How can you stop sermons being boring?
ByDuring my lifetime I’ve heard about three and a half thousand sermons. Often I’ve been challenged, uplifted, provoked, transformed. Sadly, during others, I’ve been bored.
I believe preaching is one of the most important things that the church can do. 1 Corinthians 1:21 says, “God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe”. But in Romans 10:17 Paul also says “…faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ.” (emphasis added).
And the writer to the Hebrews makes things even more explicit. Hebrews 4:2 says, “For we also have had the gospel preached to us, just as they did; but the message they heard was of no value to them, because those who heard did not combine it with faith.”
So is the way a sermon is heard any less important than the way it is preached?
How to prepare for a sermon
I’m not known for my skills at DIY, but I did once have a go at repainting a room. I spent hours and hours with my roller – making sure I didn’t drip paint on the skirting boards, making sure I hadn’t missed anything. And I have to say, when I had finished, it looked very good! Once it had dried I showed off my handiwork to a friend. They ran their hands appreciatively over the paint, then suddenly a large chunk of paint suddenly flaked off! The paint, even though it was fresh, was just peeling off the wall! What had gone wrong? Simply that I’d tried to take a shortcut, and I hadn’t prepared the walls properly. It seemed too much like hard work to sand down the old paint, too much effort to use some primer. The result? Everything that I spent so much time doing simply didn’t stick.
I wonder whether that is true for us in church? We spend so much time listening to sermons, but it never seems to stick. Perhaps it’s because we haven’t prepared ourselves properly.
It would be odd if your pastor turned up one Sunday with no notes, and simply asked, “Has anyone got any ideas what I should preach on this morning?”. But is that our attitude when we come to hear a sermon?
Prepare prayerfully
The most important preparation you can make is to prepare prayerfully. In Ephesians 6:19, Paul asked the church to “Pray also for me, that whenever I open my mouth, words may be given me…”. In Colossians 4:2 he asks the same, “And pray for us, too, that God may open a door for our message… Pray that I may proclaim it clearly, as I should.” We too should pray for clear, biblical and applied preaching.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful to know that each Sunday five people were praying that God would speak to you? So why don’t you pray for the five people sitting nearest to you? If everyone in church did that each Sunday, then everyone would be lifted to God in prayer.
But you must also pray for yourself. Many people pray when they come into church, and that’s a very good habit to get into. But our prayerful preparation shouldn’t begin when we sit in our pew.
If preaching is important, then we must invest time preparing for it, and we should pray before we leave our homes. How many of us miss our quiet times on a Sunday morning, then tell ourselves it doesn’t matter because we’d be praying and reading God’s Word in church anyway? That is not the sign of prayerful preparation.
Prepare thoroughly
A man went to see his doctor for advice about being cured of snoring. The doctor asked, “Does your snoring disturb your wife?” “My wife?! Why, it disturbs the whole congregation!”.
So the first thing I would suggest to help you prepare thoroughly, is to get to bed early on Saturday night! Sometimes you can’t avoid a late night, but if you are continually sleepy when you listen to preaching, then there is something wrong spiritually. You need to spend more time in God’s Word on your own, and less time doing other things that wear you out.
Preparing thoroughly can also mean thinking about the message before you hear it. If you have regular expository preaching in your church, then you probably know what passage next Sunday’s sermon will be based on. Why not read it before you come to church? Discuss it with someone, perhaps even see if you can guess what the preacher’s points are going to be! By doing so, you’ll be thinking over God’s Word, and you’ll be ready and open for the Sunday preaching.
Prepare expectantly
We should look forward to the Sunday sermon. It is not presumptuous to expect God to bless us when His Word makes it clear that preaching is a blessing!
I know that sometimes the preaching in your church is not all you want it to be. You know what? Often it’s not all your pastor wants it to be either! But there’s one thing that will make a difference for both of you: Prayer. Prayer can fix bad sermons.
Every preacher is a sinner saved by grace. Preachers wrestle with their sinful nature just like you do, and they fail just like you do. But you can fix bad preachers – by praying for them.
