Is your sermon achieving its purpose, and how do you know? What can you do to craft more effective sermons of any genre? Apply these three steps to grow your preaching skill immediately.
Preaching Advice Roundup: 16 Backstory Preaching mentors share strategies to make preaching easier, more effective, and more fun!
Sometimes, one small tip is powerful enough to unlock a new competency or significantly improve a skill or process. That’s why today's blog is all tips, tips, and nothing but preaching tips. As the 2021-2022 Mentorship class wraps up their program and celebrates graduation, I asked current Backstory Preaching mentors and apprentices (mentors-in-training) to offer some of their favorite preaching strategies to help you craft more effective sermons in less time—while loving the process!
3 Simple Steps to Preach Lofty Theological Ideas from Our Earthly Plane
When Jesus preached about the kingdom of heaven, he didn't explain what the “kingdom of heaven meant. Instead, he used commonplace metaphors like a mustard seed, leaven, and treasure buried in a field to preach lofty theological ideas from an earthly plane. He didn't preach about theology. He preached an experience of it. We can adapt his process to bring lofty theological concepts down to earth.
Preach Specifically: Dignity Is in the Details
What's Offensive? Preaching in the Language of Dignity
It might feel like we can’t say anything without offending someone. You’re right. Language evolves and therefore so does what is deemed offensive. To preach the dignity of every human being, we need to keep up with the changes in language so that in our sermons and writings, we are honoring and seeing our neighbors. Because when a person’s experiences, preferences, and identity are dismissed, they are rendered invisible. And that is offensive.
Crafting Sermons Like a Photographer (A Guest Post)
Photographers know the quality of a photo is determined less by the beauty of the surroundings and more by their choice of what to include—and exclude. Widen the lens, shift angles, zoom in or step back, turn up the green, soften the highlights—every choice changes the focus and final image. Shoot without paying attention to these details and you end up with an image that may be real but doesn't capture the deeper truth of a thing. The photo leaves the observer on the outside. "I guess you had to be there..."
This effort to bring your listener into the gospel as you see it is your work in sermons, as well.
Getting Away from the Page: How to Preach from the Heart
Preaching + Advertising? (A Guest Post)
“Both preaching and advertising struggle to get a message across in a world cluttered with noise that makes it hard for anyone with ears to hear. Because of this common struggle, the two communicative disciplines share a lot of the same concerns and methods. This means that a lot of what I learned was less of a radical re-thinking of preaching and more a confirmation of some standard elements of homiletical methodology to which advertising methodology offered some new nuance.”
A Stewardship Sermon Series on Psalm 50:14 (Part 2 of 2)
This is the second of a two-part blog series , “A Four-Week Stewardship Sermon Series on Ps. 50:14..” The sermon series is titled “To Know God Is to Thank God.”
Psalm 50:14: “Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving, and make good your vows to the Most High.”
Week One: Offer to God
Week Two: A Sacrifice of Thanksgiving
Week Three: Make Good Your Vows
Week Four: To the Most High
