s calling on their lives. It takes the form of a tendency to want to, or need to, do everything without any help from others.

I see this when I attend worship services in various churches. The service begins with the pastor greeting the congregation. He or she then leads in the Call to Worship. The pastor will then often lead the singing, pray the prayers, read the Scripture, preach the sermon, and pronounce the Benediction. As I leave the church, I am keenly aware that what I’ve witnessed over the course of the last hour or so is clearly a “one-man or one-woman show.”

Obviously, in the vast majority of cases, the pastor has received the most theological training. He or she may also very well be the best public speaker in the church. The pastor does have the clearest sense of what he or she wishes to accomplish in a given worship service. But, really, isn’t there room for a little help from some dedicated members of the congregation?

I invite you to click the link on this page that will take you to my Sermon-Coach.com website, where you can choose to listen to Podcast No. 194. In this Podcast, I offer a number of suggestions how a pastor can involve the members of his or her congregation in the worship service.

Not only does such involvement free the pastor to concentrate on the parts of the service for which he or she is most qualified, it also builds a greater sense of community within the church. Certainly part of developing ever-greater spiritual formation among your congregants is helping them use the gifts God has given them for His glory.

As a pastor, you do not need to always stand in the spotlight. In fact, you should always prefer to concentrate on keeping the Lord Jesus Christ in the center-stage position. By inviting members of your congregation to partner with you—and by training them carefully to do so—you actually provide a level of pastoral care that brings honor to our Lord and King.

Once again, I want to take this opportunity to introduce you to my new book, The Sermon Sucking Black Hole—Why You Can’t Remember on Monday What Your Minister Preached on Sunday. You may pre-order this book at Amazon.com by clicking here.

This book gives information about how to make your sermons memorable. And, after all, as ministers we do want the people we serve to remember what we say when we share what God has laid on our hearts. Don’t we?

 

 

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Please click here to visit David Mains’ Sermon-Coach.com website.

You will also find a variety of resources for pastors and congregations at the Mainstay Ministries website. Please click here.

 

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As I write this “Preaching Tip,” I confess to you, my fellow minsters, that I have a distinct advantage when it comes to talking about preaching within the framework of a given amount of time. That’s because I spent more than twenty years in radio and television where I had to say whatever God had laid on my heart within the confines of a very strict time period.

Radio and television teaches someone like me the necessity of choosing words very carefully. For each minute of a twelve-and-a-half minute radio broadcast, it was not at all uncommon for me to spend one hour or more carefully crafting my words. I would write and rewrite—all with my trusty fountain pen. I did not use a typewriter, or later, when they became commonly available, a computer. I still to this day draft all of my sermons using my pen-on-paper approach.

I also had another distinct advantage over the sermon preparation methods used by most of my fellow ministers. You see, early on in my ministry, I abandoned some of the methodology I was taught in homiletics class in seminary. Instead of the very traditional three-point-sermon approach, I discovered that most people listening to my sermons had a hard enough time remembering a single point.

So, I switched from a three-point sermon to a one-point sermon. I determined that each of my sermons would have a very clear, single “Subject.” And, I would build the entire sermon around that single “Subject.”

But, more than that, I realized that very few sermons actually ask the listeners in the congregation to do anything as a result of what the minister has so carefully shared. I decided that to make the sermon effective, I had to give the congregants an expected “Response” —something that would tell them what they needed to do as a result of hearing the words of my sermon.

Next, I recognized that I could not give the people in my congregation a single “Subject” and an expected “Response” without helping them find some concrete steps they could take to make that “Response.” I began to include some “How-Tos” in each of my sermons. These “How-Tos” would help the ones who actually wanted to respond to choose what they might do.

I also soon realized that people would like to know “How Long” it will take before they can see some results in their lives by doing what I’ve suggested in my sermon. I began to include some explanation as to what the listeners could expect time-wise when they follow my suggestions for deepening their spiritual formation.

To give the congregants a “hook” onto which they could hang a memory of what I said in my sermon, I decided to craft a single sentence that would succinctly state the “Subject” and the expected “Response.” I called this the “Key Biblical Truth Statement” or sometimes just the “key sentence.” I made certain I repeated this key sentence at least a couple of times during the sermon.

Soon, when I would ask the people who heard a particular sermon what I had preached about, they could tell me quite clearly the main point (the “Subject”) and what I had asked them to do (the expected “Response”). I used that method of sermon preparation for many years.

When I moved from the pastorate into radio, and later into television, I used this same method of sermon development. If I could share a single-point “Subject” and an expected “Response” in a key sentence, and also give the listeners some “How-Tos,” I could feel confident that many of those who tuned in to the program would take something away from that short time that they would later remember, think about, and, hopefully, put into practice.

Do you have a problem running out of time when you preach? If so, I heartily suggest that you give serious consideration to the “Sermon-Coach Method of Sermon Preparation.” I also suggest that you click the link on this page that will take you to my Sermon-Coach.com website and listen to Podcast No. 193.

