Ten Tips for Keeping Your Sermon Prep Out of Your Weekend
Don't want to do sermon prep on the weekends? You don't have to!
Here are ten ways to reclaim your weekends.
You spoke right to me! How did you know?
A relevant sermon connects our listeners to our message in a way that helps them find God in the midst of their lives. Lent, this season of remembrance and anticipation, is a prime time to address our listeners' challenges and questions directly.
To help listeners feel as though we're speaking right to them, we need to understand their context, their struggles, and their hopes that they'll be OK.
Should You Preach "Relevant" Sermons?
Googling the idea of a sermon that is "relevant to the listener" brings up all kinds of disagreement. Some think the idea of relevance is juvenile or manipulative, that it's a cheap ploy to seem current at the expense of truth. Others say it's essential.
Here's just a sampling of what people have to say about "relevant" sermons:
- Be true to yourself and your sermon will automatically be relevant to the listeners.
- We're not supposed to consider the relevance of the listener but the relevance of the Gospel.
- Relevance will be discerned when we think "from the pew" instead of "from the pulpit."
- "Relevance" is a homiletical and theological disgrace because God is eternally relevant.
Is that the case, though?
Perhaps to determine whether our sermons should be relevant, we should consider what it would mean to preach a sermon that is NOT relevant.
The 10 Biggest Mistakes Preachers Make
Even the best preachers can fall into patterns that make them less effective. Check out these 10 mistakes even good preachers make to see if you might be unknowingly hurting your own preaching.
Does Your Sermon Persuade or Manipulate?
What are we trying to accomplish when we preach? What is our goal and purpose?
Is our goal to preach our listeners into agreement with our position–political, religious, social, or otherwise?
Or is our purpose to reveal the Good News to our listeners?
The sermon that manipulates tries to control the listener's response. It threatens that something is at stake in the relationship with you and/or the church and/or God.
How can we tell if we're stepping over that line to manipulation?
Ask yourself these questions...
Good Talk or Good Sermon? 7 Steps to Ensure You're Preaching Good News
I've heard many a good talk that tries to be a good sermon.
The preacher is well-intentioned, sincere, and passionate. But the most intriguing, entertaining, even insightful sermon is more like a clanging cymbal if it doesn't actually offer good news. Too often there's no theology in the "sermon" that elevates it from a lecture to a proclamation of faith and hope of God's actions with and among us.
We might feel instinctively that "we know Good News when we preach it," but it's worth double-checking. Are you sure you're proclaiming Good News?
6 Tips for Preaching the Gospel in a Divided Culture
Few of us have done this before.
Few of us have preached in political and cultural climates as volatile and unpredictable as the one we face in the U.S.right now.
I've preached my share of social justice sermons, but they were issue oriented. I've never needed to preach when an entire country was in foment, when families were separating over political views, when trust was so low it was difficult to even expect common courtesy.
We wonder how to preach the unifying love of Christ while many are divided; the ways to preach peace in the face of vitriol; how to preach dignity when displays of disrespect are sought as badges of honor.
Here are six tips to help.
What Are You Trying to Say? Two Tips for a Clear Message
If you're not clear on what you're trying to say, neither are your listeners.
Tip # 1) When your message is still in your head, test whether it's as clear as you think it is: write or say your message. If you have one simple sentence you're probably good to go. If you don't, use Tip #2.
Tip # 2) Answer the question: "What do I want my listeners to know?"
If you follow these two tips you'll be miles farther to writing effective sermons, guaranteed.
If you want the explanation why these two tips are necessary for every sermon,
read on.
Have you noticed that professional communicators all get editors?
- Journalists
- Authors
- Playwrights
- Screen writers
- Professional speakers
They all get editors as part of the package deal.
I'm Not the Right Preacher for this Job
This is not where I expected to meet you.
I never set out to run an online preaching formation center for Mainline Protestant and Roman Catholic clergy.
I was given this nice little idea to help a few preachers at a time. Work with them one-to-one for a year. Help them get better at preaching but tuck it into a process more like spiritual direction.
But now, here I am. A tucked-away-in-a-corner preacher no one knows is now sending you emails, blogging, getting on Facebook, publishing a book, and inviting you to be part of a preaching approach that's way bigger than you or me.
An Invitation to Preachers this Christmas: Give yourself the gift of time to prepare your sermon
It's a busy time of year, isn't?
I know what it's like to have to wedge sermon prep time into wherever I can get a spare minute. But this year, I have a radical idea: getting ready to preach goes first on my calendar.
As a gift not only to me but to my listeners.