How to Create Stronger Sermon Points

By Rick Warren

It has been my experience that books on preaching lift up the wrong kind of sermons as examples. They tend to teach you to prepare academic outlines so vague and general that they are robbed of power.

For instance, here’s an outline for a sermon based on 1 Corinthians 12, “The Corinthians and Spiritual Gifts:”

(Does that title make you want to sit up and listen?)

Point #1 – The source of the Corinthians’ gifts
Point #2 – The function of the Corinthians’ gifts
Point #3 – The purpose of the Corinthians’ gifts

Now, here’s what I think is wrong with this outline:

1. It’s abstract and suggests an academic outline rather than a plain explanation of biblical application.
2. It’s in the third person, and therefore, not personal at all.  It’s about somebody else – the Corinthians.
3. It’s in the past tense, which gives the impression “that was then and this is now.”
4. It doesn’t mention either God or people. Do you really have a great sermon if you don’t mention either God or people?

In short, the points don’t say much of anything to anyone. You can avoid this pitfall by taking a few simple steps toward creating points that make a point.

Check out the Preaching for Life Change Conference material from Pastor Rick Warren.

First, use the biblical application as the points of your sermon. In other words, start with your application, and show how the Scripture illustrates it. Your sermon point should be a present tense application statement followed by the biblical text.

Second, put a verb in every one of your sermon points. The easiest way to help people be doers of the Word is to put a verb in the point. It turns the biblical truth into action steps.

Third, put “Jesus” or “God” into each of your points. Frankly, I’m very concerned about pastors who try to build seeker-sensitive sermons by eliminating “God” and “Jesus” from the message. In fact, I think the best sermons put “God” or “Jesus” right into the application points. When you stand to preach, you’re not just giving a moralistic pep talk. You want to change lives, and the power for changed lives comes only from God.

Fourth, personalize your sermon points by using personal pronouns. I rarely use the word “we” in an application or an outline because it weakens the application. In other words, say, “Jesus Christ came for me. Jesus Christ died for me. Jesus Christ is coming again for me.”

Here’s an outline of 1 Corinthians 12 to show you what I mean. I titled the sermon, “Using Your Gifts:”

Point #1 – God gave you gifts.
Point #2 – God gave you gifts to use.
Point #3 – God gives you gifts for the benefit of the body.

I like this outline because it’s personal, practical, God-centered and positive.

Finally, during your sermon suggest a practical assignment for the week. At Saddleback we often assign some homework! This reflects the way Jesus taught; he often gave assignments by saying, “Go and do likewise.”

The outline in the picture is from a leaf of William H. Griffith Thomas’ sermon notes. Read more at the Dallas Theological Seminary’s website.

A Powerful-Simple Sermon Outline

September 3, 2012

By Artie Davis

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In the process of wrestling with God over Mission, Vision and Direction, I “fell into” a new sermon outline that has proved to be extremely helpful to me. And I love its simplicity. It goes like this…

1. Story-Opened
   • Open with a story that has enough weight to carry the entire sermon. It can be the context of Scripture you are preaching, but doesn’t have to be. But the story must be “heavy” enough to thread through the entire sermon.
2. Head
   • This is what some are thinking  now. The wrong frame of thinking in their heads that is producing the wrong beliefs and wrong actions.
3. Heart
   • This is that God says we should be thinking and believing. The real Truth that will bring transformation to those who receive it.
4. Hand
   • This is what we should do with this new revelation of Truth
   • Many times I will break this up
   • A challenge to those Outside
   • A challenge to this Inside the Kingdom
5. Story-Closed
   • I like to go back and tie a knot in the thread of the story that has been woven through out the sermon. And end it in a way that adds an urgency to the previous challenge.

I’ve been using this for several months now, and our other campus pastors and teachers have found it be very valuable to them. It really helps when studying, and delivering, it’s really easy to keep in your head, and helps to add content in the right places.

I pray it will be a tool that  you can use to impart real Truth and challenge to those you lead and pour into.

Source: ArtieDavis.com

The Aim of Preaching Is Life Transformation

By Rick Warren

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Photo by Sylvia Uphoff

If God’s objective for every believer is to transform us into total Christlikeness, then the objective of preaching is to motivate people to develop Christlike convictions (to think like Jesus), Christlike character (to feel like Jesus), and Christlike conduct (to act like Jesus). Every other objective of preaching is secondary. At the end of the sermon, if people aren’t being transformed in how they think, feel, and act, I’ve missed the mark as a preacher.

To put it another way, the ultimate goal of preaching is not information. In fact, giving people a greater knowledge of the Bible can cause pride to develop in our hearers rather than humility if that information isn’t translated into obedience. And the goal if preaching is not merely instruction either. Preaching certainly includes instruction, but there is more to preaching that mere behavior modification. The goal of well-rounded preaching is transformation and obedience.

