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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Hello Robert! There is, of course, a difference between “sermons” and the “Word” of God. What you’re listening to when someone’s preaching is that person’s understanding and interpretation of the Word of God. THAT’s what’s sometimes boring, not the Word “once delivered to the saints.” And THAT’S the part, if it’s boring, that can be “fixed” by spending more time in preparation. Of course it is up to the church to insist that the pastor have the time he needs to do due dilegence, as they say, in preparing both himself and his message. When the minister realizes that he still has more to learn about the art/gift of preaching, and commits himself to learning, the sermon will then become tighter, more focused – and possibly shorter – and not at all boring for your fellow pew-sitter. My book would help any minister at this point. That’s why God led me to write it. Give it a look-see: http://youtube.com/watch?v=fzA-XHtyRS4
David
Hi Eric (wigrd),
I just got and read the book, The Essential Sermons by Austin Farrer. The sermons are concise and give pause for thought. It would be nice if my pastors would read and practice such a style. However, knowing my present pastor, I am sure he would be rather put off by any advice from a layman. I also happen to like Robert Schuller’s sermons; which have always been to the point and, additionally, have a biblical theme. I watched the book advertising video by David E. Holt, and think that if the book performs as advertised, it would be very helpful to sermon preparation as well. It promises to keep sermons short and captivating to church members as well as visitors. That would be a great goal to achieve.
Anyway, thanks for the discussion on this topic. I’ll be leaving for Thailand on Wednesday and won’t have much time for more on this.
My apologies to Robert.
Stan
David, and Stan,
I guess I should have made myself more clear when I said that the word is never boring.
I’m sorry for coming off strong, but I was just reacting to the usual pulpit lurker’s “entertain me” attitude where if the sermon goes 5 minutes long or is not as exciting as the last Starsky and Hutch rerun, then they complain.
I DO understand that there is a need for sermons to not be “drone-fests” really I do but as an example of the point I was trying to make; think about Jonathan Edwards. He was one of the greatest minds, (and greatest preachers) ever to preach on American soil, was a very “droning” monotone preacher…and still the spirit of God did it’s work in spades!
Have a good holiday Stan.
Glad you enjoyed the Farrer. The collection is quite old now and I wasn’t sure how it would hold up. Generally, though of course not always, preachers and pastors don’t take advice easily or readily. Ironically all too often power and conceit take over. I think it was Martin Buber who said ‘How can I hear what you say, when what you are is ringing in my ears?’
I think you are all missing the point about sermons. They are SUPPOSED to be boring! They have ALWAYS been boring. Homer Simpson and Voltaire said it. Blackadder and John Wesley said it. William Blake wrote poetry about it. It never entered my head that sermons should be anything BUT boring,
Interesting, stimulating or inspiring sermons are neither hoped for nor encountered thus a non-boring sermon is an oxymoron. By their very nature they ARE dreary and tedious. They are intrinsically monotonous and dull and are meant to be so. They are water to a drowning man and they wouldn’t be proper sermons if they weren’t.
Judging by the lengths y’all are prepared to go to with ‘plug-ins’, ‘widgets’ and ‘whatsits’ you seem determined to spoil things. Think of tradition and the shock of it all. Preachers alone enjoy sermons. Let’s leave it that way. Thankfully they are in the minority.
Have some fun with this little experiment.
Next time you have a group of some dozen or so people together, tell them you are going to list 20 common words; e.g. pin; blue; apple; bag, etc. Make your own written list and tell your colleagues that they are to try hard to remember as many words as they can.
It is important that the 14th or 15th word should be memorable, e.g. Manchester United or George Bush.
When you have finished reading the list to them,(speaking clearly with 3/4 seconds between each word)ask them to write down, without conferring, as many words as they can recall. Give a couple of minutes for this.
You now need to ask how many people remembered and wrote down the first word ‘pin’and count them. Now tally the number who remembered ‘blue’ and so on down to the 20th word. Make a simple block graph of your results as you go along. If for example 11 people remembered ‘pin’, draw a line 11 squares high; if 7 remembered ‘blue’ draw a line or block 7 sqares high. When you have finished, join the tops of the blocks to produce a curve.
What happens to the curve? Describe it. What conclusions might you draw? There could be five or more things to say. Are the conclusions useful; do they say anything about sermons or preaching?
Perhaps the best way of doing this is to use the equivalent of a blackboard and get your audience to interpret the results. Can you think of at least three reasons why this might be a better way? Can your colleagues? Are there any lessons here?
If you used the latter technique, what does it feel like to be the conductor rather than the soloist? How did your ‘audience’ feel when you engaged them rather than ‘told’ them?
This is a far more difficult way of working and although at first strange, and always risky,(power transfers to the audience!) it is far more rewarding than lecturing. Your imput is vital though discrete. In the same way that you have to learn to hold back, your ‘congregation’ has to learn to come forward. Much harder for an adult audience. The model is bottom up rather than top down, or if you like, the bidet rather than the shower.(So rather more ‘up bottom’ than bottom up I suppose). Short questions requiring longer answers are much better than long questions requiring shorter answers.
