Top ten ways to improve your preaching this year

Top ten ways to improve your preaching this year something like this is always interesting.

My own experience now includes nearly 10 months of preaching twice a week (which totals far more than I had preached over the previous 6 years). That means I am a long long way from being any kind of expert which is why I am not going to comment in detail on the various items (although I would add blogs as a very useful resource).

I have a long way to go in learning (which is one reason why I like the Methodist system of being a probationary minister for two years).

However, I did just want to mention that preparing for worship including sermon preparation is still something that lights up my week. It is still hugely time consuming, especially when I use the projector for the whole service. At Raunds we have a 7 worship leaders which is fantastic as I continue to find preparing worship with someone else one of the most exciting things around.

Hat tip: Transforming Sermons: Improving our preaching (itself a good example of why blogs are a useful preaching resource)

Comments

[John]

Those are very good suggestions; a systematic approach to effective sermon preparation.

[Tim]

Dave, apropos of the 'read two books about preaching' suggestion, do you think it might be helpful for the preachers among us to share our two best books on the subject?

[DaveW]

Tim,

Sharing is always good!

[Pam]

Oh yes, please, give me all your recommendations people!

Please someone tell me that it's normal to be very nervous indeed about preaching just before going into circuit as a probationer.

[DaveW]

Pam,

No none of us were at all nervous. It is only you and that because you have not taken theology seriously and studied to any depth at all. Your shallow understanding of the gospel is going to leave you floundering within days.

NOT!!!!

Just in case there is anyone who does not recognise sarcasm I want to point out that anyone who knows Pam cannot fail to be touched by her deep and sensitive understanding of so many faith and theological issues. Her commitment and passion for her call to minister are clear and obvious and I am sure God is very excited by her entering ministry as a Methodist probationer in September.

Oh, and Pam, you are welcome to come and practice around here :-) My Churches would be delighted to have you preach here!

[Pam]

*blush* Thanks, Dave. It's still pretty frightening, though!

Liked the first paragraph, though. *grin* You could be a male version of the triangle-haired woman in the Dilbert cartoons. :-0

[Tim]

My all-time favourite book about preaching is out of print, but readily available at second hand bookstores and on the internet (try abebooks.com). It's 'Stewards of Grace', by Donald Coggan, published in 1958. Can't remember the publisher offhand. It's short, only about 120 pages, but gets right to the heart of the matter.

In second place, I would put John Stott's 'I Believe in Preaching' - although I have never been able to live up to John's high ideals.

[DaveW]

Tim,

I agree about John Stott's book, excellent and very challenging.

I find "Preaching & Worship in the small church" by William Willimon and Robert Wilson very good (best of the books focusing on Small Churches that I found).

[kim fabricius]

Hi Dave,

Just passing, and noticed "the top ten ways to improve your preaching". I must admit it makes me nervous. Is it not an example of the church's captivity to our culture's relentless search for pragmatism amnd relevance, for packaged wisdom and managed solutions, that some think will reverse the church's decline?

I am not saying that it doesn't contain some prudent advice. But at the risk of sounding simplistic, the real key to good preaching is living fully, passionately and simultaneously in two worlds, that of the Bible and that of contemporary life - which entails keeping up to speed on current theological conversations as well as on critical commentary on currents events - that and, of course, loving your congregation, which is absolutely crucial

The only specific piece of advice I would give about sermon preparation is one that most people will be consider quite unfashionable if not downright wrongheaded: not only should a sermon be written (which is not to say it should be read), Barth was more specific: it "must be prepared and drafted word for word. . . Only a sermon in which every word can be justified may be said to be a sacramental action." And "This rule holds for every preacher and not only for the young."

Oh, one other piece of advice. You must remain all your preaching life as scared shitless as Pam now is when she enters the pulpit!

[DaveW]

Kim,

I think your concerns are very valid.

I also go with the idea of living passionately in two worlds and doing so with integrity and love.

H'mm, not so sure about Barth in this case. It seems rather prescriptive and implies rather more uniformity than I am comfortable with.

About remaining scared shitless, I confess to hoping that would diminish over time and that I would actually be able to get to sleep on a Saturday night.

[Pam]

I wonder if Kim has read Richard Lischer's (relatively) new book which pretty much expresses the same views she has?

The End of Words: The Language of Reconciliation in a Culture of Violence

As to writing versus not writing, there was a recent discussion on this on Ship of Fools and people seem to have adamant opinions in both directions. Personally, I suspect that it's a matter of personal preference but I do have to say that using an outline or notes should not be an excuse for poor preparation. I've heard too many sloppy, rambling sermons by people who hadn't bothered to think things through properly (mainly Local Preachers, not ministers) Myself, I need the discipline of writing.

[Tim]

I write my sermons out in full, practice-preach them in an empty church Friday morning, and then reduce the full manuscript to notes which I place in my Bible and preach from on Sunday. I got this practice from Coggan and Stott, and find that it combines the advantages of word-for-word preparation with the freedom of preaching from an outline and being able to adapt and change if the Holy Spirit leads.

I absolutely agree with what Kim says about loving your congregation - which is why I love preaching in a 'pastoral sized church' in which it is possible for the pastor to actually know everyone in the congregation. By the way, Pam, Kim is a 'he', not a 'she'.

[kim fabricius]

And, by the way, Pam, Kim is a he, not a she!!

[kim fabricius]

Oh - another by-the-way! - if, unlike Tim and I, you cannot follow Barth's advice, from it can be distilled some advice you can - indeed must - follow: call it "word care".

