Extending Your Sermons Beyond Sunday, Part 3
This article is the third part of the series Extending Your Sermons Beyond Sunday. Be sure to read the first and second articles, if you haven’t already.
As a reminder, the point of this four-part series is to give you some tips on what to do to help those in your congregation keep the words you speak on Sunday morning on their minds throughout the week. You invest many hours in preparation for your sermon on Sunday morning and you want to have some assurance they won’t forget it as soon as they sit down to Sunday dinner. The first article dealt with ways you can send them home with something. The second article introduced ways you can use technology to increase the shelf life of your message. This article will address the sermon itself and how you can structure and formulate your message to help it stick. Without any further blah blah blah and yada yada yada, I’ll get right into it.
- Make your message practical, biblical, and relevant
Communicate Scriptural truths that address their spiritual, relational, and emotional needs using language they can understand and specific ways to implement these truths into their lives. - Make it biblical. Don’t just preach off the top of your head or from your heart. God penned His Word using many authors and you are not one of them. Your job as a preacher is to communicate the truths of Scripture, not the Gospel according to You. Hebrews 4:12 says, “For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.” Use the Bible; it’s powerful and it works. I know I’m getting all up in your grill on this point but it’s the Word of God that changes lives and not your personal wisdom or pithy statements.
- Make it practical. The normal church-goer probably spends about 167 hours each week outside of church. Your hour with them on a Sunday morning has to resonate with them and make a difference during those 167 hours.
- Make it relevant. The words of Scripture cross the boundaries of time and culture unlike the mullet, parachute pants, togas, and the beehive hairdo. Preach with the realization that the current generations are far removed from the first century when the canon of Scripture was completed. Help them understand how words written many hundreds and even thousands of years ago can give them hope for the issues they are facing today.
- Speak in a series
Earlier this year, I have to admit, I had McPheever. Now, I’m cheering on the Losties who are being captured and bullied by the Others. When I sit down in front of the TV on Wednesday night at 9:00, I remember where the story left off and can expect that story to advance from there. Continuity is what helps me figure out what’s going on, stay interested, and keep it in my head over the next seven days. Speaking in a series provides continuity and your listeners will have a better understanding of what you speak about from week to week if there is a common thread.
- Reference popular culture and current events
When preparing for a series or an individual message, set it against the backdrop of something happening currently to which the people can relate. They will make associations and it will stick. Look around and study the culture in which you live, events in the news, popular media (books, movies, music), and the stuff you see all around you and think about how you can work that into to the topic you’re preaching. Be careful, however. If it’s a stretch to make the association or if you’re not really with it in regards to pop culture, it will come off as gimmicky or you’ll appear to be out of touch with reality. If you don’t pay much attention to one of these areas, don’t venture into that territory because you’ll be like the father who shows up to the mall to pick up his daughter after an evening out with her friends with his pocket protector, bermuda shorts, and black socks. - Don’t end with an alter call
I know some of you would like my salvation revoked for saying such a thing but hear me out. In many churches, it is common to offer an “alter call” at the end of the service. It is a venue for spiritual decision-making where the pastor invites people to come forward to receive Christ, confess sin, get baptized, etc. There is another version you should consider avoiding, which I’ll call the Alter Call Express, where the pastor asks everyone to bow their heads and close their eyes and those making a spiritual decision can either lift their gaze to the pastor or simply raise their hand. In my church the pastor said, “With every head bowed and every eye closed. No one looking around.” Usually the alter call has very little to do with what the pastor was speaking about, so it would require a 180 degree shift in focus. I’m all about providing opportunities for people to repent of their sin and turn to Jesus but you’re most likely sacrificing the point of your sermon by offering an alter call. - Don’t let someone else summarize your message for you
After you preach, share your heart, sweat, pound the pulpit, encourage, exhort, and spray spit for 30-45 minutes, you sit down and pass the baton to someone to either close the service in prayer or with an appropriate song. Instead, he launches into an impromptu commentary on the ideas he took away from the sermon and attempts to summarize what you said. If I were the preacher, I’d be thinking, “Wait. I didn’t hear the congregation chant for an encore and, if they did, why is he stealing my thunder?” I probably wouldn’t think that, but the reality is this is a potentially disastrous situation. You spend all this time and effort into crafting your words and phrasing your major points in just the right way and someone else gets up to the pulpit and diverts the focus or puts his own spin on your message. If you do have someone wrap up the message and provide either a summary or some final thoughts, talk it through with him before the service. It can be an excellent punctuation at the end of the service if it’s done right. Sometimes a reinforcing word from another effective communicator is exactly what you need to drive the point home. Beware, however, of the impromptu summary. Communicate with those who take the platform after you (worship leaders, soloists, etc) to resist the urge to offer their own sermonette unless you have discussed it with them beforehand.
When preparing for Sunday morning, keep these ideas in mind and make the effort to craft your sermon to make it stick in the minds of your congregation throughout the week. Have other ideas for making your message memorable? Share them in the comments below.
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