At times, we might contribute to this classic parishioner, blank stare.
One advantage of experiencing a couple of surgeries to extract a 6mm kidney stone from my right kidney was the opportunity to listen to a couple of sermons.
Preachers can relate to this. I was sincerely wanting to worship, not critique the sermon. But while I was worshiping, the homiletician in me thought, “Try to figure out the cause of the blank stare syndrome.”
I came up with two things over the past few weeks. They may help you as you prepare to preach.
First, I help create the blank stare when there is a lull in the emotional connection. There are sermon minutes filled with minutia that do not engage the listener. The data is not connected to any worship response. Many listeners who take God’s Word seriously will endure these minutes until the impact returns. But it’s painful for them and I don’t wan to cause this.
Second, I also help create the blank stare when there is a break in the logical flow of the subject matter. Too many minutes elapse as too many details are disconnected to the main worship response. And this can all happen within a well-crafted outline. Listeners easily lose their place in a sermon. Sometimes we lead them down this path of inactive learning by not connecting the individual concepts to their worship.
The two reasons I’ve listed cover the emotional and logical components of listening. Both are equally important for communication.
When you’re on vacation this summer and you’re a worshiper, play the reason-for-the-blank-stare game. God knows why you’re doing it. You want to be a better preacher. See if you experience what I did and for similar reasons.
And He will receive glory in the church and in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 3:21) because of His gift and your extra effort to improve.
Dave and I enjoyed fun times together at our Global Outreach Summit. He also has great interest in hermeneutics and homiletics.
Dave Shive is a 1968 graduate of Washington Bible College, and a 1972 graduate of Capital Bible Seminary with a Th.M. in New Testament Studies. He is also a 1994 graduate of the Baltimore Hebrew University where he received an M.A. in Biblical Literature. Dave also pursued doctoral studies at Baltimore Hebrew University.
He has spent the past 48 years in fulltime ministry as a pastor, Christian school director, college professor, and missions advocate.
Since 2008, Dave and Kathy have served as full time mission mobilizers. They are currently on staff with Frontier Ventures (formerly the U.S. Center for World Mission) in Pasadena, CA.
Dave and Kathy will celebrate their 54th wedding anniversary in June 2022. They have lived in Catonsville, MD, for 25 years. They have three married children, Dan, Mike, and Becky and are the proud grandparents of 11 grandchildren.
Working Harder to Preach Shorter
As a guest speaker, I was recently asked to limit my sermon to 25 minutes. As one who prefers 35 or 40 minutes to preach, I was confronted by a daunting challenge. Oddly enough, I find that preparing this short post on preaching short sermons is much more difficult than writing a longer post about preaching shorter sermons!
As I prepared my short(er) sermon, I recalled a senior pastor who, when asked by a guest preacher how long he could speak, replied, “Five minutes shorter than you think.” The senior pastor was probably thinking that he had heard many sermons that could be improved if only they were a bit shorter. One homiletics professor confided to me that each year one or two students would tell him that they could preach a better sermon in class if they were only allowed more pulpit time. The good prof’s response was always the same: “No, you couldn’t” (said with a smile).
As I was preparing my 25-minute sermon, the difficulties in preparing a shorter message were glaring. My struggle reminded me of the quote by Blaise Pascal: “I would have written a shorter letter, but I didn’t have the time.” Similar to Pascal, I realized I could preach a shorter sermon, but I would need a lot more prep time! Therein lies the dilemma of preaching with less allotted time.
To reduce the length of a sermon, more care is required in the selection of what to say. There also needs to be a ruthless culling of what NOT to say. Almost every pastor can agree that preaching for 25 minutes is harder than preaching for 45. Give me a text and I can preach on it for an hour with little preparation (I’m not saying it would be a good sermon!). But give me the same text and ask me to preach on it for 25 minutes and I would need significantly more prep time.
To preach a shorter sermon, one must be more deliberate, focused, conscious of every word, sentence, paragraph, and idea. Greater discipline is needed to make the best use of every precious minute. I found myself desperately returning again and again to my Big Idea to make sure everything I was saying was necessary and remained true to the text.
Oh, and a footnote to my story about my 25-minute sermon. When I arrived at my guest home the night before I was to preach, I was informed that I could take as much time as I needed! Relieved to hear that, I only exceeded my original time limit by a few minutes the next morning. I realized that my preparation for a 25-minute delivery enabled me to preach a much better sermon.This kind of sermon preparation is great practice in developing homiletical discipline. Try this sample exercise: If you have 40 minutes to deliver a sermon, prepare as if you only have 25 minutes to preach. See what happens!
