9 Ways to Make Your Sermons More Memorable

Posted by RevNev09 on Apr 11, 2012 in All, Blog | 0 comments

The fact that people do not remember on Tuesday morning the sermon they heard 48 hours earlier is both a blessing and a curse of ministry. On the one hand, it’s hard to take that your message is simply one drop of the bombardment of input people receive in any given week. You expended considerable effort to craft a biblical message that is as interesting and valuable. You want people to remember it. On the other, even pastors are fallen human beings who fail, sometimes miserably even when preaching.

I once heard a seasoned pastor describe this as “laying a homelitical egg.” He said after those sermons where you just as soon let the floor open up and swallow you as greet anyone, you are very glad people will forget it all by Tuesday.

Nevertheless, you and I are called to speak God’s truth to people and to do our best at it each week. Part of our job is to consider how to communicate truth.

I should say one thing about what I am assuming about you. I assume that what you want more than anything when you prepare a sermon is to actually communicate the Gospel to people. I assume you care if people remember the truths you mined and meditated on all week.

This doesn’t mean it’s an ego trip. When I have had the opportunity to preach I am often thankful for the prayer I learned to pray from other pastors that goes something like this: “Lord, help them remember what was from you and forget what was from me. If it was valuable and leads them to you let them keep it and remember it. If it sends them in the wrong direction, may they forget every word.” I don’t care if anyone remembers me. I want them to remember what God says to them through me. If you feel differently, please leave a comment below. I’d love to hear it. (Note: I mean it. No snarkiness intended.)

The list below is 9 things to think about as you are preparing the presentation of the the material you’ve dug from Scripture.

Without further ado:

• Preach about just one subject at a time – This advice might seem like first year seminary stuff but you’d be surprised how many pastors violate it. In their zeal to speak from the Biblical text they fail to find the central thought in the passage and carpet bomb the congregation with too many topics. It might be fine in a Sunday School lesson or a small group but in a sermon it just loses people. They look like they are taking notes on their iPhones but I promise, that’s not what’s happening. They are on Facebook while you are preaching. Or they are texting each other about where to eat after the sermon. Keep working with the text until you find the central point (the “big idea” as Hadden Robinson calls it in Biblical Preaching.) If you can’t find just one point then it’s time to break up the text.

• Consider your audience – I once heard a pastor preach a sermon in which his main illustration was about feeding babies. Someone in the congregation had recently given birth. When I say recently, I mean really recently as in earlier that morning. So I get why he did it. But when I glanced around at the congregation I realized that he was preaching to a room full of people who had been walking with the Lord longer than he’d been alive. Octogenarians were everywhere. Most of these people hadn’t changed a diaper in decades. Did they get the point? Sure. Just like babies need nourishment so does their spiritual life. Check. Did he know his audience? I’m being charitable saying no. Either he didn’t know them or he didn’t care which is worse. Do you think anyone, including the pastor, remembers that sermon? I remembered the sermon because of this observation but it’s the only thing I remember about it.

• Tell more jokes – I know some pastors who discourage humor in the pulpit. They object that the task of preaching is serious business. It most certainly is. The task of preaching the Word of God is too serious not to use all the tools available to you. Don’t be trite or trivial but realize humor is a tool. Like a good craftsman, learn to use the tools available to you and always use the right one for the job. Sometimes humor can obscure a good point. Avoid it then. But other times, those glorious, miraculous times, it connects to the audience and they get it. You can almost see the light bulbs go on as the laughter spreads across the sanctuary. If you see this opportunity then, by all means, say something funny. For an example of a pastor who uses humor well listen to Mike Householder at Lutheran Church of Hope in West Des Moines, Iowa. First thing you’ll notice is that he is not funny all the time but when he is it is very effective.
  

