Name Your Sermon - Or Someone Else Will

I was reading the Biblical Preaching blog and Peter Mead had a post up on Sermon Titles. That got me to thinking about sermon titles again. As I have noted in the past, the subject of Sermon Titles is not talked about in the literature as much as it should be, in my opinion. So Mead got me to thinking. Why is a title important?

Well one of the foundational reasons why it is important is because it gives a handle to the sermon. A few years ago I didn't realize the importance of having a handle for a sermon. During that time I preached a sermon that talked about the grand sweep of evil and good in the world. I used the narrative of Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden. When I picked up a copy of the sermon tape, I then realized that the sound engineer, because he didn't have a title, simply named the sermon "The Story of Adam and Eve." I guess it is functional, but it was not really what I was getting at in the sermon.

It was then that I realized that we need a handle or a short textual description for the sermon that may go in the bulletin or it may go on a sermon tape. It may not even be on a sermon tape, it may be just your parishioners telling other people what the sermon was about. If you don't have a title, you force them to make up one, and often they will end up with one like that sound engineer gave my Good and Evil Controversy sermon.

It was then that I realized that someone will put a title on it, that someone should be the preacher.

Sermon Title Creation Method

For more information on sermon title creation, I would ecourage you to look at my simple method for the creation of a sermon title. Learn More Here..,
Learn the secrets of Good Title creation at my own "sermon title handbook" for a method for putting together good sermon titles.