This is a continuation of a post on seven questions I like to ask myself as I do sermon prep. The first set of questions help focus the sermon and set me up to think about application. This set of questions ensures that I’m speaking to mind, heart, and will.
The questions are simply:
1. What do I want people to know or believe?
2. What do I want people to feel or experience?
3. What do I want people to do or act on?
The order is intentional – cognitive, then emotional, then volitional.
What do I want people to know or believe? Question one highlights the central insight that I want to drive home. Where are people deceived, blinded to the truth, or believing a lie or half-truth? What truth am I bringing that will shed light in the middle of darkness?
And not just truth in general – but gospel truth. How specifically am I bringing the objective, historical reality of Jesus – who he was and what he did – to bear on the lies and half-truths of our age?
What do I want people to feel? Question two asks as a result of embracing or believing that truth, in what way am I calling people to experience that truth. Truth merely understood with the mind but not experienced is not a truth that has been truly believed, at least not in the Biblical sense of belief.
John Ortberg says that answering this question – bringing people to a point where they feel or experience truth in some way in the sermon – takes the most skill. Can we talk about grace without it in some way inspiring awe & wonder? Can we preach Jesus’ words to inauthentic followers in Matthew 7 and not to some degree sense holy fear?
Answering question two means more than just yelling – it means that the preacher himself must have a personal encounter/experience with the truth that he is preaching. As Martyn Lloyd-Jones famously said: “Can a man really contemplate the love of God in Christ Jesus and feel no emotion? The whole position is utterly ridiculous… What is preaching? Logic on fire! Preaching is theology coming through a man who is on fire… I say again that a man who can speak about these things dispassionately has no right whatsoever in a pulpit; and should never be allowed to enter one.”
What do I want people to do? Finally – after people hear the truth, experience the truth, it is right and appropriate for you to call them to act on that truth. What do you want people to do as a result of all this? What should their lives look like this very week in response to the way the Holy Spirit has brought the gospel to bear on their minds and hearts?
Famed preaching professor Haddon Robinson encourages preachers while in sermon prep to fast forward in your mind to the Monday after you preach. Imagine that several different types of people in your congregation approach you privately and say, “I got it. I understood what you were trying to say. Now what? What should I do as a result? What does this mean for me as a single mom, or business owner, or struggling college student, or young single man on the verge of faith?” Whatever you might say to them then in that conversation – say it to them in the sermon. Specifically address the different demographics in your congregation and help them in the sermon with the “now what” question.
The gospel – first proclaimed, then experienced, and finally lived.
Based on your own background, personality type, and your current denomination or stream of faith (reformed, charismatic, seeker, etc.) – you’ll be naturally strong with one of these, while one might be a weak spot for you. What about you?
Tags: preaching
[...] To Be Continued. Update: Part 2 of this post can be found here. [...]
Jon, I ask the same questions. Not in this order but I ask them. I recently added the “How do I want them to feel” question about a year ago. I added it because I was reminded of an age old saying: “People won’t remember what you said, but they’ll remember how you made them feel.” This struck me as I noticed that I had become a one trick pony – HUMOR. I was good at humor using it in the message but what about when humor doesn’t drive the message home enough. Humor and hell? Humor and suffering? Humor and pain? Humor and endurance? Humor and loving the lost? Didn’t fit anymore. So my only retort would be to be fiery and loud. Again, that just doesnt always fit. So by asking that question it changed my approach, my tone, my pace, my voice pitch – it changes a lot of the presentation.
Good stuff!
(meant to put this at the end of the last one…)
Thanks for sharing.
Yeah Steve, thanks for the feedback. Great thoughts on the appropriate use of humor in our sermons.
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