Today’s blog is a lightly edited excerpt from Craft an Effective Sermon by Friday, Backstory Preaching’s eCourse and the foundation of our popular Sermon Camp, starting August 15th.
We’re not writing sermons to get a job done.
Nor are we looking for a topic the same way we do for a term paper.
Instead, having engaged the text prayerfully—vulnerable and open to the Holy Spirit—we have been changed.
We encountered the living God, and that encounter transforms us.
We become a “word” of God, part of the story God is telling the world through creation.
A sermon serves as a public declaration of faith: yours.
After all the praying, sifting, and discerning we do before and during our prep, the sermon offers our best understanding of the ways God was with the people in the Scripture and is present with us now.
And at Backstory Preaching, we teach preachers to summarize this discovery in a Belief Statement—a single sentence defining the Good News the preacher has encountered for themselves.
The essential work of the Belief Statement
What is the Good News I believe?
The Good News isn’t dependent upon our belief to be true, yet “What do I believe?” is a critical question for preachers.
After your reading and study and prayer and reflection, the essential work of your sermon prep is to draft your belief statement, which will guide the rest of your sermon.
The Belief Statement is the foundation of an authentic message.
The Belief Statement articulates where the Gospel has been preached to us first: where we have connected with God, where we have experienced the Good News for ourselves, where the Truth has set us free.
Effective sermons can only be preached from the places we have believed.
And here we pray, “I believe. Lord, help my unbelief” (Mark 9:24).
The foundation of authenticity and connection in the pulpit
The biggest stressor we hear from preachers in discerning a sermon message is this: if the message doesn’t feel authentic, if it doesn’t “click” or “feel right,” the preacher feels disingenuous.
That unease can be intense enough to drive them back to the Scriptures late into a Saturday night.
If we feel disconnected from our sermon, it may be that we do not actually believe what we are asking others to believe —or we do not yet know what we believe.
Sharing what we believe as a result of our own transformation is what makes a sermon authentic and genuine.
This offering allows our listeners to see that we are on the same path of discovery and change.
Together, we’re learning to recognize God and respond to God’s hopes for us—in real time.
We become a living witness of the living Gospel, and we declare that faith publicly.
How do we identify what we believe?
As we engage the text, we read not just for a sermon message but for an encounter with God.
We open ourselves to the words on the page and Spirit moving within them.
We bring ourselves to the passage first, allowing ourselves to be known, loved, and instructed first.
And then we seek to articulate that encounter for others.
To write your Belief Statement, name the Good News revealed to you. You might allow responses to the following questions to guide you:
What did you discover about God’s nature in this passage?
What is the good news for the human condition?
Which patterns/assumptions/mindsets were disrupted or broken?
How were minds or hearts changed in this passage?
Where is Christ or the hope of Christ in this passage (including in Hebrew Scripture passages)?
Then, distill and refine your thoughts until you can answer these questions:
Who are you, God?
Where are you, God?
Who am I to you, God?
Who are we to you, God?
Articulate the idea, the theme, the thread of truth or hope that connects the passage, your life, and your listeners’ lives.
When we name the Good News clearly and succinctly, we’ll be clear about our theology.
And that clarity will allow us to proclaim a message we’re excited to preach and our listeners are eager to here.
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