Preaching has always had a central role in the life and work of the church. While they may look and sound different through the ages and cultures, sermons have always been around and show no signs of going away. For some unknown reason, I began thinking about what the purpose of a sermon is. Why do preachers preach? I thought this could be a good question for our reader(s) to sound off on.
I suspect the answer is something along the lines of “the purpose of a sermon is to explain and apply the Scripture,” with the assumption that 2 Timothy 3:16 applies: “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work” (NIV).
Now, it’s always dangerous that a post asking for interaction will end up with tumbleweed blowing by and crickets chirping in the background. But I’m hoping we’ll get some thoughts thrown out here. Let me ask a few questions, though feel free to pick up a tangent you might think is helpful:
1) Do you agree with the purpose of a sermon given above (keeping in mind I’m simply trying to give what I think is the most common sentiment)?
2) What would you say the purpose (or purposes) of a sermon is?
3) In your opinion, have most sermons you’ve heard in your lifetime fulfilled this purpose?
4) Have any of these been lacking in the majority of sermons you’ve heard: teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness?
Okay, go at it. Let me say that I do think it’s good to think through these things every so often. It’s easy to get too comfortable with church life that we don’t ask why we do the things we do, or even if we’re doing it for the reasons we should be. In my opinion, that’s a quick way to make the work of the church ineffective.
I think I agree with your general definition, given that your understanding of ‘applying Scripture’ is sufficiently broad (which I believe yours is).
One fault I often see is that too many sermons, in my opinion, lack a robust application and jump too quickly to a moralizing application, there’s too much emphasis on applications being practical or ‘doable.’ On the other side of the spectrum, some sermons have an application that’s too abstract.
I think what’s needed is application that’s profoundly theological while still understandable. We need to know how to better embody the truth of the gospel.
Now I don’t want to go off on a rant here…
As to a sermon’s purpose, my answer is (not surprisingly?) the one you give above: to explain and apply Scripture. It’s purpose is to bring the Word of God to the congregation; to faithfully explain what it says, and make clear its meaning. This is preaching God’s Word.
A few examples pop into my head: Peter in Acts 2, Stephen in Acts 7, Jesus in Mt. 5, and the author of Hebrews in the same. When Paul goes to the synagogue in Acts 17, he reasons with them from the Scriptures, “as his custom was.” What is Paul doing in Acts 13:16ff? He’s preaching the Word of God (Acts 13:46).
Apostolic examples notwithstanding, it would seem to me that one must explain and apply Scripture if one is to preach effectively. After all, what’s the Authoritative source of Christian doctrine? What’s sharper than a double-edged sword, judging the thoughts of the heart (Heb.4:12)? Upon what does humankind live (Mt.4:4, Dt.8:3)? What is Timothy commanded to preach (2 Tim. 4:2)? The Word of God in all cases. Whence the sermon’s authority if is not found in God’s Word? How else do we protect ourselves from the subtle lies of worldly “wisdom,” or the preacher’s own sinfulness or biases, if not by preaching God’s Word?
Of the sermons I hear, I get a mixed bag. Many are not even sermons, in my mind, so much as helpful talks that are Biblically based. If there is one trend I notice it is that many sermons tend to water down the “rebuking and correcting” side of things. They seem to be undercut by the desire to not offend. Sermons also tend to be further undercut by the desire to entertain.
A great test of a sermons efficacy as to 2 Tim. 3:16 would be to test the regular attendees: How well do they know the Word of God? Are they growing in knowledge and understanding of Scripture? Are they able to not only give you “the answer” to some Spiritual problem, but also the reason why, (i.e., the Biblical defense for that position)? It may be possible, though a series of good, Biblically based talks, to foster a congregation that lives very well; and bears fruit for God’s Kingdom. “Training in righteousness” may be satisfied, then, but the “teaching” is not. Similarly, one could faithfully exposit the Scripture, thus “teaching” very well, but evoke no response from the congregation, thus missing the mark there.
I’m going to shut up. My short answer:
(1) Yes.
(2) See above. It should explain and apply what the Word of God says in such a way as to teach the congregation about God’s Word, and evoke a response from them consistent with that Word.
(3) & (4) It’s been a mixed bag.
Raise your hand if you lied in the first sentence of your comment… go ahead… not you marcus…
Both of you mentioned a perceived over-emphasis on sermons being practical (pragmatic?). I happen to agree with both of you. I can understand the desire, of course, and I do think that a good sermon will address the “now what?” question. Unfortunately, the “now what?” is rarely address through the lens of the cross.
I do think preachers can get a little leeway on this (I’ll bet you both agree). Preaching ain’t easy.
So a question for you guys (and anyone else who’s reading this): how does a preacher ensure that he is hitting the 4 items of 2 Tim 3:16? Is it as simple as saying, “huh, I haven’t rebuked them in a while, let me go find a text…”?
Brian- interesting thought on testing the regular attendees. How would one do this?
