Improving your Sermons – Importance of a Growing Preacher
Peter Mead at the Biblical Preaching Blog has a post up on how the preacher must be a perpetual student. In it he provides 5 ways to ensure continued growth in preaching. I think this is a good introduction to improving your preaching.
Mead’s Suggestions
- Preach Difficult Passages – This will definitely expand one’s preaching horizon.
- Read Books – If you want to improve your preaching, then you need to read books on preaching.
- Listen to Other Preachers – I agree totally with Mead’s suggestion here. I remember reading a preaching blogger who said that he did not like to listen to other preachers, he would rather read a theological text or listen to a theological lecture. However, if you don’t listen to great preacher’s you will not get better. Does the Jazz musician only read theory books and never listen to other jazz musicians? Does the novelist simply read books on composition and never read other novelists?
With the Advent of the internet, there is simply no excuse for a preacher to not listen to other preachers. Simply type in the preachers name into google and often you will find audio from that preachers
Mead has 2 more and you should go over to his post to see them, but simply following these three will greatly improve one’s preaching.
Analyze Your Own Sermons
One of the things that Mead did not talk about, in this post, is the importance of analyzing your own sermons. Analyze the text of the sermons. Do you have a clear purpose? Do you do an adequate job of exegeting the text? What could you have done better?
In addition, you might analyze the audio and video. Do you have habits or mannerisms that work against the proclamation of the Gospel?
These are some introductory questions that can help the preacher better his or her preaching.
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