[DaveW]

Kim,

I like the phrase "word care" and agree that it is a requirement whatever form of notes etc you preach from.

Tim,

The simple advice to love your congregation is incredibly important. I have Angela Shier-Jones to thank for making that point very clearly in our training. It makes a huge difference and easily gets missed in lists on how to improve your preaching.

So far then we have collected 4 new items to improve our preaching:

- The need for "Word care" in our preparation.

- The need to love our congregations. We can only preach to those we love.

- The need to be afraid of what we do.

- The need to live fully, passionately and simultaneously in two worlds, that of the Bible and that of contemporary life.

I have to say I love the way these are holistic and connected to the Christian life rather than sure fire "techniques". I feel they show that in some sense we need to "be preachers" rather than "do preaching".

[Pam]

Kim, I apologise for confusing your gender. I shall remember that you are a 'he'.

My experience of preaching is much like Dave's was before he started as a probationer, so I'm not afraid to get up in front of a congregation and speak. (I was called to preaching after ten year's experience of public speaking at work.) What I'm afraid of is that it strikes me that producing good sermons week after week - and sometimes two a week - is not an easy task.

I DO write my sermons out in full but in outline form. My Local Preacher's tutor had worked for BBC radio prior to becoming a minister. He suggested simply practicing the sermon three or four times until one doesn't need to read it. This approach works for me, and if I have a sudden panic, I have the crutch of an actual sentence written down rather than simply notes. The usual objection I get at this stage is people saying that there is no way one can write out a text and have it sound natural. (I disagree.) Another objection is that the Holy Spirit can't work.

It seems to me that people are genuinely different and, like most things in life, I don't see the point in getting dogmatic about the process of preaching.

[kim fabricius]

Hi Pam,

I still think writing a sermon out in full is an imporant discipline, but that mustn't mean taking the manuscript into the pulpit and reading it. Heaven forbid! "The church," as Luther said, "is a mouth-house, not a pen-house."

Once written, there are several ways for the manuscript to become a sermon (the final decision, of course, is the Holy Spirit's). Bonhoeffer used to memorise his. Others reduce it to notes, headings, etc. I simply go through mine several times on Sunday morning, making a last-minute change here or there, marking bits for emphasis, pause or repetition, etc., so it's fresh in my mind - while still taking the manuscript with me into the pulpit (I'd rather go into the pulpit without clothes than without a manuscript!) - and while also feeling free to depart from it (usually only slightly), sensitive to the present moment and to the rapport I sense I have (or not!) with the congregation, sensitive too to the promptings of the spirit - my own certainly, God's I can only hope and pray but not presume.

You are right to disagree with people who say that "there is no way you can write out a text and have it sound natural" - they are demonstrably mistaken. And as for the preposterous idea that "the Holy Spirit can't work" - I guarantee you that if the Holy Spirit hasn't been working with the preacher in the study, he sure as hell won't be guiding the lazy bastard in the pulpit!

[Tim]

Hah! Kim, you crack me up!

Thought back a bit over my own history. I never used to write out my sermon in full - just wrote an outline, then went into the pulpit with that. Then my Dad retired, and he and Mum weren't getting a lot of good teaching, so I started writing out my sermon in full to send it to them. Very quickly I noticed the benefits. As Donald Coggan says, 'Many a heresy has come out of the preacher's mouth in the pulpit because it has never stared him in the face in the study first'. I noticed after several years of writing in full that I was becoming much more careful in my preparation as a whole.

I am the lazy bastard Kim is talking about. If there's a corner to cut, I'll cut it. Preparing a full manuscript is a good discipline for me because it keeps me from doing 'the least I can get away with'.

However, I'd hesitate to lay it down as a general rule. Some cultures are just not writing cultures. Some cultures still have the gift of thinking inside one's own head. I saw that when I worked in an Inuit community in the high Arctic - one of our best preachers never wrote down a word, but every word that came out of his mouth was exactly right, in the right place, with proper pauses for emphasis and so on.

Still - preparing a full text is a vital discipline for me, even though I don't preach from it.

[Pam]

I guarantee you that if the Holy Spirit hasn't been working with the preacher in the study, he sure as hell won't be guiding the lazy bastard in the pulpit!

I got really grilled on this when I candidated because someone had written that I prepare my sermons diligently. The person (a minister) was quite unhappy with my answer that I thought the Holy Spirit could work through my preparation. I'm just imaginging you in the room with that chap! :-)

Tim, I can be a rather broad-brush person at times. When I write out my sermons, I find that there are things that I could have expressed in better way. Kim's 'word care', possibly?

[DaveW]

Some people have very strange ideas about the Holy Spirit! Where can the idea that the Holy Spirit is only in preachers when they are in the Pulpit come from? Surely the last thing the Church needs or God plans for is preachers who only experience the Holy Spirit in the pulpit.

Why are Christians so interested in limited the Holy Spirit all the time? We see so often statements that say this Holy Spirit will only do this or you must do this/be this, ... I for one want to see more and more of the Holy Spirit active in our lives. Active in our sermon preparation, active in our preaching, active in the congregation when we preach, active in all our lives. Actually not just active but in control.

Basically I want to be a football and let the Holy Spirit be Ronaldinho :-)

[kim fabricius]

There is a (true) story told about an Anglican priest whose curate preached one Sunday. They talked about the sermon afterwards. The curate said that he worked hard on half the sermon and let the Holy Spirit do the work on the other half. "I prefer your half," replied the priest.