I absolutely agree that “preaching ain’t [sic] easy.” Like many matters in life, it’s far easier to critique somebody else’s work than come up with your own.
Regarding your question, my first answer is (broken record alert!) that a preacher can hit all these items by consistently preaching the WHOLE counsel of God. At the risk of oversimplifying: preach faithfully the Word, and let the rest take care of itself. This is redolent of Augustine’s “Love God and do as you will,” sound byte, but I think it hits at the heart of things. God’s Word teaches, rebukes, corrects, and trains in righteousness, so preach that Word. Preaching shouldn’t be left up to us, as it were, let God’s Word decide the matter.
The issue then becomes how one chooses Scriptures from which to preach, and how one arranges sermons and sermon series, which is perhaps going down another path. Very practically speaking, there are some ways to help inform our choices (in no order): (1) Preach through entire books (not always, of course), (2) Keep a log of the Scriptures from which you preach and note if there is any lack of proper proportion(Hmmm…I’ve rarely preach from the Pentateuch and it’s 1/6th of the Bible), (3) Think in terms of Biblical Theology; every part has a place in the whole.
Books could be (have been) written here, I’m sure, since we also can’t ignore the specific needs of a given congregation, current events that are on people’s minds, etc., etc. No easy tasks here, praise be to God that His Spirit is in us, and is far more interested in truthfully revealing Himself than we are.
As to my “interesting thought,” about testing regular attendees, I shall retreat to my ivory tower: I don’t really know. I think the pastor should have some sense from his relationships with the congregation as to where they are in certain matters; even if its a big church, ministry leaders can help keep a pulse on where people are. E.g., “Wow, people always act like they’re hearing something new when I talk about the resurrection of the body.” Perhaps there’s a cue to pull out 1 Cor. 15. Handing out an actual (anonymous) test wouldn’t be the worst idea ever, though it may feel a bit awkward. Many churches will hand out surveys without compunction, so why not reverse the survey, so to speak?
Sorry for my long comments. Suffice to say this is near and dear.
Hmmm…
I agree that preachers should get some leeway. Even from my limited experience I know that it’s not an easy task.
I think I tend to agree with Brian’s answer. Preach through large sections of the text and the rest will take care of itself as long as you don’t try to dodge difficult passages (which also means that I don’t think that preaching from the lectionary is the best move because of its tendency to skip controversial texts) and seek to understand what the author was trying to do with the text. I think that looking at the text from the angle of speech act theory and trying to perform equivalent speech acts may be a helpful.
In my formation group at Trinity we had a guest come (I wish I could remember his name) and talk about life as a pastor after seminary. He mentioned that he alternates blocks of sermons between OT and NT. So he’ll preach, for example, for a couple of months on the first few chapters of Matthew, then he’ll switch and preach on the life of Abraham for a few months. Here’s where Brian’s suggestion would be a good addition to this method. If you track what you preach you can see where you tend to cluster your sermons and then can see how you need to diversify.
I’m on board with the suggestions from both of you. In fact, I think I may just have to write another post on the subject… (easy way to get/steal post ideas, by the way).
I do want to make a comment about the “survey the congregation” idea. I think it can be helpful to find out what the church is thinking about the sermons (and other stuff the church is doing). There is, of course, a danger in trying to cater to the whims of the people- I feel like Paul said something about that. But, a pastor may feel like he’s doing a good job at something, only to find out that he’s missing his audience. Then again, any helpfulness would be predicated on good, thoughtful responses from the congregation, which may or may not actually happen.
Just to clarify, by “survey the congregation,” I mean “test the congregation.” It’d be a doosey to try to think of good questions though, since we’re not trying to make folks adept at Bible trivia. It may be unacheivable. I’d be pretty wary of doing the equivalent of a “worship survey,” (P.S., I’m also wary of “worship surveys”) that tries to guage how people are ‘responding’ to sermons, which is most likely just a euphemism for how much they like them. As you (Danny) mention, though, it may not be all bad.
The excellent Ken Swetland had some neat ideas in this regard in the broader sense of what a given congregation might expect of their pastor. It was basically hashing out a rough schedule: how many hours a week should the pastor spend on visitation? How many hours on sermon prep? etc. It’s a little unfair, since many laypeople may not understand how many hours it takes to prepare a sermon, but the data can be normalized to get a sense of how important certain areas of ministry are to people. You might do the same by asking survey questions like “Which parts of the Bible do you feel most familiar with? Which parts the least? What areas of Scripture do you have trouble understanding?” Etc. Simple questions like these might help hone on areas needing emphasis. Even yes/no questions like “Do you know what is meant by the word ‘atonement?'” could help guage people’s confidence (n.b., not if they’re actually right) in Biblical matters.
The best bet is probably staying well in tune with your congregation, either directly or by proxy, and praying. And praying some more.
