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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