And if you’re not the listener you want to be, prayer can fix that, too. Pray to become an eager and obedient listener to preaching.
How to listen to a sermon
A sermon is served like a Sunday dinner, not like an intravenous drip. It has to be chewed, digested and swallowed. We cannot simply sit back and expect to be fed, if we are not prepared to play our part.
Preparing well is the first step, but we must also listen well. Here are a few ideas to get you thinking about how we should listen to sermons.
Listen worshipfully
Too often we equate worship with singing. Certainly our singing ought to be worshipful, but the whole service is a worship service. Everything that we do during a Sunday service ought to be worshipful, and that includes listening to the sermon.
So what does it mean to listen worshipfully? Simply that we should respond to the preaching in a way that brings glory to God. So while we’re listening, we should pray short, silent prayers of praise, or ask God to help us to take the message on board.
Listen attentively
Different people’s memories work in different ways, but I’ve found taking notes is a great benefit to listening attentively. Jotting down the main thoughts of a sermon helps keep your mind focused. Not every sermon is fitted for a point-by-point outline, but you can almost always identify the big ideas and bible references. If taking notes doesn’t work for you, then think of other ways to help you listen attentively.
Listen critically
In Acts 17:11 Luke writes, “Now the Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.”
It’s important that you trust your pastor and others who preach in your church. You need to be willing to submit to the authority of your church leaders. But you must not make the mistake of thinking they are infallible. We should never ask, ‘What did the preacher say this morning?’. What we should be asking is ‘what did the Bible say this morning?’
Listen submissively
Having said that, we’re not above God’s Word. If God says it, we should do it! There can’t be any exceptions to that rule. The worst thing that can happen to us in a sermon (and I really mean this), is that when we’re challenged by God’s Word, we harden our hearts and refuse to respond. We must submit ourselves to God’s Word.
How to respond to a sermon
It’s not good preparing well, and listening well, if the sermon doesn’t actually make any difference to us! We need to respond well, too.
Respond thoughtfully
One way of responding thoughtfully is to discuss the message with other people (for example, over Sunday lunch). You’ve heard the old joke, I’m sure. Q: “What did you have for lunch today?” A: ‘Roast preacher’. Don’t roast the preacher, but do discuss God’s Word. Surely the Word of God is more enlightening than politics, the weather or sport? See who can remember the outline of the message; see if anyone caught the main application, or if anyone can repeat the major verse or reference.
And why not take it a step further? Each week, see how the Word of God can be put into action in your life. Write down the date, the title of the message, the main idea and an outline in a notebook. Then, ask questions like these:
What has God commanded? How does He want me to change? What habits do I need to get rid of? What do I need to think about and pray over?
Next Sunday, you can see how you have done at putting the Bible into practice. Did you generally have victory, or were there a lot of failures? What prayer requests has God answered? Keeping a journal to remind us of God’s Word can be a great spiritual benefit.
Respond fully
Do you remember we said earlier that a sermon is like a Sunday lunch? Well, don’t leave the sprouts! Sometimes God’s Word has things to say that we may not like to hear, but which we desperately need. We mustn’t throw away the biblical truths that will challenge and change us.
Imagine you hear a sermon about the importance of resting on a Sunday. It’s easy to digest this to mean, ‘put your feet up and let mum do the cooking’. But if we don’t also think ‘What can I do to help mum rest on Sundays’, then we’ve not responded fully.
So what’s the best way to tell if we really are listening to sermons? It’s by looking at the way we live. Our lives should repeat the sermons that we have heard.
So how do we stop sermons being boring? With a soul that is prepared, a mind that is alert, a Bible that is open, a heart that is receptive, and a life that is ready to spring into action.1
Footnotes
- This last sentence has been borrowed from Philip Ryken’s How to Listen to a Sermon.
This article was published in the March 2004 edition of the Evangelical Magazine, and the October 2004 edition of Grace Magazine.
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Well, it’s back home to the US from Thailand tonight.
