He was happily greeting people at the door when a lady from the congregation spoiled the morning. She asked: “Pastor, why did you preach that sermon?”
She wasn’t being critical; it was an honest question. But as she stood there waiting, people lining up behind, the minister couldn’t think of an answer. Like many others who stand in the pulpit, he assumed that the sermon communicated its message. But it hadn’t. Inside, he started to be defensive: “If she had been listening she would have known.” But she was listening.
The reason for his sermon wasn’t obvious. If he was aiming for something, preaching for some result, it was not understood. He was giving information, that’s all, and he hadn’t thought through the “why” of it.
Why did you preach your sermon last Sunday? Why are you planning to preach the sermon that you are preparing now? The answer to that question is not in the sermon; the answer is in the mind of the preacher. Does the person who stands before the congregation have a reason for what he is preaching? If he doesn’t, he’s going nowhere. As a pastor explained, “We can give out information without edifying.” And John A. Broadus, in On the Preparation and Delivery of Sermons, described what happens: “It is melancholy to think how large a portion of the people, even in favored communities, really do not understand most of the preaching they hear” (Harper, 1944, p. 95).
Try something.
Write down, in one sentence, the reason you are preaching next Sunday’s sermon. If you can’t do it in one sentence, chances are you’re going to be preaching in vague generalities and the listeners won’t really understand where you’re going or what you expect. Oh, they might pick up one or two interesting illustrations or recall a summary point, but there won’t be much in the way of specific results because you weren’t aiming for any. Again, it was Broadus who said: “Something worse may happen than that the discourse should not be understood; it may be misunderstood, utterly, and with deplorable results. We must strive to render it not merely possible that the people should understand us but impossible that they should misunderstand” (p. 96).
A pastor, realizing this, said that because he is now consciously thinking about why he is preaching on a particular theme or text, he finds himself consciously clarifying as he goes along. He keeps his preaching direct—concentrating more on his audience than on his delivery. Communication has become important because he has something specific that he wants to say. With that kind of preaching, his parishioners are responding.
Salesmen know this too. They spend time before each phone call or visit to a prospect’s office honing their presentation and making sure they know the direction that they want to go. Some professional sales trainers even expect their trainees to know where they want to be at the end of a minute’s conversation so that they will aim to be there and not talk around their subject.
Are you that concerned about where you are going? As you pray about next Sunday’s sermon, do you know what should be happening to the congregation by the end of the first minute of the sermon, or the tenth? Will you quickly awaken a need? Will your hearers realize right away that “this is for me?” By the end of the first minute will you and the congregation be moving forward together?
Of course, God is free-wheeling. He won’t always be bound by our plans and can always break out of a sermon outline. Every experienced minister knows that. But that’s the exception. God uses thoroughly planned sermons and will give direction to our messages as we pray for their proclamation and reception right from the earliest stages of preparation. God honors prayed-for goals.
There should be a warning given here. It is unrealistic to expect that every goal in a sermon will be accomplished immediately. No clergyman will see all of the results that he would like to see. Those who expect too much too soon quickly become frustrated. Some parishioners will not hear and many who hear will not heed the promptings of the Holy Spirit. No person in the congregation will understand everything all the time. But each week many people will respond, and that number will increase week by week. The minister who wants results and preaches for realistic results will see those results, whether his message is meant to encourage, instruct, convince, challenge, or bring people to put their trust in Jesus Christ as personal Saviour. The focus will be clear, the people will understand, and they will be grateful to God.
But some ministers will argue, “This doesn’t apply to me. I’m not a topical preacher; I’m a Bible preacher; I expound the Word of God.”
Still the question has to be asked, “What results do you want from your Bible preaching?” A minister can preach without direction, even with the Word open before him, with the result that his parishioners can parrot “good Bible teaching,” yet show no change in their attitudes or actions.
Just as some salesmen address the value of their product, not the wants of the buyer, and lose sales, so some expositors of Scripture are simply addressing texts. The listener wants the text to address him.
What is it in that passage of Scripture that you want people to understand? What is the text saying that they need to hear? Why did you choose that particular passage and not another? Even if you are preaching through an entire book of the Bible, that question still has to be answered each week.
When you can put together that single sentence about why you are preaching each message, type it at the top of your sermon notes or outline. Then all week long as you think about the message, and on Sunday when you preach it, keep checking that sentence; it will keep you on target. It will make you restate, clarify, and emphasize the theme. Your hearers will know where you are going because you will know where you are going. They will appreciate that and understand your point better. Otherwise you risk taking an exciting book and making it very dull, and preaching right past the people who are asking, “Is there any word from the Lord for me?”
After all, that’s part of the reason they come to church. They want to hear what God is saying to them. God’s Word, because it is inspired, is meant to bring results. Every preacher should be able to say, at least to himself, “God gave me this sermon to preach because.…”
Are you preaching for results?
Then know the result you want as you prepare for this coming Sunday. When you know and can state it, the congregation will know it too. And you will see results.—ROGER C. PALMS, editor, Decision, Minneapolis, Minnesota.
