Chapter 6: Pastor, Preach with Sermon-Based Small Groups in Mind

The sermon should reverberate around the church long after the final “Amen.” Pastor, you can facilitate ongoing response by providing resources that ensure the sermon’s momentum keeps rolling.

J. Todd Murray describes John Newton’s practice as the Curate of Olney in Buckinghamshire. Newton recognized that most of his listeners were illiterate. He would walk through his village and hear the uneducated workers reciting and chanting to one another rhyming stories and poems, called ‘tells,’ as they worked. Newton realized that he could write new, spiritual ‘tells’ for the people of the church. They might not be able to read but they could certainly memorize these new ‘tells.’ Newton took the sound doctrinal truths he preached on Sunday and turned them into poems. It was these poems that eventually became known as Newton’s great hymns.[1] It all started with a pastor’s desire to help his congregation meditate on Bible teaching throughout the week.

What can you do today to make sure the sermon keeps on preaching?

First, spend thirty minutes on Monday morning preparing discussion questions for the mid-week sermon-based small groups. By Monday morning, you would have received feedback and questions from listeners that will help you to formulate thought-provoking discussion points based upon their insights. The questions should be open-ended discussion questions. The idea isn’t to test the people on their sermon retention, but to elicit implicational conversations. You shouldn’t introduce new ideas—this is not an opportunity for you to say what you couldn’t get out on Sunday. There should be discussion surrounding interpretation and theology, but the questions should always lead to application. Depending on the type of passage your sermon was based on, this might be easy or hard, but think it through carefully, and help your people to consider the implications of every sermon. If the passage doesn’t call for action, it might call for correct thinking, or a right understanding of God. These are still applicational.

Sometime before Monday evening, these discussion questions can be made available on the church website and/or sent out by e-mail to the small group leaders.

Second, you should promote mid-week sermon-based small groups as a necessary ministry of the church. Every Christian should be involved in some form of organized discipleship, fellowship, relationship-building, life-on-life, or small group ministry. To not be involved in such a group is a rejection of God’s instruction to “stimulate one another to love and good deeds” (Heb 10:24). Indeed, it would be a rejection of all the “one another” commands of the New Testament. Anonymous attendance on Sunday morning doesn’t constitute body-life, so your people need to be involved in more than just that. A small group could choose to study another passage or a different topic altogether, but this doesn’t maximize the impact of the Sunday sermon—the very ministry we say is central to the life and practice of the church.

Pastor, we defend the necessity of expository preaching, but we negate that commitment by failing to prioritize any applicational follow-through after the sermon. As a result, your twenty hours of sermon preparation, the financial contribution to your salary, and the preparation of the congregation to hear the sermon are all wasted on forty-five minutes of listening that often ends without community-oriented response. Why not maximize the impact of your sermons by asking your small groups to reflect on the implications of each sermon?

You’ll need to help your small group leaders in the process. Meet with them three or four times each year to monitor their progress. Give them instruction on how to conduct their groups. Ensure they’re not taking over with an independent teaching role within their group. Teach them how to plan for discussion. Help them to involve everyone in the conversation. Teach them how to lead people to pray together.

You’ll need to encourage your small group leaders. Help them to see the spiritual growth of the overall church family. Review what you have all studied and applied together. Help them to see that their long-term commitment is vital to the life of the church.

Finally, take part in a sermon-based small group yourself, not as the leader, but as a regular participant. This way people will see you as one who also values Christian fellowship. Your example will speak volumes and other sermon-listeners will follow your lead. To begin with, some group members may be intimidated by your presence, but they will soon loosen up after they see you contributing as a regular person working to apply biblical principles just as they are. Don’t be tempted to take over the group leadership. This is not a time to finish your sermon. Refrain from giving further instruction. You have had your chance to speak into their lives as the preacher. Now it’s time to take part in the body-life of the church as an equal. Let people minister to you. Let them ask you about your personal application. Request their prayers for your obedience. Take part in the discussion as one who is committed to community aspect of church life. Your people will have a realistic appreciation of you and will join you in church-wide sanctification. Paul Tripp believes a church should require their pastor to attend a small group he doesn’t lead. He comments that the pastors who do this all report how spiritually beneficial it has been.[2]

Summary

Pastors are called to preach, but preaching is not an end in and of itself. The result of preaching is the dissemination of the gospel, the equipping of the church, the sanctification of the saints, and the proclamation of the glory of God. With these ends in mind, pastor, consider how you might increase the impact of your sermons.

Church growth “experts” suggest all manner of techniques that are “guaranteed” to bring success. Don’t fall for them. Their butter knives and plastic utensils have no power over the evil one. Pick up the sword, preachers (Eph 6:10–17). Ensure that your preaching is expository in nature. Pray for church-wide impact. Expect great things from God. Preach with clarity and encourage implicational thinking in your congregation. And consider sermon-based small groups as a way to maximize the preaching of the Word of God in the life of the church.

As you enter into the next phase of your preaching ministry, allow Donald Sunukjian to encourage your soul:

Biblical preaching is the best thing we can do for our ministries, and it’s the best thing we can do for our own personal lives. To drink deeply of the Word of God, to saturate ourselves with its truths, to have our lives changed by its transforming power, and then to stand before God’s people, proclaiming with joy and confidence, “Look at what God is saying to us!”—who could be called to anything greater?[3]

Men, you have been called to the most important occupation in the world. No one undertakes a task greater or more vital than yours.

Paul instructed his son in the faith to preach. Receive his words as if he was speaking directly to you:

I solemnly charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by His appearing and His kingdom: preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort, with great patience and instruction. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires; and will turn away their ears from the truth, and will turn aside to myths. But you, be sober in all things, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry (2 Tim 4:1–5).

Let me rephrase the words of Martyn Lloyd-Jones in order to impress these things on your heart:

You are there to deliver the message of God—a message from God to the people. You are “an ambassador for Christ.” That is what you are. You have been sent. You are a commissioned person. You are standing there as the mouthpiece of God and of Christ to address the people. You are not merely there to talk to them. You are not there to entertain them. You are there to do something to them. You are to produce results of various kinds. You are to influence people. You are not to influence a part of them. You are not only to influence their minds, or only their emotions, or merely to bring pressure to bear upon their wills and induce them to some kind of activity. You are there to deal with the whole person. Your preaching should make such a difference to a man who is listening that he is never the same again.[4]

Dear pastor, will you commit to this most vital of all tasks? Will you commit to teach sound doctrine in every sermon? Will you commit to bring the Word of God to bear on the souls of men every time you address the congregation? Will you plead with sinners to repent and trust Jesus Christ for their salvation? Will you impress upon saints the need for personal holiness? Will you teach the people the truth found only in the Scriptures? Will you call them to genuine Christian fellowship? Will you lead them to minister to one another? Will you model this community project called “sanctification”? “For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (Heb 4:12).

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[1] J. Todd Murray, Beyond Amazing Grace (Webster, NY: Evangelical Press, 2007), 17.

[2] Paul David Tripp, Dangerous Calling: Confronting the Unique Challenges of Pastoral Ministry (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2012), 79–80.

[3] Donald Robert Sunukjian, Invitation to Biblical Preaching: Proclaiming Truth with Clarity and Relevance (Grand Rapids: Kregel Publications, 2007), 15.

[4] These words are adapted from Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Preaching and Preachers, 53.