Through the years I have always been intrigued by critiques and analyses of musical performers. Recently I enjoyed a documentary on the Beatles and once again came away with insights for preaching.
One interviewer/reviewer said of the Beatles:
“They were fresh and they were honest.”
Just those two things, but extremely important for explaining part of why this new singing group took the world by storm.
It got me thinking whether these two elements of being fresh and honest are important for preaching God’s Word in church on Sunday.
First, why is being fresh and honest important for preachers? Our listeners resonate with a sense of freshness that they hear in our preaching. This kind of freshness means that you and God are together in the study before the sermon. Freshness means God’s Spirit is teaching you in the study and in your sermons and lessons you are relaying what He is teaching you. It is very current, very fresh material.
Then there is honesty. This gives our listeners the assurance that you are being real in your own faith-journey. Your preaching and teaching is genuine, not contrived. Our listeners find it easier to listen to us because they feel we’re real, not fake.
Second, how do preachers accomplish being fresh and honest? This kind of freshness sounds different, but not in the sense of always coming up with things they’ve never heard before. It might be the way your use words and phrases. It may be your particular style, but it is unmistakably you.
And being honest? It includes an honesty about your own wrestling with the text. It includes honestly preaching the text no matter how it might sound to the listeners. It also includes the sense that you believe what you’re saying and that it’s a matter of life and death.
Anyway, I hope this creates some thinking on effectively communicating God’s Word. You probably have things come to mind immediately that could add to either being fresh or honest or both.
May any sense of Spirit-created freshness and honesty result in our Lord receiving glory in the church and in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 3:21),
Manuscripting your sermon isn’t about being clever.
I am writing this post on a Sunday evening. If you preached today you know that feeling of a sense of accomplishment, plus the usual nagging thoughts of, “It could’ve been better, Lord. I tried my best.”
I am enjoying the slow process of reentering my “normal” life. Like, for instance, getting back to my reading schedule which includes books like Jared E. Alcántara’s, The Practices of Christian Preaching: Essentials for Effective Proclamation.
In his introduction, Jared reminds his readers that what matters most is what we preach and “not just how we preach” (p. 6).
He quotes Augustine:
“There is a danger of forgetting what one has to say while working out a clever way to say it” (p. 6).
As I mentioned not too long ago, I had the privilege of working with two sections of Advanced Homiletics students in PA and MD. Part of their final sermon assignment involves writing a manuscript. They preach without it, but write it to practice what they want to say to their listeners. In almost every case it makes them better preachers since the practice makes them work harder on how they speak to their congregants.
Alcántara reminds us how important it is to develop sermon content based upon solid exegesis of the passage. That’s what we have to say. That’s where our authority comes from.
But there is a place for working on how we say it. Cleverness isn’t the goal but listenability and clarity are. So allow the practice of manuscripting to aid your communication. Just note Augustine’s warning. We can’t work so hard at being clever that we forget what we have to say.
As you begin to think hard about next Sunday strike a balance between careful exegesis (what to say) and engaging orascript (how you say it). Discover the strong foundation and then build on it.
And our Lord will receive glory in the church and in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 3:21).
Randal
P.S. I am curious as to what percentage of sermon prep time do you devote to crafting your words (as opposed to the raw exegesis).
Before getting back to sermon application, I wanted to take a moment to ask you about your word smithing. I know it’s not a word. The spell-checker just rejected my one-word and spit it into two.
One of the top five books on communication that I’ve ever read is Humes’, The Sir Winston Method. He analyzes and summarizes Winston Churchill’s powerful communication style.
A top takeaway from the book is the CREAM approach to crafting words. The acrostic stands for:
C = contrast
R = rhyme
E = echo
A = alliteration
M = metaphor
You can use this acrostic to guide the development of key concepts in your sermon such as your big idea or theme.
I am not great at this, but every once in a while my wordsmithing superpower kicks in. This happened a couple of times the past two weeks.
First, while preaching in 1 Corinthians 1:17ff. where Paul teaches about the cross of Christ and how foolish that message sounds, I urged our folks to
“stick to the script.”
This would help them fight the temptation to change their message ever so slightly to make our Gospel appear more palatable.
Then, yesterday while preaching Jude 5-10 I reviewed the purpose for our series with this broad directive:
“We proclaim the Gospel out there; we protect it in here.”
The first one has a lot of alliteration and a little bit of rhyming going on. The second example has more alliteration and a little bit of contrast.