This is an interesting discussion, I wish there were a way to turn it into a solution that would make our churches more inviting both to current Christians and to prospective Christians. It would be nice to be able to do this in a positive way and not find places to put blame, but rather places to make dramatic and positive changes to how the Gospel of Jesus Christ is presented.
I read Mr. Edwards and the Spider. It brings back memories of my youth and some of the tent revivals. The preacher was able to cause folks to go to the front in tears and seeming repentance. But, as I remember, the bully at school went forward every time, and never lost his reputation as the bully at school. For some reason, we are not afraid of being scorched on a hot brick. Then again, maybe that is not the Gospel message?
The Psalm 139:7-11 is something I can identify with more closely. Again, there could be difficulty in interpretation–”…if I make my bed in hell, behold you are there…;” KJV But, the idea that God has a personal interest in each of us and in our circumstances is one that should be inviting. As followers of Christ, we, too, need to be inviting. Otherwise, there is no such thing as Amazing Grace, is there?
Stan,
I’d take exception to a few of your points:
Quote:
The preacher was able to cause folks to go to the front in tears and seeming repentance
Why would you characterize this as “the preacher being able” to “seemingly’ bring repentance? You know as well as I do that no preacher can “bring repentance.
Your example of the bully is fine, nobody says that there are not false converts at ANY service and in the church today…but does this shed any light on the validity of Edward’s sermon’s biblical content? Pragmatism?
QuoteThen again, maybe that is not the Gospel message?
Are you trying to imply that using the law and the cross is not the gospel message?
That would be news to all of the apostles and Jesus himself!
They ALL preached repentance as the gospel…it IS the gospel.
Galatians: The law was our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ”
It’s the function of the law to drive a sinner to the cross…no law…no gospel.
As for your misquote of Psalms 139:7
“…if I make my bed in hell, behold you are there…”
and your comment
But, the idea that God has a personal interest in each of us and in our circumstances is one that should be inviting.
Don’t hold any water in this context and don’t make your point. It’s merely one of several examples of God’s omnipresence and says nothing like “takes a personal interest in our circumstances” as part of the gospel message.
Jesus: Repent for the kingdom of Heaven is near!
John the Baptist: Repent, for the kingdom of God is near!
Peter: This man, handed over by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you executed by nailing to the cross at the hands of Gentiles…”
Those are examples of preaching from the bible itself.
As followers of Christ, we, too, need to be inviting. Otherwise, there is no such thing as Amazing Grace, is there?
Is there an underlying idea that we must “entice” people to the message of redemption? I take exception. The preaching of the cross is FOOLISHNESS to those who are perishing…”
PS: Grace is amazing because NO HUMAN deserves it. God doesn’t owe anyone anything, if He NEVER SAVED ANYONE then He’d be well within his rights and He’d be JUST to do so…but thankfully God is merciful, and he took pity on me, a rebel sinner and saved my soul…
Now THAT’S AMAZING GRACE.
You seem to have a very “man-centered” view of the gospel vs a “God centered” view as presented in scripture.
Wow, Robert is kind of scary, hunh? He uses Scripture but his spirit seems critical – which we do sometimes have to be when confronting misinformation, etc. But how he gets what he’s talking about from Stan’s post is puzzling. Perhaps his “folks” enjoy that kind of seemingly harsh attitude but it would keep me far away. I’ve spent a lot of my career – and yes, being a pastor is both a ministry and a career – counseling with people who have been beat up and burned out from their experience with caustic messages which put them down, making them feel guilty for their thoughts or actions. The Scripture “Speak the truth in love” occurs to me. Now very possibly I’m coming off as judgmental. But my purpose is intended to draw attention to our need to lift and embrace one another, giving one another the befifit of the doubt. In my book ABCs Of Ministry I call attention to the fact that as ministers, we can be a curse or a blessing, lift up or cast down.