If we preach with life transformation as our goal, then the result will be believers who are more obedient to the Bible, and we call obedient believers disciples. Just look at the challenges Jesus gave as He taught people – He continually expected people to DO something as a result of hearing Him.

“Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them.” John 13:17 (NIV)

Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.” Luke 10:37 (NIV)

“But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand.” Matt. 7:26 (NIV)

“For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.” Matt. 12:50 (NIV)

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven” Matt. 7:21 (NIV)

“If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching…” John 14:23-24 (NIV)

“Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it” Luke 11:28 (NIV)

Pastors, we are in the business of producing repentance. And repentance is more than being sorry, it’s more than confessing sin, and it’s more than changing some bad habits. Repentance involves a total change of our thinking to be in agreement with God, which affects our emotions and moves us to act in obedience.

Repentance is changing minds at the deepest level -  the level of beliefs & values. We preach to produce the ultimate paradigm shift for people – the very transformation of their lives. And it’s serious business!

4 Factors to Balance in Your Preaching Calendar

By Rick Warren

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Hopefully, by October, you’re already thinking through your preaching calendar for next year. Part of shepherding a congregation toward long term health is offering a balanced diet from the pulpit. Your preaching over a twelve-month period should be pre-planned with certain factors built in.

Before a new year begins, I try to identify eight to twelve series’ that I’m going to do for the year. What I’m looking for most is balance. There is no way I’m going to be able to use all of the themes that I come up with, but I want to be balanced. And I want to look at several factors as I seek that balance.

First I want to be balanced in content.  That means I need to do a doctrinal series, a relational series, and an ethical series. I want to strike a balance between Old Testament and New Testament. And I want to preach to people at various stages of spiritual growth.

Second, I want to have balance in terms of style. I may do a character series such as a series on Moses, Joseph,  or Joshua from Hebrews 11. I may also do a series on the life of Christ or events from his life such as His miracles or His parables. I might also teach through a book of the Bible like James, Philippines, Peter, Proverbs, or Ecclesiastes.

Third, I like to have balance in tone. This is very important.  1 Corinthians 14:3 speaks of having a balance between building up, firing up and holding up. It’s out of balance to spend your whole year preaching in any one of these tones exclusively. All comfort and no challenge produces a soft congregation.  And all challenge and no comfort produces a warn-out congregation. I’ve found it helpful to identify the emotional stance of each message before sharing it. It has more impact when you know what feeling you’re going to produce.

And fourth, I want to balance the five purposes of the church. Always remember that there is a corporate aspect in preaching. As we preach to move individual people along spiritually, we are also moving the church along. So I always try to preach a series that relates to evangelism, another to fellowship and relationships, another to worship or prayer, another to discipleship or being more Christ-like, and another to serving and ministry.

Look at some of the series’ we’ve done at Saddleback in the last three years and you’ll see that these factors are intentionally balanced…

2011

Ref: http://pastors.com/balanced-preaching-calendar/

ALWAYS PREACH FOR A SPECIFIC RESPONSE

By Rick Warren

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The Bible is clear that Christians must be “doers of the Word and not hearers only,” (James 1:22) so it’s clear that our responsibility as Pastors and preachers of the Word is to challenge people to do something in response to what we’ve said. In other words, the goal of preaching is life change.

How can you add more application into our message to make God’s Word more doable? Always aim for a specific response.

The greatest weakness of most preaching is that the sermon has a fuzzy focus. So many sermons are vague & abstract because the pastor isn’t really clear about why he is teaching this particular message, nor does he give the audience a specific direction to go in response.

It’s easy to be abstract, but it takes effort to be specific, but nothing becomes dynamic until it becomes specific! A well-prepared sermon should be more like a bullet than buckshot. Know your purpose and aim right for it!

The most important question you can be asking as you are in the process of studying and preparing your sermon is what specific response am I going to ask for?

Since you are preaching for action, for a verdict, and for a commitment, you should prepare everything about the message with the end and the stated goal in sight.

Plenty of books on preaching advise you to dig to discover the “big idea” in the text. This is vital, but it isn’t everything. The big idea of the text is the what? of the sermon, but people also need to hear the so what? Ask these three questions before you finish preparing to preach:

• What do I want them to think? That is, how will this message challenge their mind?
• What do I want them to feel? How will this message challenge their heart?
• What do I want them to do? How will this message challenge their will?

After you’ve answered these questions and have thoroughly understood not only the big idea of the text but also the main application, condense the objective down to a single sentence. This will help you to focus, which will help you to be clear, which will in turn help people to know exactly what to do in response to what you’ve said.