Fixing the Sermon

The sermon is not a Biblical lecture designed merely to inform the hearer of some interesting fact. No, the sermon is a vehicle for an encounter with the Most High God. This encounter does “inform,” but it also provides hope, healing, direction, salvation, etc. Because of this, preachers should embed in the sermon an expectation of a response from the congregation.

This response may be a heartfelt question “What must I do to be saved?” The response might be an assurance that God will be with us through a painful circumstance. The response might be a week of living with more loyalty to God’s coming Kingdom. There may be other responses, but the point is that the encounter with God changes humanity and that change will manifest itself in some way.

Every sermon should ask the people for some sort of response. However, before one can ask such a thing, the preacher must connect what is taught to the lived experience of the congregation.

Doctrinal Sermons need to Connect to Human Experience

Many sermons, especially “doctrinal” ones, neglect this connection to human experience. We preachers sometimes think that preaching the “truth” is all that is needed. So we preach sermons that follow an outline like the following:

1) Teach the doctrine
2) Defend the doctrine from a few angles
3) Tell people they need to believe the doctrine

I heard a sermon on the trinity like this. The preacher read a few texts that taught the doctrine of the trinity. The preacher then defended the doctrine from a few attacks that are sometimes heard. The preacher then closed by calling us all to hold on to this doctrine. He then sat down. Note that the people don’t know why the doctrine is important. They do not know how to apply it in daily life.

Lowry’s Homiletical Plot Approach

In contrast, I read where Eugene Lowry stated the following on page 18 of the book Homiletical Plot:

I am considering the possibility of a doctrinal sermon on the Trinity, the preliminary question to be asked is: What problem or bind does the trinitarian formula resolve?

Here the preacher will be looking at how the doctrine does solve some problem. Does the trinity tell us something about community? Does the trinity guide us in some way? Perhaps the trinity provides a vehicle for understanding God’s total investment in humanity’s salvation. Whatever the case, when we go to preach a doctrine it should be connected to human experience if we expect to be able to make an appeal to the importance of the doctrine.

Now it is true that some people neglect doctrine as if it is unimportant. That is another issue we shall take up later. But when you preach doctrine, informing others is important, but helping the people to understand the doctrine in such a way that it will change the way they live is also important. And most important is to allow the doctrine to facilitate the encounter with the God that we hope to experience in the worship service.

Only have one Major Point in your Sermon

Perhaps one of the most common errors in sermonic structure is to have too many competing points. Sometimes preachers exhibit this error when they go on tangents or on asides that are only marginally related to the main point.

Prominent Preaching Instructors Weigh In

In any case, a sermon should have one major point or theme. Grady Davis calls it an idea that grows, Haddon Robinson calls it the big idea, Thomas Long calls it a focus statement, Paul Scott Wilson calls it the Major Concern of the text, Bryan Chapell calls it the Fallen Condition Focus, Brad Braxton calls it the Gospel Claim, and Henry Mitchell calls it the Controlling Idea.

Whatever you call it, your sermon needs a driving idea that is behind it that helps you determine what to add in and what to leave out. Too many sermons have no one major idea. Sometimes the “three points and a poem” turn into three sermons and a whoop with little reference to any of the other points.

How To Fix It?

To fix this problem in your sermon, ask simply what one thing are you trying to teach in the sermon? All of the “points” or “moves” should support that one point. If it does not then drop it.