Preach the Word
“Paint a picture in their minds,” my Homiletics professor said, just before giving me a C- for a sermon on which I’d diligently worked. At the time I appreciated neither his advice nor his letter grade. Fortunately, I soon realized he was right on both counts. The ‘art’ of the sermon has been lost and it took me quite some time to realize it. Warren Wiersbe says pastors too often take “skeletons into the pulpit and end up with cadavers in the pews—undernourished saints who have nothing to chew on but outlines.” Somewhere in our quest for quirky alliterations, outlines, quotes, poems, and prayers we’ve forgotten that when we take both concepts and images into the pulpit—weaving them together in such a way that a listener’s ears become eyes—they see the truth. And, in seeing truth, the imagination is nourished and a person leaves spiritually satisfied.
A sermon is a living, breathing thing. A good one creates and sustains life through the power of the Holy Spirit and the Word. It is equal parts: content and connection. As a preacher, I must have something to say and then say it in a way that they eyes of the heart are opened. It is a, dare I say, supernatural event where the speaker is super-intended and God words are spoken. If the message has not first seared my soul as a preacher, I cannot expect it to ever sear another’s. The most powerful sermons address the concerns of both the mind and the heart.
Though many preachers’ sermons fit neatly into a paradigm box, mine rarely do. I find my style is foundationally expositional yet tends to meander through topical, textual, historical, and biographical paradigms. Perhaps a better descriptive term is: narrative. Every sermon is an opportunity to tell the story of God through the lens of the biblical text. Thus our interpretation and application must always be firmly rooted in the text itself. Matt Chandler, Pastor of the Village Church, recently said to a group of pastors: “I’ve just come to find that a lot of you are really good at clichés and really bad at tying in the Word.” Oh to God that it may NEVER be said of me!
Essentially, I agree with Rob Bell’s assessment. The world needs better sermons and I’m passionate about it. A sermon shouldn’t be boring, it should be electric. It should never be something people sit through so they can get to lunch. A good sermon should rattle your cage, disturb you, comfort you, inspire and provoke you. This is an ancient, primal art form. When you study through the prophets and look through Jesus’ sermons: whatever you did, you didn’t sit back and just evaluate them. You were caught up into something because the communicator was caught up into something.