Back to the theme of the original question of how to keep sermons from being boring, I’ve dedicated seven chapters to Preaching,Communication, and the fact that people WATCH as well as LISTEN. Visitors to our churches get a “first impression” of us through our sermons, as well as through our facilities. I’ve included an additional three chapters on preparing and delivering the kind of sermons which grab the interest and attention of our listeners, holding it to the very end. Maybe the book would be worth reading – this post has grabbed your attention, right? You didn’t stop reading before you got to the end, did you?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzA-XHtyRS4
Robert,
I think you have confused “Mr Edwards” in Lowell’s poem with Jonathan Edwards!
Was Jonathan Edwards a false convert? (I mean the triple jump champion!)
If there are some “false converts” it is logically possible that all are false converts isn’t it?
The squaring of justice and mercy is difficult isn’t it? Can it be done?
In Islam, justice has priority. Traditionally in Christianity it is the other way round. (Though not always! think tele-evangelists and Inquisition. Indeed think of some of the contributors to this site.)
To some extent your reply to Stan reminds me of the disgruntled stait-laced Presbyterian parishioner who, cheated of his weekly dose of hell-fire and smarting under the deprivation, complained that the preacher, Hutcheson, was a ‘silly loon’ who had ‘babbled’ to them for an hour about a ‘good and benevolent God’ without a word about the ‘old comfortable doctrines’ of election, reprobation, original sin and death.
This was about 1730. (‘The more things change….’!) Hutcheson, one of the founding fathers of the Scottish Enlightenment and a great influence on David Hume, subsequently took up the Chair of Moral Philosophy at Glasgow. Stan is in pretty good company don’t you think?
We might remember that the strong and older meaning of ‘repent’ is to ‘re-think’ through the French ‘penser’ – ‘to think’ and the Latin ‘paenitere’ It does carry that meaning today though to some extent it has been eroded to mean only ‘to be genuinely sorry’ ‘Change of mind’ might be more accurate, I don’t really know. Does God repent over his decision to make Saul king? What are the implications here?
Does all this mean that repentance is a continuous process? or a one-off? Billy Graham now thinks people of other faiths can be ‘saved’ and John Stott no longer believes in hell. Ironically some evangelicals now say Graham should burn in Hell! Is this ‘justice’ or ‘mercy’? Can it be both? Can it be neither?
Yes, Robert, I am a sinner without a doubt. Sorry to be such a disappointment.
wigrd, I appreciate your efforts to carry on a positive discussion, but I think with Robert nearby, we won’t be able to make any progress.
This will be my last contribution.
Stan,
that’s disappointing that you’d make several unfounded assertions, even to the point of misconstruing the gospel itself and then when called to explain, you just leave.
Too bad.
I’ll leave you and Wigrd to yourselves, you don’t have to leave, I will.
bob
Hello! I wrote what I considered a thoughtful reply to Robert’s comment to Stan. It didn’t appear. So I copied and pasted that same reply and sought to submit it. I got a message which told me I had already made that comment. Ok, but then where is it? If it was too controversial a thought to be published, just let me know. I thought it might prove to be an interesting comment which would start an honest conversation.
I’m really sorry about this Stan.
I think you are very wise to ‘resign’. It is hard, and probably silly, to carry on in the face of such persistent and confident wrong-headedness.
You are the one who will make progress. Remember Aristotle “The unexamined life is not worth the living”
and Socrates who believed wisdom lay in recognising the limits of our knowledge.
Very best wishes to you and to your wife.
How can we stop sermons being boring? The foolproof answer is simple; stop preaching! This is not quite as flippant as you may think, but perhaps I can return to it later.
Mark claims he has heard about 3,500 sermons. This works out at three per week, every week, for 25 years! Now either Mark’s maths is suspect or he has a serious addiction. He thinks preaching is one of the most important tasks of the church’s mission and is concerned enough to write 1500 words to try to improve the quality of sermons. (It would be interesting to know which church activities he considers less important.)
