Are Sunday sermons a tool for equipping? Most certainly. Are you equipping through your Sunday sermons? Here are a few questions to check if your preaching is equipping people for ministry.

Are you modeling, by good Bible exposition, the conviction that the Bible is our equipping manual? The process of teaching from the Word rather than from theories of psychology or sociology points people to God's source of instruction for all sorts of relational, social, ethical, and moral questions.

Is your delivery adult-to-adult or parent-to-child? Preaching equippers respect the adulthood of each believer and do not speak in condescending terms. This does not mean the absence of passion, but it is an educational passion rather than the rantings of a frustrated parent. My seven-year-old son asked me recently after hearing such a tirade, "Daddy, why was that man so mad at us?"

Do you write equipping goals for each sermon? There should be content goals for each sermon and goals to measure response: an ...