ChurchHacks.com

Scenario: you’re at Bob Evans having breakfast with your head deacon/elder and you ask him a question about the great sermon you delivered just two days ago. Beads of sweat appear on his brow and his face becomes flush. It’s apparent that he can’t remember a word you said or if you spoke from the Old Testament, New Testament, or the newspaper. The cinnamon pancakes taste different smothered in awkward tension that now exists between you and the soon-to-be-ousted elder. Ok, maybe it’s not that bad but the reality is that an individual only remembers a small percentage of information he hears and it’s probable that the three points and poem you preached on Sunday exists in his memory between his childhood friend’s phone number and the color of the pizza delivery guy’s shirt from last Friday.

Speakers spend many hours each week studying and preparing words of truth, wisdom, and instruction to deliver to a hopefully captive, spiritually hungry audience. Practice and preparation might involve preaching to the wall or a mirror but you sure don’t want it to feel like that on Sunday. What can you do to make sure that by Wednesday (or Sunday afternoon for that matter) the people in your congregation are walking around with your words of instruction and encouragement on their minds? Here are some tips to help extend your sermon past Sunday dinner.

1. Provide them with an outline. Chances are if your preaching method is not extemporaneous you’ve been using some sort of outline for your own reference while you preach. Type a skeletal outline ahead of time and stuff it in your bulletins/worship folders/playbill for the congregation to use to follow along and write notes. Some people need their mind and hands occupied while listening so allow them to occupy themselves by taking notes. If you don’t keep their attention during the message, they can’t hardly remember it afterwards, right?
2. Give them a take home object. Send them home with something that will remind them of what you spoke on. The church we were a part of for several years before moving went through a series describing who we are as Christians. Each of those seven weeks we went home with an object about the size of a quarter ranging from a little packet of salt (Matthew 5) to a little alien figurine (1 Peter 2:11). One thing that Sam’s Club has taught us is that buying in bulk is cheaper so don’t be afraid that it will be too expensive. Send them home with something they’ll attach to the point of your message so they’ll have that running through their minds whenever they see that object.
3. Give them homework. “But, I come to church to listen and get fed! Why the homework?” Perhaps church should be a little more like school in that everyone gets graded on participation and homework. On the homework end of things, give them something to do throughout the week that relates to your message. For example, after preaching about the importance of people to God and your ministry, encourage them to go inside the gas station and be friendly to the attendant rather than paying at the pump. Or, you can prep their minds for the next week’s message by giving them something to do that relates to what they will hear next weekend.

Give them something to take away from your message, an outline, an object, or an opportunity (now I’m starting to sound like a preacher!), and they will have something to help them remember in the days and weeks to come.

This is part one of a four-part series.

Tags: Preaching, Pastor