"Really—How Hard Can Preaching Be?" Very. Here’s Why.
Photo by Robert Baker on Unsplash
I taught a preaching class a few years ago which included a lay person who never intended to preach.
He took the class because, for sixty years, he’d been listening to overly long, unfocused sermons—and he wanted to find out why.
He took the class because, in his words: “Really—how hard can preaching be?”
It’s not like we’re summiting mountains or performing brain surgery, right?
I wasn’t able to follow up with him afterwards, but I’m confident he gained a better appreciation for the complex layers of theology, analysis, synthesis, writing craft, and oratory skill involved in offering a sermon.
If his comments during the course are representative of other listeners, I have some ideas about why many parishioners struggle to connect to the sermons they hear.
Take a moment to do the quick evaluation below.
1) preaching is vitally important & Requires Dedicated time to do Well.
If you’re reading this blog, you likely agree that preaching is a vitally important part of your ministry.
But do your actions reflect this value?
Preaching well requires time. Dedicated, sacred time throughout the week to soak in the scripture, study, organize your thoughts, and craft a compelling message.
And as much as YOU may recognize the time involved, all too often, congregations do not—leaving preachers juggling more tasks than feasible in a work week and pushing sermon prep to the edges or, more often, into personal time.
How do you know whether you and your church recognize the importance of preaching? Consider these questions.
Do you (and your staff and your parishioners) respect your sermon prep time as sacred and essential to the health of your congregation?
If so, do you prioritize time for sermon prep each week?
Or does it get squeezed into the space between budget meetings, hospital visits, and scheduling the HVAC repair company…or get left to the 11th hour Saturday night at the expense of your personal or family time?
Do you maintain your connection to God outside of your church responsibilities?
In other words, do you make time to relate to God as a beloved child in addition to connecting as a pastor and messenger of Good News?
I ask these questions not to issue judgment or condemnation but to encourage honest reflection.
What would your week look like if your church believed preaching is essential to those who enter your doors?
How might your time for sermon prep be prioritized if your calendar lined up with the conviction that the people in your pews need to know who God is, what God does, and how responding to the Good News with all our hearts, minds, and souls leads to an abundant life?
What would change if, week after week, our increasingly biblically illiterate culture encountered engaging, compelling sermons that offered a clear message of Good News so that minds were renewed and lives transformed?
Of course, the Gospel is preached far and wide beyond the pulpit.
But since the sermon is a primary tool of preachers—and by far the most significant factor in whether someone attends a church—these questions merit consideration.
2) Preaching is a complex craft involving multiple skills that are each disciplines unto themselves
Preaching is both science and art. Discipline and inspiration. Corporate and personal.
Consider the skills involved in writing and delivering a single sermon:
knowledge of scripture
knowledge of church history
knowledge of the cultural and historical contexts of Biblical texts
awareness of current events—global, national, local, and congregational
awareness of the needs, concerns, and hopes of our listeners
commitment to ethics
ability to connect the ancient words, lives, and contexts of Scripture to our current struggles and cultures
ability to craft an introduction that grabs listeners’ attention and a conclusion folks will remember after they leave the building
ability to organize a sermon’s content in a way that flows clearly and smoothly from idea to idea—from the order of ideas to the transitions between
ability to identify and articulate the Good News—even in confusing and unsettling texts
and of course, all the public speaking skills involved: pacing, vocal inflection, volume, eye contact, gestures, awareness of verbal of physical “tics,” etc.
So, what’s so hard about preaching? Everything!
Whew! It’s no surprise, then, that we likely will never feel we “arrive” at preaching mastery.
If the Gospel and preaching are vitally important, though, then we want to keep getting better at it. And yet, preaching is so complex it requires—and deserves—a lifetime of study.
The good news is we can always improve our ability to offer a sermon message succinctly and compellingly so listeners’ attention is held first word to the last.
And why do these skills matter?
Because if our listeners tune out, they don’t hear the Gospel.
Or if they tune in only to get lost in a muddled, nebulous message, they miss the Gospel.
Or if they tune in only to hear a perfectly clear message devoid of Good News, they’re left with merely a self-help talk.
Proclaiming Good News of great joy for all people is the whole point of preaching!
As a preacher, I can’t think of anything more important than continually improving how to offer the Gospel in ways people can hear, absorb, and say yes to.
3) Growth as a preacher requires a plan and support—which can be difficult to find
Sometimes it’s hard to know our own weaknesses.
Even when we know what we’d like to improve, it’s can be hard to go about it alone.
Knowing we are stewards of a craft that can always be improved doesn’t always mean we know how to grow and improve.
Here are some ways to get started on your own:
Read one book per quarter that pertains to preaching.
Listen to and evaluate one of the sermons you preach.
Better yet, swap sermons with a preaching buddy and appraise each other’s.
Listen to someone whose preaching you admire. Pay particular attention to the elements that compel you and try to emulate their techniques in your next sermon (not to be confused with copying the actual ideas or content of their sermon!).
Find a group of parishioners for bible study on the lessons. You’ll encounter ideas and concepts you’d never have thought of alone, and learn about their lives in ways you can address in your sermon that week.
Join us for Live Lectio on Mondays at noon CST (on our Facebook page) to prayerfully read the week’s RCL Gospel lesson.
Choose one aspect of sermon crafting and work on that one skill, one month at a time. For example, you could focus on storytelling, transitions, attention-getting first sentences, or conclusions people will remember.
Make plans to attend a preaching conference.
And any step toward growth will yield fruit that surprises and delights. Doing just one thing keeps us growing!
That said, sometimes we don’t have the time or bandwidth to figure out what we want to work on or how we’ll learn and implement new ideas or what will actually produce the growth we are desperate for right now.
If that’s you, you don’t have to figure it out on your own.
4) A Proven Path to Transformation
We created the Mentorship for exactly this purpose.
It’s a holistic, 10-month intensive that gives you the guidance, proven tools, and trusted feedback to experience real transformation.
You’ll discover what’s working about your sermons and why. And where you can make shifts that produce outsized impacts in the clarity, engagingness, and impact of your sermons.
But it’s not just your preaching craft that will grow. YOU will grow: in your confidence, your voice, your balance between ministry and personal life, and your relationships. Most importantly, you’ll deepen your connection to God, the source and purpose of your entire ministry.
If this sounds like the kind of support you need, we’d love to have you join the Backstory Preaching Mentorship.
Applications are open now until midnight on June 5, 2025!