Important endeavors require preparation. Preachers need to plan ahead in order to help the church family take full advantage of the sermon-event. This is especially true when community-oriented sermon-listening is practiced. Your goal is to change the sermon-listening culture of the church. So, the details of that change need to be well planned.
Pastor, the first thing you can do promote
community-anticipation for the weekly sermon is to publish the sermon topic and
passage ahead of time. You can post the sermon title and Bible text on the
church website. You can have the church office e-mail the sermon information to
the congregation. It can also go into the church bulletin a week ahead of time.
But frankly, just sending out a passage reference is not enough. You need to do
more than that to generate interest in the upcoming message.
Try asking the congregation questions that
the Bible passage will answer in your sermon. Get them wondering about issues
that are addressed in the text. Consider the way you typically garner the
congregation’s interest in your sermon introductions, and employ the same
techniques to write questions that will pique the church’s interest even before
they gather to hear the sermon. In addition to using the church website and
e-mail contact list, you could also post your thoughts on Facebook or Twitter.
If you have video recording capability (a smart phone will do), you could
deliver your questions in person via a two-minute video message that could
easily be uploaded to YouTube. The church will value that personal touch. It is
another way to maintain contact with the congregation during the week. The goal
is to have the entire church preparing for the sermon together, asking
questions about the passage, asking questions that relate to application,
praying together, and anticipating personal and corporate transformation.
Second, you should encourage prayer groups
to pray for you, the upcoming sermon, and the church’s response to it. Prayer
groups can meet before, during, and after the sermon event. Donald Whitney
recounts a story:
An American preacher once visited Spurgeon and was given a tour of
the church building where he ministered, the Metropolitan Tabernacle. He
noticed that there was no heat in the worship center, so he asked, “Don’t you
have a heating plant?” Spurgeon responded by leading him down to a large
basement room. In that room four hundred men met before each service to pray
for the pastor and the salvation of souls. Spurgeon said, “That’s our heating
plant.” He responded similarly in 1882 when some American visitors to the
Tabernacle asked what was the secret of success: “My people pray for me.”[1]
No wonder thousands were converted under Spurgeon’s
preaching ministry. If you want the same kind of fruit, the entire congregation
must commit to faithful prayer, and you—the pastor—will need to encourage that,
just as Paul did (2 Thess 3:1).
Michael Fabarez asks people in the church
to pray for elements of his sermon preparation: Tuesday 8–11am, study of text;
Tuesday 11am–noon, word studies; Thursday 1–5pm, commentaries; Friday 8am–noon,
study significance; Friday 1–3pm, craft outline; Friday 3–4pm, prepare
handouts; Saturday 8–9am, refine content; Saturday 9–10am, prepare
illustrations; Saturday 10–11am, introduction and conclusion.[2] Each hour of his sermon preparation is covered in prayer by
someone. This is one way to get the congregation involved in the sermon. They
take ownership of the process and contribute to it.
Third, you can plan to have the entire
worship service support the main theme of the sermon. Meet with your worship
leader and discuss the next sermon series. If he knows what’s coming up, he may
be able to select songs that contribute to the overall theme. This may be hard
to achieve in some sections of Scripture, but more often than not, he’ll be
able to select worship anthems that express concepts and ideas similar to that
of the Bible text you’re preaching. Bible readings and other elements in the
public worship service can also coordinate with the overall message. Careful
planning with your worship team will bring harmonious expressions of worship
that work in concert with each other, and will also prepare them to hear the
sermon.
Next week, we’ll discuss preaching for church-wide
impact.
[1] Donald S. Whitney, Spiritual Disciplines within the Church:
Participating Fully in the Body of Christ (Chicago: Moody Publishers, 1996),
71–72.
[2] Michael Fabarez, Preaching That Changes Lives (Nashville,
TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2002), Appendix 2.
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