I also want to take this opportunity to introduce you to my new book, The Sermon Sucking Black Hole—Why You Can’t Remember on Monday What Your Minister Preached on Sunday. This book is so new that at this point you can only pre-order it at Amazon.com by clicking here. However, the book is now off the press, bound, and I’m already holding one in my hand.

This book gives even more information about how to make your sermons memorable. And, after all, as ministers we do want the people we serve to remember what we say when we share what God has laid on our hearts. Don’t we?

 

 

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Please click here to visit David Mains’ Sermon-Coach.com website.

You will also find a variety of resources for pastors and congregations at the Mainstay Ministries website. Please click here.

 

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As we ministers begin to preach, we know that we must capture the attention of those in our congregation. And yet, sometimes we fall into patterns that disrupt the very attention grabbing we need to sustain in order to most effectively convey the message God has laid on our hearts.

I guess I’ve been thinking a lot about this subject lately: “How to attract and keep the attention of listeners.” We simply cannot teach or exhort our people if they have tuned us out. And, it is so very easy for them to do that—tune us out—especially in our culture today.

It may seem unthinkable that people would check their email or Facebook account during our sermons. After all, we have spent hours crafting a sermon that shares the truth of God’s Word and offers steps along the pathway toward mature spiritual formation. So, how could anyone choose to do something other than listen attentively to what we have to say?

Nevertheless, sitting in the congregation—as I am more likely to do today than actually stand behind the pulpit—I can see more than a few individuals looking at their smartphones or tablets. Either they are amusing themselves by scrolling through the latest photos they’ve taken, or they are actually checking email and looking at Facebook, or Twitter, or Instagram, or some other social media. Oh, I know they may have a “Bible App” on their device. But, I notice they rarely look up, so I suspect they’re not looking at the passage of Scripture for the sermon.

Since our culture seems so driven by what people can look at, visuals can become one tool in our minister’s toolbox that will help us capture and hold the attention of our congregants. You may already have begun to use visuals. But, are you using them as effectively as possible?

In Sermon-Coach Podcast No. 192, I offer some specific suggestions as to how ministers can use visuals in the most effective way. I invite you to click the link on this page that will take you to my Sermon-Coach.com website. Once there, you can click on the link and listen to this latest Podcast.

If you think about the way Jesus communicated with His disciples, He often used something visual to grab onto and hold their attention. We ministers need to find ways to make listening to our sermons as engaging as possible. The effective use of visuals may help us do just that.

 

 

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Please click here to visit David Mains’ Sermon-Coach.com website.

You will also find a variety of resources for pastors and congregations at the Mainstay Ministries website. Please click here.

 

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Every serious pastor, when he or she begins to construct a sermon, wants to make that sermon memorable. Yes, pastors want to fairly and accurately represent the message that they believe God has laid on their hearts. They also want to make certain that they incrementally aid their congregations in spiritual formation. But, most pastors also realize that to write and deliver a sermon that will “stick” with their congregants long after they’ve left the church—well, that’s just a really good thing.

So, most of us, as pastors, rely on the illustrations we use to provide “hooks” for people to grab on to when they hear us preach our sermons. In fact, sometimes, we even come upon an illustration that grips us so tightly we may even try to build a whole sermon around that illustration.

However, when we make an illustration, or a group of illustrations, the central point of our sermons, we will ultimately fail in meeting the goals we have set for ourselves. Our sermons will likely not properly convey God’s message, will not aid our congregants in their spiritual formation, and will not become memorable.

One of the great advantages of the Sermon-Coach Method of Sermon Development comes from the fact that it has the ability to give pastors a laser-like focus for their sermons. By starting with a clearly chosen “Subject” and then determining exactly what “Response” you want from your listeners, you can begin writing a sermon that does not need to have “sermon fillers.”

We define “sermon fillers” as extraneous, but generally well-meaning, material that fills time, but does not necessarily achieve a thoughtful, well-constructed outcome for a given sermon. In fact, sometimes sermons become an unrelated chain of “sermon fillers.”

Illustrations do play a key role in creating the “How-Tos” that will enable your congregants to make the “Response” that you intend them to make. So, I’m not suggesting that you do away with illustrations that truly support the “Subject” and “Response.”

If you would like to hear more of what I have to say on this topic, I invite you to click the link on this page that will take you to my Sermon-Coach.com website. Once there, you may listen to Podcast No. 191.

Creating memorable sermons does not depend on clever illustrations. By choosing a clear “Subject,” “Response,” “How-Tos,” and “How Long,” you can easily craft a sermon that will convey the message God has laid on your heart, help your congregation to deepen their spiritual formation, and become truly memorable.

 

 

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Please click here to visit David Mains’ Sermon-Coach.com website.

You will also find a variety of resources for pastors and congregations at the Mainstay Ministries website. Please click here.

 

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