If you’re serious about practicing CREAM, you’ll enjoy Humes’ relatively short, but packed paperback (see what I did there?). My Doctor of Ministry thesis, Teaching the Skills of Preaching, is not nearly as enjoyable, but does contain examples of CREAM.
May our Lord receive glory in the church and in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 3:21) as we put our word smithing (there it goes again!) superpowers to good use each Sunday.
Would it matter to your sermon if no one was listening?
One of my mentors, the late, Dr. Haddon Robinson, taught me about the difference between preaching and lecturing. He put it this way:
“We don’t talk to our listeners about the Bible; we talk to them about them from the Bible.”
My wife, Michele, recently had an opportunity to listen to another preacher from a local church. I don’t blame her. To quote my mentor again, she’s heard enough poor sermons in her lifetime–bless her heart–it’s no wonder she’s still a Christian. [I’ve preached over 2,000 sermons and she’s heard most of them!]
So, I asked her the question that ranks second in my order of importance:
“Was the preacher talking to you about the Bible or talking to you about you from the Bible?”
Without hesitation she replied: “The first one.”
The first scenario, the lecturer’s stance, does not require listeners. Take a look at last week’s sermon or what you have developed so far this week and ask yourself whether or not the way it sounds requires listeners.
Michele followed that up with this insight:
“But if you believe your assignment is to teach the people [insert a book of the Bible or theological concept], then it makes sense to preach like that.”
But if our responsibility is to watch over souls (Hebrews 13:17), then we approach the sermon differently. We talk to them about them from the Bible because we are shepherding them in the moment, urging them to worship our Lord during the teaching.
As you continue to prepare for this weekend’s assignment, as yourself whether you are taking the lecturer’s stance or the preacher’s.
While I am convinced our Lord can receive glory in the church and in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 3:21) either way, I am also convinced you and I are being more responsible soul-watchers to the degree that we continue to talk to them about them from the Bible.
Randal
P.S. By the way, in case you’re interested, the first question of importance is, “Did the preacher preach with accuracy, faithfully saying what God is saying?”
If you want to keep your worshipers engaged during the sermon, then…
I can’t remember the source and it’s been years. But someone rated the best sermons and discovered that one thing that they shared in common was a noticeably greater number of questions than lesser rated sermons.
Jonathan Edwards’s sermon, Value of Salvation, could qualify for an effective sermon that effectively uses questions to keep listeners engaged.
In the Doctrine section, Edwards’s second particular is: “The whole world shall have an end with respect to every particular person at death…all worldly pleasure…come[s] to an end.” (p. 313 in Kimnach’s volume 10 of The Works of Jonathan Edwards)
After stating that particular doctrine, Edward bombards his listeners with seven straight questions. He leads off with, “To what advantage, then, will be bags of gold and silver?” (p. 313). Then, six more questions follow, often a variation of, “What good will it do him then that…?” (p. 314). The seventh and final question ends the second particular doctrine and comes directly from Luke’s parable in chapter 16 about the rich man who built more barns to store all his goods: “…then whose shall those things be…?”
Each question drives home the point of doctrine. And if you and I ask the right questions at the right time, we are forcing our worshipers to engage.
There’s a reason why the best sermons contain the most questions. Engaging preachers and teachers engage their listens with great questions.
Lord willing, tomorrow many of us will begin preparing for the fourth Advent Sunday of this year. As you write your orascript, think about the kinds of questions you can ask your listeners to force them to think along with you about the greatest gift of our Lord Jesus Christ.
And may our God receive glory in the church and in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 3:21) by our attempts to bring our listeners into heartfelt worship.
Randal
P.S. And one more thing, when you ask questions during the sermon, ask them in a way that lets them know you really expect an answer. I actually expect them to answer, but whether you do or not, it’s critical to ask the question so they know you want them to think with you.
This is a guest post written by Dr. Jeffrey Arthurs. Jeff is Professor of Preaching and Communication at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. We team up together each year to instruct Doctor of Ministry students in Preaching the Literary Forms of the Bible. He is the author of Preaching with Variety and Devote Yourself to the Public Reading of Scripture. I hope your enjoy and profit from his insights. I always do.
As a teacher of preaching for more than twenty years, I have listened to thousands of student sermons. Most of those sermons were biblically accurate, and most were theologically grounded. (I’m glad to see a growing trend toward Christ-Centered preaching). About half were interesting; about a third were clear; and about a quarter were applied with insight and specificity.