• Be brutally honest – Nothing is more memorable than the truth especially when someone says something  you know is true but have never heard said out loud before. One temptation in preaching (there are so many) is to sugar coat things or to attack them from the side hoping everyone knows what you are talking about. Those sermons probably don’t even make it to Tuesday. But think about a time when you heard a pastor call out a specific lack of faith and you realized he was talking about you. Do you still remember it? Of course you do.
  

• Tell a good story – The most memorable sermon at our church in the past year was when our pastor, preached last Memorial Day. He told the story of Jacob DeShazer and Mitsuo Fuchida to speak about forgiveness and grace. Most people in the room had never heard the story of two men who fought against one another in the Pacific theater during WWII but no one who was there will forget their dramatic story of reconciliation through Christ. Sometimes when I am tempted to hold a grudge I remember that sermon and figure if WWII wasn’t enough to keep these men apart my issues probably aren’t either. See? Memorable truth.
  

• Use one unifying image or illustration to make your point – This one I learned from personal experience. I had a nice illustration to end my sermon with about a tree and how fruit grows. It was great. A week after I preached the sermon I realized how much more effective the rest of the sermon would have been if instead of throwing the  illustration in at the end I used as a unifying theme of the message. Chalk this one up to experience learned the hard way. You ever learn anything that way?

• Offer more detail – As you tell stories, paint a picture in people’s minds. The more vivid the picture the more likely someone is to remember it. Recently in a Sunday School I’m teaching with another guy, we covered the myths about the Nativity story and we did it by digging into the details of the story separating fact from fiction. Some folks were astonished to learn the Holy Family were probably not in some Motel 8′s barn but more likely in the stable area of a family member’s home. Their whole idea of Christmas was rocked. I guarantee they’ll never forget it. We ruined Christmas pageants for the rest of their lives. For a nice example of detailed preaching, see Jeff Gilmore’s series called In the Fullness of Time, from January 2008. Gilmore does a fantastic job of offering details that make the sermon come alive.
  

• Package your points in threes – I hesitate to even bring this up. It’s so overdone. “Three points and a poem” is a tired cliche. But inside every cliche is a nugget of truth. Let me give you an example to explain why I believe this one. Once I heard a pastor preach a nineteen point sermon. (Yeah, 19!) I kept the notes just to remind myself never to inflict that on a congregation. Great points. Needed message. Way too long. By the end I was wishing he believed in “three points and a poem” and hoping the pot roast wasn’t burning. You know as well as I do that capturing the attention span of your audience is critical to helping your message be heard. The maximum attention span in adults is about 20 minutes and shrinking. Breaking your sermon up into smaller chunks (still observing the first point above!) will help keep people’s attention and if they are paying attention they just might remember that very important message you have for them. Alliteration is optional.

• Be passionate about your subject - I heard Alistair Begg say something that stuck with me in one of his sermons on the radio about how he gets ready to preach. He offered what I think is an old preachers saying:
• I think myself empty
• I read myself full
• I write myself clear
• I pray myself hot

I love that last part. The question is worth asking yourself: Am I passionate about the subject I am preaching today? Has God convicted me of its relevance to me and the people placed in my care? If so, great! Preach on and with conviction! If not, is it worth preaching?

Did I miss something? Share it with me below. I’d love to hear it!

Gordon MacDonald on Spiritual Shortcuts

Posted by RevNev09 on Jan 5, 2012 in All, Quotes | 0 comments

“As a young man I must have tried a dozen techniques that people said were sure to guarantee a measure of passion that would transport me above teh ordinary and ineffective. In each case I eagerly embraced whatever it was I was supposed I was supposed to do or say. But the results, if any, were short lived, and what I discovered was that there are no shortcuts, no gimmicks, no easy way to cultivate intimacy with God and attain the resulting passion that should carry one through life’s journey.”

Gordon MacDonald, Restoring Your Spiritual Passion

Trusting God: What I Learned From Watching the 2011 World Series

Posted by RevNev09 on Jan 2, 2012 in All, Blog | 0 comments

The 2011 Major League Baseball World Series was one to remember. As a lifelong St. Louis Cardinals fan watching them win the 11th championship in franchise history was a sweet, exhilarating experience. The Cardinals finished on top at the end of a season when no one, myself included, expected them to. Oh we of little faith!