I think a survey could be really useful, if done properly. I think you have to weigh the answers carefully. For instance, the congregation might rate the preacher very highly, leading him to think he’s doing a great job. The problem, however, is that his preaching may have already caused others to leave, thus taking them out of the survey.
I wonder if you could get away with something like this: “what themes, passages and topics have been covered in the last 6 months?” Something along those lines (could be 12 months, whatever- this could also work for worship songs). That way, you test whether or not the congregation is retaining what you’re preaching, you can find out if they are even picking up what you think you’re putting out there, etc. If you get a lot of generic or one-sided answers, that can tip you off that there’s a lack of balance.
I don’t think a survey is the only, or even the best approach. I still think keeping a log of sermons (passages, themes, etc) and reviewing it to see how you’re doing is better. Having a team of trusted people around you to offer thoughts, critiques, etc, would also be invaluable.
Surveys are always interesting (at least to me – I work in marketing research), unfortunately in the church they often lead to depressing results for the pastor. So I don’t know if you really want to survey people on what you’ve been preaching on. Also, a particular point may impact someone in the way you intend without them being able to remember the context in which they heard it. So the results, in my opinion, could potentially be skewed more negatively than they really are.
I have a hunch that a content based test wouldn’t be better, for gauging how well they retain what you preach, as Brian suggests.
Suggestions
Dear Brother/Sister,
I am Nadeem Aslam, from Pakistan. Urdu and Punjabi are the biggest languages of this country.
I visited your website and impressed by your work. I have one suggestion regarding booklets, sermon, tracks, and Bible studies and recording, it would be good, if these will be available in native languages in Urdu and Punjabi. Reaching out to the people in their own languages is very helpful, affective and fruitful.
If your ministry is interested and willing to reach unreached and untold in Pakistan with the materials in native languages, I can arrange to translation for messages, bible studies, biblical tracks, books and also Urdu page on your ministry website.
Our all services will be provided with reasonable rates and whatever we get we use it to spread the word of God.
With prayers and blessings,
Nadeem Aslam,
Pakistan
How do I judge a sermon’s success?
The more I learn, the more I realize how much I don’t know….likewise the better a sermon, the more I realize how much work God still needs to do in my life to transform me AND how much yielding I still need to do to allow God to work in my life.
to quote Barbara Brown Taylor, “preaching is a moment in which words are used by the preacher to connect the audience to their deep humanity and the mystery of God. It is the space in which we give our sisters and brothers the eyes to see the world and each other as God sees.
A good sermon “continuously bothers you!”
Messages that Made a Difference
Having been a bible college student and having grown up in the church and being a lifetime student of the word…i have probably listened to thousands of sermons in my life….but I have only truly experienced a percentage of those! therein lies the problem..once you “taste, and see that it is good”, it’s difficult not want to satisfy your hunger with that kind of “meat.”
the ones that made a differnce — the time a pastor explained how the blood running through my veins was the exact same blood running through the vein of another person of another ethnicity….prior to this my beliefs were such that i had been raised to believe it was ok to be friends with “those people” but God was against us marrying “those people”…..the preacher explained how the only requirement was to be saved…sure all other ideas of being equally yoked would make for a smoother marriage but they weren’t prerequisites. that day my beliefs were challenged in a way that i understood my beliefs did not stand up to god’s word, and since god’s word is truth and since his truth does not change, then what had to change were my beliefs.
Just when I was becoming complacent with not being challenged, I heard a message last week – challenging me to love the unlovable…to reach out without judgement to the prostitute, the homeless, the pierced & tatoo’d guy that might be sitting next to me, to share the love of christ as much as they can handle, at their own pace, even if they arent tranforming as quickly as you’d like them to. At first I thought, “oh, this doesn’t apply to me”…I don’t know that I’d be comfortable next to “those people” and besides at my church, that just wouldn’t be an issue (there being a questionable person sitting next to me)…..fast forward 10 days and God is still bothering me about this….Rich Mullins is playing in my head “you can argue with your maker, but you know you just can’t win….alright-ok-uh huh-amen…”
The purpose of the sermon as a part of the purpose of the church
is fourfold…worship, instruction, fellowship & evangelism. a sermon centered service is out of balance, as is any service that doesn’t balance its focus on all 4 purposes of the church.
all four aspects are equally important — worship invites us, the sermon informs us, fellowship encourages us, evangelism sends us forth.
we must bring our A game to every aspect. The church has a responsibility to carry out their purpose BETTER than the BEST non-christ alternatives (world views) available to our target audience.
The pupose of a sermon? Gives the Holy Spirit the opportunity to use the speaker to articulate and expound on those Truths that the Holy Spirit has determined is essential at that given moment.
It’s amazing designed for me to have a website, which is helpful in favor of
my know-how. thanks admin
[…] the message across, and they should not be the primary emphasis, but rather the message. See also What is the Purpose of a Sermon? The central purpose of a sermon HAS TO DO with the utility of Scripture to affect us spiritual in […]