Here are my top three observations on how to improve:
(1) Think yourself clear. Our job is to “package” in 30 minutes what it took us 10+ hours to prepare. This demands ruthless simplicity. I’m not talking about dumbing it down. I’m talking about having your idea(s) so well in hand that you could deliver the gist of your sermon in 60 seconds or less.
(2) Be concrete in application. Come down the “ladder of abstraction” with real life examples. Show what the truth of the text looks like in actual situations for the actual people who sit before you. If the text urges us to be patient, ask yourself: when, where, with whom, how, and what hinders our patience? Read the Sermon on the Mount and notice how much time our Lord spends at the bottom of the “ladder of abstraction” with concrete application.
(3) Model. Be an example of speech, life, love, faith, and purity. Don’t be afraid to illustrate the text from your own life, either “positively” or “negatively.” To be sure, there are risks with each, but when done with humility, and when done in the context of pastoral ministry where you are more than just a talking head on Sunday morning, God’s truth through your personality is powerful. This is part of the way you can watch over their souls—by pointing out how you yourself are being saved through preaching.
The Opinion section seems fair and the writing is superb. Photo by Allie on Unsplash
Several months ago I decided to go back to getting a newspaper again. I was close to getting a subscription to digital curated news, such as Apple News, but the reviews were not great. I chose the Wall Street Journal thanks to a generous discount for educators. Or, was it students? That’s not important right now.
What is important is how the quality of WSJ’s writers is helping me be a better communicator of God’s Word.
Here are some lines from this weekend’s WSJ from one of my favorite writers, Peggy Noonan’s, Declarations: The GOP Tries to Make Its Case…
“If you weren’t moved by [Jon Ponder’s speech] you don’t do moved.”
Or, the reporting of Sen. Tim Scott’s speech which included the phrase,
“Because of the evolution of the Southern heart.” (explaining how “a black man who started with nothing [ended up in “Congress in an overwhelmingly white district in Charleston and beat the field, including the son of former-Sen. Strom Thurmond.”].
Or…
“[Republicans] hit on the one fear shared equally now by the rich, the poor and the middle: that when you call 911 you’ll go to voicemail.”
Or, my new favorite word I read several days ago: humblebrag.
So, in Psalm 18:23 David commits humblebrag when he claims: “I was blameless before him, and I kept myself from my guilt.” Much different than David’s confession in Psalm 38:18 “I confess my iniquity; I am sorry for my sin.”
There are several times in the earlier Psalms when David voices humblebrag. It’s a great word to describe how David can crow even though there were many times he had to eat crow.
I just wished I had remembered to say it in the sermon. Oh well.
May our Lord receive glory in the church and in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 3:21) because of our attempts to become better wordsmiths.
One of the values of reading sermons is that you are able to learn something you can’t from a good commentary: how a pastor/theologian creates their rhetorical strategy.
Along with obvious exegetical/theological developments, sermons contain evidence of rhetorical strategy. Preachers show you how they logically move from minute to minute, major/minor point to point, or move to move.
For instance, in Edwards’s third recorded sermon in Kimnach’s volume 10 (The Works of Jonathan Edwards), Wicked Men’s Slavery To Sin (based on John 8:34), Edwards states the obvious doctrine: “Wicked men are servants and slaves to sin.” The verse says that much. But his opening move is labled:
“[Query] I. How does it appear that wicked men are servants and slaves to sin? Perhaps you may think with yourself, ‘I don’t see but that wicked men are happy, and live as free as the best men in the world.’ Or it may be you may object in your mind that you are very wicked yourself…” (p. 340)
As you can see, Edwards anticipates the response of his listeners, something Buttrick called, a contrapuntal. He expects pushback from his listeners right from the start. So before he does anything, he wants to make sure everyone knows that this verse/doctrine is reality.
You may have also noted that Edwards is acutely aware he is addressing some wicked people and this means anticipating their response.
I am more geared to filling message minutes with exegetical data, but Edwards aims at proving God’s Word to be true. He develops three proofs for this first Query, the last of which is:
“Thus, if sin requires them to steal, swear, defraud, or commit fornication, it is done; if sin command them to do that which tends to their own ruin and destruction, it is done” (p. 342)
In order to preach like this, Edwards must know what God says elsewhere in His Word about this subject matter (i.e., the ability to cross-reference in a way that develops his argument). Even before that, he has been trained to think in the direction of what I’m calling for now, extra-exegetical insights.
Before Sunday, you might explore places in your sermon where your listeners may not all be on board yet and need some coaxing.
And may our Lord receive glory in the church and in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 3:21) through your efforts.
