BACK to BASICS PREACHING A TEN STEP GUIDE TO MASTERING THE ESSENTIALS Steve May
Becoming a great preacher, like becoming a great artist, requires a life commitment. Calvin Miller
introduction C.S. LEWIS once said that Christians need to be reminded more than we need to be instructed. This especially applies to the preacher s relationship to preaching. Most of us know what we need to do we just need to be reminded from time to time. Therefore, I hope this back-to-basics guide will serve as a reminder to preachers and teachers that a few small steps can make a big difference in the impact we have with our listeners. Here s to great preaching! Steve May 4
YOUR SERMONS ARE AS GOOD AS YOUR RESOURCES 1 IN HIS SEMINAR on preaching, Rick Warren talks about the need to use good resources during the sermon preparation process. He asks, Did you hear about the preacher who insisted that he would be original or nothing and was both? Maybe there are a handful of preachers so naturally deep and dynamic that they can dazzle and deliver without doing any digging, but there aren t many. And let s face it, if Rick Warren doesn t think he fits into that category, you and I don t either. The bottom line is that most sermons are as good as the resources used during preparation. Great sermons are a team effort. By team I mean the 5
writers, preachers, and theologians you turn to while putting your message together. Paul said to Timothy: And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable men who will also be qualified to teach others. (2 Timothy 2:2) He s saying, Take what you ve learned from me, use it and pass it on. Tell it to others like I told it to you. This is God s method, that we learn from one another and we teach one another. I m not talking about carbon-copying someone else s sermon. Neither do I suggest that your messages should lack your own stamp of originality and creativity. I am saying that your most creative ideas will come from the overflow of your research what you read and study and hear and absorb from God s seasoned leaders during the process of preparation. 6
A great library is the first step toward great preaching. Assemble a collection of reliable preaching resources. Then commit yourself to the habit of getting outside input each week as you prepare your message. Seek out devotional books, commentaries, podcasts, and collections of sermons and sermon illustrations. Identify the tools that work best for you, the ones that can spark a good idea and help you take it to the finish line. And then put those tools to use each week. I ve been preaching since I was a teenager, and have been writing sermon resources for 20 years. I never begin a sermon or a sermon series empty-handed. That s because I have learned that over the long haul, your sermons are as good as the resources you use. 7
THE IMPROVEMENT TECHNIQUE MOST PREACHERS AVOID 2 WHAT IF I TOLD you that there is a preacher whose technique you could study for just a few minutes a week, and by doing so you will experience in just a month or two exponential growth in your ability to effectively communicate the gospel, resulting in a greater number of lives changed through the work of your ministry? Would you study that preacher? Most pastors even those otherwise motivated to improve resist the idea. Some outright refuse. Who is this preacher? It s you. 8
If you re serious about becoming an effective communicator of the gospel, you need to do the difficult (sometimes painful) work of evaluating yourself. It won t be easy. You probably won t like your voice. Your accent will be stronger than you realized. Every ummmm and uhhhh will have a nails-on-a-chalkboard effect. You will feel, at times, like you re droning on forever. It can be brutal. However, you ll soon discover things your congregation already knows. You ll hear exactly what they hear, week-in and week-out. And you ll begin to understand why some of your messages, though solid in content, sometimes fall flat. Every great coach and athlete does basically the same thing. After each game, he sits in front of a screen and watches film analyzing every play, every call, every score, every missed opportunity, every mistake. He does it so that next time he ll get it right. 9
It has never been easier to capture your sermons with video or audio. Start recording your messages every week. Then listen with the intent of hearing your sermon as your listeners heard it. Did your message tell the story you wanted to tell? Was your big idea easy to understand? Did each illustration contribute to the point of the message? Did you speak too fast? Too slow? Did you laugh at your own jokes? Did you stumble too many times? With every mistake and annoying habit you discover, you can pat yourself on the back. As you fix or eliminate each one, you ve taken another step forward to becoming a more effective communicator. 10