While there is a lesson about never giving up in the Cardinals’ improbable run to the World Series, there is another one for our spiritual lives from the losing team.

Texas Rangers’ outfielder Josh Hamilton is known to be a committed Christian and credits God for turning around his life and career. He blasted a huge home run in the 10th inning of Game 6 to put his team ahead by two runs. But his home run heroics are only half the story.

After the game, Hamilton explained to the press that God told him he was going to hit a home run in the at bat. “He told me, ‘You haven’t hit one in awhile, and this is the time you’re going to,’” he said. And he did on the first pitch. For the briefest of moments it looked like the home run from God would win the game – and the Series – for his team in what would have been an inspiring cap to his comeback.

But it was not to be. David Freese, the Cardinals’ third baseman belted a home run of his own in the 11th inning to win Game 6 and force a Game 7 which the Cardinals would win the next night easily. It was a wonderful end for the Cards, not so wonderful for Hamilton and his Rangers. Imagine his heartbreak as the zenith of Major League Baseball sailed into the night on a long ball to straightaway center field.

What about his message from God? “There was a period at the end of [the sentence],” Hamilton said. “He didn’t say, ‘You’re going to hit it and you’re going to win.’” This is why the phrase “God moves in mysterious ways,” is a cliche. Did God set Hamilton up for disappointment?

This curve ball in the at bat of our faith happens to all of us eventually. It happens because we take a limited amount of information God has revealed and extrapolate it to a meaning He has not.

Why would we hold God to something He has not promised? One reason is our natural tendency to hear what we want to hear. Jesus promised that his yoke is easy and his burden is light (Matthew 11:30) and we hear our life will be easier. Proverbs reminds us that godly and healthy habits are best developed early (“train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it,” Proverbs 22:6) and we hear that our children will never reject the Lord because they were raised in the church. The list goes on.

There is a deeper reason, too. The central struggle of the spiritual walk with God is learning to surrender to His will and to abdicate our own. We struggle with God’s mysterious ways because they are so different from what we think is the ideal. Even Jesus longed for a more ideal resolution to his life as he prayed in Gethsemane (Luke 22:42) but when he faced death, Jesus did not attempt to control the outcome to suit his desires. He was resolutely abandoned to the will of His trusted Father.

Where is this leading?

Are there any outcomes you are trying to control? Are you failing to trust God for the results of your ministry? This is a difficult question for many leaders who feel responsibility to produce. Spiritual “production” is not easily quantifiable and almost never controllable which complicates the pastor’s task immeasurably. Without a heart purposefully set on trusting God your ministry vision can be lowered from seeking Christlikeness in your people to bottom lines in your budgets, from prayer with your Father to power on your board. Once this happens, outlandish expectations of God – and disappointment when He does not live up to them – are inevitable.

How do we learn to follow in faith through the steps God has revealed into those He has not? In the history of the Church there has only ever been one answer to this question: we must get know God as He has revealed Himself.

That means we must stop thinking of God impersonally. I am convinced one of the reasons we are surprised by God’s ways is because we expect Him to work like an ATM. We punch in our PIN combination of prayer, Bible reading, holy-ish living and expect God to spit out the blessings we request. It is a very impersonal view and sometimes we don’t even realize we are taking it. But God is a person; not a human person, but He is personal. Persons often surprise us. Machines only do when they malfunction.

When you want to get to know someone you spend time with them. This is hardly surprising. But many of us, pastors included, neglect spending time with God and therefore do not know Him. Jesus had a habit of prayer that led to his intimacy with the Father. Christians overlook this point by assuming Jesus was automatically intimate with the Father by virtue of being God himself. But Jesus made prayer his habit. How can we do with any less?

