In my life-time I would guesstimate that I have listened to approximately 5000 church sermons. That’s considerably more than most people, but I am now in my 70’s and am also an ordained minister.
Back in my middle 20’s I started seriously analyzing messages. What was the subject the speaker was talking about? Could I as a listener state what the overall purpose of a given sermon or sermon series of messages was? How did the speaker want me to respond? All too frequently I had trouble coming up with answers.
In my 40’s I started asking these questions of friends who were listening to some of the same preachers in various church settings. I found that they also had trouble answering such basic inquiries. To my frustration, however, most of them didn’t seem as bothered by this lack of pulpit clarity as I was. I should probably add that over the years a number of them eventually dropped out of church.
There came a time when I decided I would devote a good part of my remaining years to see what I could do to help solve this problem surrounding Sunday sermons. Unfortunately, I have found that it is bigger than I realized and preachers have patterns that are deeply entrenched.
Even so, I have now had the privilege of working with literally thousands of both speakers and listeners and have seen real progress in many of these cases. Some of the lessons I have learned I want to share with you in my blog. More to come…
