I remember well my mentor, Haddon Robinson, saying many years ago that the most common complaint of our listeners is that our sermons contain too many ideas. Evidently the problem hasn’t gone away.

In, Preaching That Matters: Reflective Practices For Transforming Sermons, Carrell writes, “Organization emerged as the number one listener-identified characteristic of a poor sermon…” (p. 72). The most common one-word description for the organization issue was

“rambling.”

Virtually every preaching portion you select looks like the slide above. And certainly every sermon we preach sounds like it too. Each Scripture, like each biblical sermon on that Scripture contains many ideas. Evidently, we’re not doing a good job showing how the ideas fit together to make meaning.

So, what we’re aiming at looks something like this:

In order to avoid what sounds like rambling, we have to organize the results of our exegesis according to the logic or arrangement of the ideas in a preaching portion.

I regularly teach that tracing the argument or flow of thought and allowing it to drive the sermon is the telltale sign of an expositor. For me, tracing the argument or discovering how the various ideas interrelate is the first thing I do on a Monday morning (after praying, “Open my eyes that I may behold wondrous things out of Your law.”).

Rambling is not just continuing to talk once your point is made. It is the word listeners used to describe a sermon that contained too many disconnected ideas. And that’s the key word, disconnected.

Carrell writes, “Wrote one listener, ‘I wonder if he even knows his main idea.'” (p. 73) Yikes!

I am going to give you and me the benefit of the doubt and say, “We do know the main idea.” Then, all that’s left for us to do before Sunday is to make sure we know how all the other ideas interrelate with the main idea and allow our congregants to follow that logic during the sermon.

And God will continue to receive glory in the church and in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 3:21),

Randal