But we often do settle by allowing information about God to substitute for intimacy with God. This temptation is especially seductive for professional Christians. For many, seminary training launches an unending pursuit of knowledge about Scripture. The deeper we dig, the more we know and the smarter we sound and the bigger our heads can become. But knowledge about God is not the same as knowledge of God and should never be mistaken for genuine relationship.

When I find myself struggling to control what happens in my life I often return to Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. Reflecting, I notice how Jesus trusts his Father. and watch as he struggles with and commits to God’s will. Try reading Mark 13:32-42 several times and reflect. There is no better picture of trust in God in desperate times.

Are you open to the outcomes God wants for you?

Will doing these things change God’s mysterious ways? No. God will always be somewhat mysterious and His ways will remain not our ways. Like every good mystery, God demands to be investigated and small clues and cues lead to deeper, eternal truths about His character. Slowly, we find we trust Him because we know Him. When we do we find He is always faithful.

Did God set Josh Hamilton up for disappointment? Hardly. Hamilton seems to understand that God promised him a home run, not a World Series ring. The home run and the experience of trusting God’s voice while going to the plate are their own reward.

What ways do you find you must trust outcomes to God? Do you ever struggle in your ministry to rely on Him? What practices have you developed to help bring you back to trust?

Related: Christ-Centered Ministry

Christ-Centered Ministry

Posted by RevNev09 on Nov 10, 2011 in All, Your Answers | 0 comments

I have a hand-written statement placed prominently on my desk.  It reads, “If teenagers love me and they don’t love God, then I have been promoting the wrong person.”  I wrote this statement while on my knees asking God about the ministry that I have.

Conventional thinking goes something like this:  If I can get a teen to like me, respect me, to draw close to me, then I can show him the Christian life.  The teens love for me will eventually transfer to a love for the Lord through my testimony.

There is something very satisfying to the flesh with this theory.  It is pleasing to be respected, followed, loved.  It is flattering to be imitated.  Teens do stay out of trouble, oftentimes, because of the influence that the Youth Pastor has in their life.   However, the problem comes the year after they graduate.  I am no longer there to keep them straight.   The time they spend with me is greatly limited.  My influence diminishes and their true heart is revealed.   I was trying to get them to follow me, and that is exactly what they did.

On the other hand,  if I spend my time, not working at getting the teens to like me, but pointing them at all times to Christ and His sufficiency, then lasting progress can be made.  If a teen loves Christ and I love Christ, we will automatically love each other and be drawn together.  When the young person graduates,  he doesn’t need me to keep him straight.  He goes on with his True Love.

This may seem like an obvious truth, but under the searching microscope of reality, most of what is done in the youth ministry is a promotion of self, not Christ.

Scott VH., Runnels, IA

A Pastoral Call?

Posted by RevNev09 on Oct 31, 2011 in All, Your Answers | 0 comments

Be with your people.

Most pastors don’t do it, but my job as a chaplain requires it. Most Christians never see or hear from their pastor outside of the worship services unless there is an acute problem they are facing. Would it really be so difficult to give each family a “how’s it going?” phone call once a week? (My largest battalion had 1500 people and I had to visit them each day.) I can tell you from experience that at first people will be suspicious – “Why is he calling me? Is something wrong?” – precisely because it isn’t usually done. But it will soon change to a profound appreciation and you will be seen as highly approachable and personable.

Ben D., Bowie, MD

*****

I’m curious about this one and would love to hear from other pastors. How do you keep current with the people in your congregation? Do you call once in awhile? Is this personality driven?

How Time Management Can Affect Your Ministry

Posted by RevNev09 on Oct 31, 2011 in All, Your Answers | 0 comments

Time management.

It is my settled conviction that a great many ministers are lousy at time management. I have pastor friends who are seemingly almost overwhelmed by preparing for the following: a sermon, a Sunday school class, a prayer meeting and one or two committee meetings per week. As a result, visitation is seen as a burden and their family suffers as well. I encourage you to learn how to make efficient use of time.

Ben D., Bowie, MD