For any one brave enough to try, good advice would be that there are no ‘bad’ questions and no ‘wrong’ answers. People need to be encouraged to speak but importantly to listen to others, think and comment on what other people say rather than always put forward their own point of view. The importance of the leader’s role is crucial here.
If you want to try the same technique but with a harder exercise (without involving scripture at this point) try the following.
Take the well-known nursery rhyme ‘Three Blind Mice’
Three blind mice, three blind mice,
See how they run, see how they run.
They all ran after the farmer’s wife,
She cut off their tails with a carving knife,
Did ever you see such a thing in your life’
As three blind mice?
Can we unravel exactly what is going on here? Are the mice in the first two lines running away from the farmer’s wife because she has cut off their tails, or are they running after her? Does the verse describe two actions or one? One possible chronology is that the farmer’s wife cut off the tails of three mice who were running after her, an act which somehow blinded them thus causing them to run away. This would account for the change of tense from present to past: the narrative opens with an event in the present before shifting to highlight its past cause.
One could also read the verse as a single action in the present: three mice already blind, are running after the farmer’s wife, who cuts off their tails. This fails to account for the change of tense, and it is hard to see how the mice could run after the farmer’s wife at all if they were blind; but it is otherwise a plausible reading. If we opt for the first interpretation, a certain ironic reversal is detectable, the nub of which is the shift from line 2 to line 3. The mice that scampered gleefully in pursuit of the farmer’s wife are now fleeing in panic away from her. Nobody comes out of this with much credit – especially the sadistic speaker. There are baffling aporias here. What are we to say?
All these points and more can be drawn out by careful questioning and perhaps some prompting.
Does the task tell us anything about close textual analysis? Are there lessons here? What are they? Who are they for?
These are some neat exercises. 1) It wouldn’t take too long to figure out that “George Bush” or “Manchester United” would be the words that get the most blocks and evoke participation by the audience, and that the other 19 words are just fillers at best or a big waste of time at worst. 2) I’ve never understood Three Blind Mice and can’t say I do now, although I’ve heard it a thousand times. No amount of analysis is likely to clear it up–at least for me. I guess that’s what you’re saying. Very interesting.
Maybe we could have a cafeteria style church. Pick the parts of the service that interest us and participate in them for as long as they pertain. Go to the music room for awhile, participate in the prayer room for awhile, drop by the offering room, participate in the Sunday School class, take communion. And when finished, do something useful for others–visit the sick or elderly, feed the homeless, visit the prisoners.
I’m not sure what to do about the sermon, though. I can’t seem to find a room for it.
Here in Thailand, my inlaws founded a music group that sings secular music karaoke-style. They only allow ten persons a time and meet irregularly–probably once a month or quarter. They have a professional singer and her accompanist husband as facilitators. The pro singer rarely sings solo; her purpose is to facilitate, and she does a wonderful job of it. Both are top-notch professionals. The particpants are so-so in quality, but they sing for four to five hours at a crack whenever they meet and never seem to tire of hearing each other’s voices. Of course, they can stand it, because they know that their chance to shine is just around the corner, and they can’t wait to grab the microphone and be the singer they always wanted to be. Is there any lesson here for Christian enthusiasm and participation?
Solo participation (ego satisfaction?) seems to be a big motivator. Just like participation in a blog like this. We get to express ourselves even if we get creamed once in awhile. We keep coming back.
You sound as though you are having a great time Stan. Wish I was with you! Do try the task, the results may surprise you. There is more to it than you guess. The curve starts to go up before…. Glad you responded, though the lack of response is both telling and deafening. I think you are right, people need significance within the group. Are you going to put your karaoke on YouTube!!!!? I agree with your critical theory !!! (Three Blind Mice). People become so much more confident and insightful when they discover for themselves that there isn’t always an answer – let alone a right answer. Three Blind mice is puzzling and of course one could say ‘who cares anyway?’ You might however enjoy unravelling the first stanza of Robert Lowell’s magnificent poem ‘Mr Edwards and the Spider’ and Psalm 139:7-11. Is there any correspondence or resonance here? Do they shed light on each other? Does it matter?
Wigrd,
No real reason that I did’t respond except I just didn’t care about it or see it’s relevance in light of the blog topic.
I see you didn’t respond to my comment about Jonathan Edwards:
That’s relevant to the topic and hand…a response?
It is rather odd to start your response by saying you didn’t respond! But I know what you mean.
I’m sorry you can’t see the point Robert. Does this mean there isn’t one? Did you try the exercise and fail to see the relevance or are you just guessing? (I’m guessing the latter). Do you think you did not see because you did not care; or, do you not care because you do not see? (remind you of anything?) Are the two not connected?
What can I say about your opinion of Jonathan Edwards? It is precisely what you say it is – an opinion. You are quite entitled to it. That is a necessary condition of an opinion. You may well be right, but there was nothing to respond to. You, yourself call it a ‘comment’.