THE TEN-SECOND TAKE-AWAY 3 GREAT SERMONS HAVE one point, not three or four. Wait a minute, some will say. Don t the best sermons follow the tried-and-true 3-points-and-a-story format? Actually no. Not if the three points are moving in three different directions. This is an important distinction to make: Your points, when you use them, should really be more like subpoints. They re not three major ideas. They re three ideas that support your one big idea. Your points are like strands in a rope that, when wound together, create the rope. Your points work together to create your big idea. Your sermon should have only one Big Idea. In the Advanced Coaching Course, it s called the Ten-Second Take-Away. 11
This was hard for me to get used to. I was taught that the best way to structure a sermon is to outline the passage. But as it turns out, an outline does not a sermon make. There s a difference between outlining a passage and preaching a message. Outlining a passage is, basically, an academic exercise. Great sermons take it one step further. Great sermons zero in on the message of the passage. In any Biblical text, there are several approaches you can take, countless directions you can go. The best sermons are built around only one of those countless directions. Only one. On a Sunday afternoon several years back, my youngest son (in high school at the time) said, You know, Dad, most of the time, after your first point, you could quit right there and it would be an incredible message. Sometimes your sermons lose focus after the first point. 12
He wasn t referring to the length of the message, but to the fact that I had a habit of going too many places. The problem was that I was preaching the outline of everything I found in the text almost like doing a book report rather than preaching one specific message from God s Word for today. His comment challenged me to focus on finding one point, one big idea, for each message and only one. Here s how I say it to the students I coach: Imagine that, right before you speak, you ve been told that instead of thirty minutes, you have thirty seconds. Can you give your listeners one statement that sums up what you came to say? It is essential to learn how to summarize your sermon into a single sentence so that your listeners can say it like you said it, even after they ve left the building. If they can remember your Big Idea well enough to repeat it, they re more likely to put it into practice during the week. 13
Give it a try this Sunday. After you ve sketched out your outline for this week s text, zoom in on one Big Idea: focus on one thing you want to say about this passage, one thing you want your listeners to do in response to the Word. Develop this one idea into a single statement a ten-second take-away that your listener can remember, and can apply to their lives. There s your sermon. 14
PREACH WITH AN EMPHASIS ON DOING THE WORD 4 APPLICATION ISN T JUST part of your sermon. It is the sermon. Everything you say on Sunday needs to lead the listener toward becoming a doer of the Word... Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. (James 1:22) Great sermons are a call to action. They answer the question: What shall I do in response to the truth I am hearing? A pastor once said to me, I m in a series on the attributes of God. This Sunday is about God s preeminence. What am I supposed to do? Tell my congregation to be more preeminent this week? 15
Obviously, no. But instead of just talking academically about God s preeminence, explain to your listeners what this attribute of God means to them, personally. Show them how their understanding of God s preeminent nature can affect their outlook on life, their choices, their attitudes. And show them how to respond to a God who is above all others. It s not enough for your people to hear the textbook definition of a Christian doctrine. Instead, give them a living definition. Show them how the truth that they are hearing can make a difference in their lives, day-in and day-out. Application isn t just part of the message; it is the message. It s not something you tack on to your conclusion, as you re wrapping things up. It s a core part of your sermon from start to finish. Every step of the way, ask yourself: Am I showing my listeners how to become doers of the Word? 16
USE STORIES 5 THE OIL OF the sermon is a good story. It ensures that your homiletical engine keeps running smoothly. The story is also the best way to bridge the gap between exposition and application. One preacher gave this advice: Give them a point for their head and a story for their heart. My grandfather, a dedicated lay minister who preached as many as 40 times a year well into his eighties, used to say to me, They ll forget your theology but they ll remember your stories. So tell good stories that teach good theology. Do you know who made a habit of doing this? Jesus. 17
