The Preacher’s Final Point: What Do You Hope the Listener Will Think, Feel or Do?
Do we hope our sermons have an effect?
Yes.
But what effect, exactly?
Do we hope to see minds changed? Hearts softened? The poor championed?
The Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, The Most Rev. Sean Rowe, wrote an open letter on June 11th, 2025, which included this:
“At its best, our church is capable of moral clarity and resolute commitment to justice. I believe we can bring those strengths to bear on this gathering storm. Churches like ours, protected by the First Amendment and practiced in galvanizing people of goodwill, may be some of the last institutions capable of resisting the injustice now being promulgated. That is not a role we sought—but it is one we are called to.”
Our world needs preaching that galvanizes the people of goodwill to resist the injustices being perpetrated against the most vulnerable.
Preaching with the End in Mind
As to how we do this, I remember an important lesson I learned from voice-acting lessons: The speaker needs to decide the purpose of every “beat” of speech. What do we want the listener to think, feel, or do?
For instance, if we want a listener to feel an urgency to act, we might speak rapidly, our voice focused, tense, and clipped, while we lean toward the listener.
Or, if we want the listener to feel compassion, we might speak slowly, pausing often, with our voice soft and rounded, and our posture relaxed, arms at our sides.
O. Wesley Allen, the Lois Craddock Perkins Professor of Homiletics at Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University and author of multiple books on preaching, says the same question applies to the purpose of a sermon in his book Determining the Form: Structures for Preaching. He writes:
“The sermonic claim is an expression of what preachers want the congregation to think, feel, and do at the close of the sermon. The end of the sermon, at which point the message fully "claims" the hearers intellectually, experientially, and ethically, is the climax of the sermonic event.” (Kindle edition, loc. 218. Emphasis mine.)
What we hope our listeners think, feel, or do at the end is the purpose of the sermon—its raîson d’étre, its intended effect.
For example, consider the Beatitudes.
At the end of a sermon on this text, we might hope our listeners feel empathy with the poor.
We might want listeners to think about a question: Have we treated others the way we want to be treated?
Or we might want listeners to actually do one thing: love our enemies.
How do we craft sermons towards this end?
Step 1: Discern what the Spirit is hoping listeners will think, say, or do
In our sermon prep, the most compelling idea is a mere clanging gong if it doesn’t move the listener deeper into the mind and heart of Christ.
And any encounter with Christ changes us.
In what manner do we hope our listener encounters Christ in this sermon? How do we hope that encounter forms us to be more like him?
What call to action, call to thought, or call to faith will we issue based on how God meets the human condition in the scripture before us.?
We must define this point, this “so what,” for the sermon in order to do more than offer interesting anecdotes or cultural context.
At Backstory Preaching (BsP), we call this idea the “Invitation to Transformation.”
Step 2: Craft the Sermon with the End in Mind
Once you’ve identified the sermon’s takeaway, write for the end.
The intro sets up the question, conundrum, or conflict that the ending resolves (or addresses if there are no answers).
The body offers examples—from the Bible, culture, congregation, news, etc.—of how this question or problem plays out in our lives.
After that issue is well established, the sermon introduces how God enters those questions and conflicts.
Who is God in this challenge? How does God behave? What does the passage reveal about God’s character and our ability to trust and follow?
Ideally, then, the entire sermon crescendos toward the takeaway—the call to action, call to thought, or call to faith.
The more the language and imagery of the start and end mirror each other, the more compelling the sermon will be.
Allen describes it this way:
“This means the strongest imagery and/or the most provocative language should come at the close. To put it as directly as possible, the beginning and middle of the sermon serve the ending.” (Kindle edition, loc. 218).
Once the content and organization are established, the rewriting phase can focus on enhancing these craft and language details.
All parts of the sermon function like a call and response, each initial question answered. Each named problem affirmed. Each element finding its conclusion in the sermon’s intentionally crafted end.
What are you inviting your listener to understand or believe more deeply? Why does it matter?
Every word of the sermon lays the path to those answers.
Step 3: Trust the Spirit and our Listeners
This does not mean we have to tell listeners exactly what a gospel response looks like.
Allen instructs, “We should lead our hearers up to a climactic moment and then trust them and the gospel to do the rest.” (Location 300)
That is, the call to action need not be prescriptive.
If our sermon message is that God calls us to love our enemies, we can trust the Spirit to nudge each person to identify the enemy they’re encouraged to love.
For some, that may be immigrants. For others, that may be those of a different political party.
Still others may feel conviction to love themselves or a difficult manager or a frustrating neighbor.
Crafting a sermon around loving your political enemies may resonate with some but feel hollow for others.
Rather than presume to know where God is working in each person’s life, get specific enough in your message that the takeaway is clear, but leave space for each listener to discern that takeaway’s application to their own circumstances and perspectives.
The power of preaching is in trusting God to reveal the sermon message to you—and then trusting the relationship between listener and Spirit to connect the sermon to their particular struggle.
Step 4: Temper Expectations
Your work is to preach.
The Spirit is responsible for the rest.
Allen writes:
“It is too much to aim for 180-degree turns in our hearers each week. We should aim for smaller, more realistic transformations-changing formations-changing an idea, more deeply understanding an issue, building stronger commitment to a principle, reforming a habit, opening where previously closed. A climax can be an internal ‘Hmm’ as much as a spoken ‘Aha’ or a shouted ‘Amen!’" (Kindle edition, loc. 227)
How your listeners embody your message is not your business or responsibility.
Relationships are unlikely to be reconciled by the following Sunday. Political affiliations almost certainly will not change overnight.
But it’s possible that, away from your gaze, someone offers a gentler response than they may have otherwise. Someone else may re-think a particular social issue. Still others may pray for someone they’d rather curse.
These small, invisible shifts are the works of the Spirit.
And we can trust she is ever at work among our people.
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