He identifies ten reasons why sermons are boring and all of them are the fault of the listener not the fault of the preacher! He even beseeches us to do what our pastors tell us!!! A sort of ’slaves obey your masters’
Michael Holt on the other hand, whilst agreeing that something needs to be done lays the problem at the door of the preacher. In fact he decided to write a book … sorry, God led him to write a book on the subject. He might be right or he might be wrong about this, others must judge, but either way it is a rather worrying claim. It places him in the same company as George Bush, David Koresh , Jim Baaker and Gerry Falwell and Benny Hinn. Just to be on the safe side, a visit to an audiolologist and a psychiatrist would not come amiss. Best to check these sorts of things out. Actually if he is right, judging from the video he has made, things are worse than I feared.
Mark and Michael should be neither surprised nor dismayed that sermons are generally wearisome and may find it comforting that, as far back as the 18th and 19th centuries, William Hogarth, James Gillray and Thomas Rowlandson illustrated humorously and vividly, the dreary, mind -numbing nature of sermons. A contemporary analogy is ‘snails doing algebra’ (Eagleton 2008)
Teachers were urged years ago to give up monologues (more politely expositions) that lasted more than 10 minutes and if we take a moment to remember our own schooldays we surely would say amen to that. Anyway it is not at all clear why we should expect priests, pastors or ministers to preach better than, say, window cleaners.
Although congregations wisely favour brevity over quality, there is clearly a problem for those who feel a need to sermonise. Just maybe, one of the problems rests with the internal power structures of the evangelical enterprise. This is well documented by Percy (1995), Bebbington (1994) but perhaps most interestingly and purely sociologically by Basil Bernstein:
“How a society selects, classifies, distributes, transmits and evaluates the educational knowledge it considers to be public, reflects both the distribution of power and the principles of social control”
Bernstein B. “Class, Codes and Control: Towards a theory of Educational Transmissions . Vol 11” (1975)
What all this boils down to is that the power structures intrinsic to fudamentalism and to evangelicalism are such that;
monologue is favoured over dialogue
authority is favoured over opinion
uniformity is favoured over diversity
certainty is favoured over ambiguity
The ‘society’ or organisation becomes ‘closed’ rather than ‘open’. This is one ‘explainer’ of the existence of hundreds of different sorts of evangelical churches. An interesting and sobering exercise is to identify other societies or organisations which fit the same model.
In Bernsteinian terms, the language code is restricted not elaborated and the resulting hierarchical structure is strong and rigid.
This ensures that preaching becomes pre-eminent and over-important.
There is a continuous quest for agents that will deliver certainty and control of power through preaching. (note this blog). Ultimately, concrete faith is sought through propositions and the quest for authority: control and certainty is a way of receiving, holding and demonstrating power against any other power that might pose a threat. (Again, comments on this blog illustrate this).
There is an alternative way of working which has been outlined previously and consists essentially in a reversal of the above table. The transfer of power is noticeable and at first uncongenial. The examples below are ‘things hard for thought’ but if hard questions take the place of ready answers, as they do in the best poetry and in the sayings of Jesus, the rewards are high.
The sorts of questions that might be raised are:
“you call for faith;
I show you doubt, to prove that faith exists.
The more of doubt, the stronger faith, I say,
If faith overcomes doubt.”
“ Bishop Blougram’s Apology” Robert Browning.
Can we have faith without doubt? What about doubt without faith? Is Blougram right?
How can we be merciful? Does being merciful necessarily mean being unjust? Does being “just” necessarily mean being cruel?
What can I know? What ought I to do? What do I hope for? Notice not “what can YOU know? What ought YOU to do? Nor What YOU can hope for!
There are plenty more. I’m sure you can think of plenty of your own.
References
“Evangelicalism in Modern Britain – A History from the 1730s to the 1980s” Bebbington D W (1989) Routledge.
“Words, Wonders and Power – Understanding Contemporary Christian Fundamentalism and Revivalism” Percy M (1996) SPCK.
Mark,
That was a great lesson on preaching and listening and responding. Some of the responses were interesting too. I think there is a lot of boring preaching out there for several of the reasons you mentioned. I think you have some great solutions and I hope I do my part as a preacher and sometimes a listener.
Thanks for the post,
Mark