Jesus always used stories and illustrations like these when speaking to the crowds. (Matthew 13:34 NLT) For each idea that you want your message to communicate, find a story to illustrate it. Where do you find such stories? They re all around you. Look to your own experience. Or look to the news. Or the movies. Or the best seller list. As one great preacher said, All of life illustrates Biblical truth. Get in the habit, then, of asking yourself often, Which spiritual application can be made of this situation, this event, this ball game, this movie, or this news report? The best of these lessons will find their way into your sermons. In lesson #1 I talked about the importance of building a reliable library of resources. This is especially true for sermon illustrations. 18
Unfortunately most story collections for preachers and teachers (in print and online) are dreadfully out of date. That s too bad, because the best stories to use in a message are the ones from recent events. Your listeners can relate to an illustration taken from the world of sports or business or entertainment easier than they can relate to something that happened 400 years ago. That s why it s worth the effort it takes to seek out stories that resonate with this generation of listeners. As you prepare this Sunday s sermon, don t forget the WD40. Give your listeners a story to bring every key idea to life. 19
ALWAYS BE PREPARING 6 GREAT SERMONS TAKE weeks to prepare, not hours. Can you create a great sermon with an hour of preparation on Saturday night? I suppose it s possible, but I wouldn t count on it. It s also possible to win a million dollars in the lottery, but I wouldn t count on that, either. The best preachers I know are able to tell you at least in a general sense what they re preaching 3-6 months from now. And most of them already have a rough outline of their sermons for the next four or five weeks. That s one reason they re so good at what they do. Today I will encourage you to start planning your preaching at least a month in advance. It takes only a week to get into a 20
rhythm that will maximize your sermon preparation for as long as you re in the ministry. If you haven t already, sketch out what you ll preach for the next four weeks. Nail down text and topic, at the very least. Select a couple of good resources to help in your preparation. If it s a commentary, put it on your desk and keep it there. If it s a podcast or tape series, put them where you can find them quickly. If it s a website, bookmark the pages you ll use. This week, as early in the week as possible, take part of an afternoon to crack open each of the texts. Put some ideas on paper. Scratch out the beginnings of an outline for each message. Come up with working titles. Work on it for an hour or two. And then, after you ve made a few notes for each of the upcoming weeks, turn your attention to this Sunday s sermon and prepare as you normally would. 21
Next week, set aside a couple of hours one afternoon, as early as possible, to review your notes again for the upcoming weeks. (You ll need to add a new week-four to your list.) Spend some time with each text, do a little reading, listen to a podcast, check the Preaching Library, make a few more notes. And then, turn your attention to this Sunday s sermon. Prepare as you normally would. You already have notes from last week to start with. From now on, let this be your preparation schedule. Each week, early in the week, spend a couple of hours looking four weeks ahead. And then turn your attention to this week s message. This way, when you begin working on this Sunday s message, you won t begin with a blank sheet of paper. This week s message will have been in the back of your mind for several 22
weeks. When you sit down to get it ready for Sunday, you re already 20%, maybe 30%, perhaps even 50% of the way there. Great sermons are prepared well in advance. The habit of looking four weeks down the road helps you develop another habit: Always be preparing. When you study the Bible or watch the news or hear someone else preach or go to the movies, you re not just thinking about this Sunday. You re thinking weeks ahead. Things will catch your attention that you might not have noticed before. You ll latch on to ideas that you might have otherwise passed over. When you know what you re preaching in the weeks to come, it s easier to keep your eyes open for fresh ideas that fit the sermons that are coming around the bend. When you make it your habit to always be preparing, you ll find that each Sunday morning you re always prepared. 23
TALK ABOUT JESUS 7 DO YOU KNOW what was so great about the Jesus movement? It was all about Jesus. As millions turned to a personal relationship with him many from the counterculture and many from the church they identified themselves as Jesus People. Of all the labels that evangelicals have embraced over the past 40 years, none hit the target of who we are, or who we re supposed to be, like the label Jesus People. This same identification should be reflected in our preaching. Our goal in preaching is not just to get people to warm up to the idea of God. Neither is it to persuade them to vote Republican or to accept family values into their heart. 24
Our goal is to lead others believers and non-believers to experience a life-changing one-on-one personal connection with Jesus. Recently I read a secular critic s evaluation of a bestselling Christian author: His books are filled with exclamation points, but rarely do you come across the name of Jesus. I don t know if what the critic said is true, since I ve never read this writer s books. But I know this: such a statement can never be true about our preaching. Not if we want to change the world. Make sure that every message you preach lifts high the name of Jesus. 25
DRIVE YOUR LISTENERS TO SCRIPTURE 8 A GOOD SERMON presents solid Biblical truth in a straightforward manner. A great sermon does that and a little more: it also drives listeners to search the Scriptures for themselves. No doubt your goal for the people you serve is that Christ be formed in them. For this to happen, believers need to develop a solid relationship with Scripture one that exists between Sundays. In addition to teaching them the Word week-by-week, teach your people to love the Word, week by week. 26
As often as you can, challenge, encourage and inspire them to develop the habit of a daily time alone with God, which includes daily time in the Word. People who hear the Bible preached on Sunday are more likely to live it out during the week. And people who dig into the Bible during the week are more receptive to hearing it proclaimed on Sunday. Preach the Word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage with great patience and careful instruction. (2 Timothy 4:2) 27
MEMORIZE THE BEST PARTS OF YOUR MESSAGE 9 THERE ARE PARTS of your message that need to be said exactly the right way. There are parts that need to move smoothly, and parts where you need maximum impact. This means no fishing for words. No stuttering. No rambling or repeating yourself. No staring at a manuscript. Some parts need to be spoken with your eyes on your listeners and with the conviction that comes from saying something that you have taken the time to think thoroughly through until you got it exactly right. The way to do this is to memorize the key parts of your 28
message. Take the time to write them out exactly as you want to say them, and take the time to learn to say each phrase in the best possible way. Which parts of the sermon should you memorize? It depends on your message, but at the very least, you should commit to memory: The first 90 seconds of your introduction. Each key transition sentence. Your Ten-Second Take-Away. The final 60 seconds of your message. The rest of the message you need to know well, but these four elements of the sermon you need to be able to say in your sleep. 29
PREPARATION INCLUDES PRACTICE 10 I ENCOURAGE THE pastors I coach to spend an hour on Saturday night running through their sermon a couple of times. Then, on Sunday morning, run through it again. During practice, make sure that you ve committed to memory the parts of the message that need to be spoken from memory. Make sure your notes are simple enough to follow and detailed enough to be useful. If you preach from a manuscript, make sure it sounds like a conversation, not an academic paper. The best you can, practice your sermon on Saturday the way you will preach it on Sunday. It s tempting, when you hit a rough spot, to say, It ll work itself out tomorrow when I m in front of the congregation. 30
Over the years I ve learned that rough spots rarely work themselves out just because I m now standing in front of a group. In fact, groups usually make the rough spots rougher. If something doesn t work in practice, it usually doesn t work in the pulpit. LEARNING FROM THE MAJORS. Before the umpire calls batter up in any inning of a baseball game, what do the players do? They toss a ball back and forth. They practice fielding grounders and making the play at first, while the pitcher practices throwing strikes to the catcher. And before the batter steps up to the plate, what does he do? He takes a few practice swings. Maybe you remember these rituals from Little League. But don t forget that the pros do it, too. The guys good enough to 31
earn millions playing their position give it a dry run each time they take the field. Why? Because they know from experience that a dry run helps them get ready to do what they re about to do. Maybe we can learn something from the guys in the majors. You never get too good for a practice swing. Preparation includes practice, every sermon you preach. 32
Thanks for reviewing this back-to-basics guide to preaching! To find out more about Steve s preaching resources visit stevemay.com 33