Sermons Are Not Meant To Be Remembered

How many of you remember the sermon from last Sunday?  Don’t worry, you were not supposed to anyway.

Look at and Listen to the Preacher:  Not Obnoxious Learning Devices

The congregation really wanted sermon notes in the bulletin, so I gave in. However, I don’t like people looking down when I am preaching. Much more preferable is to have everyone engaged with me in the amazing biblical text, enjoying it together.

Another bad idea is having people looking to the side at a screen as if this holy event were a business presentation or educational lecture. And yet, the ultimate bad idea is fill-in-the-blank preaching notes, especially when bloated with alliteration.

It is also infuriating to listen to powerful (and often long) illustrations, well-crafted story-telling, creative reconstructions of a Bible story (sometimes even including theatrical garb and voice), because the Bible gets lost, and really fast.

Entertaining, motivating, counseling, providing practical steps, creating artsy set designs—can we just stop it and just preach the Word? This is all for getting people to remember. And we falsely assume that remembering brings about transformation. It doesn’t.

What if we gave up on getting people to remember sermons and just went for the transformation outright?

It is actually easier, less time consuming and much more enjoyable for everyone, trust me. Simply listen to the preachers as they explain and apply the Word for us all. It is a good and beautiful thing. Look at the preacher!

Look at and Listen to the Book:  Preaching is Unique Communication

I have never preached so that people remember outlines, stories, life principles or any other cute Christian slogans or quaint Christian sentiments. I don’t want people to remember my sermon, I want them to know and love God more through the Scriptures, and be able to do so on their own, in their families and with other people.

There is no parallel for preaching, not school teaching, not academic lecturing, not business presenting, not inspiring, not theater, not solving problems. We really need to stop trying to find an analogy, because no analogy exists.  Preaching is a unique event.

If the goal is to rejoice in God and His Word before His People, trusting the Holy Spirit who wrote the Bible and indwells His People to stir their hearts for the glory of God, then what are we doing messing around with inferior methodologies and delivery methods that cannot hold the weight of the message!?

We need to believe more in God and His Word. Our goals of transformation are going to be accomplished through the Biblical text. Each person in the congregation should be able to go back to the text and remember by the Holy Spirit and re-preach it to themselves. They should be able to see God’s transformational truth from the Word themselves without the added baggage of the preacher’s outline obscuring the text and confusing them.

This kind of preaching is what the people of God really hunger for. This kind of preaching is what those without God really want and really need to hear. We preachers need to stop playing games and simply love our people and preach the Word. Look at the book!

( See related blog post: Hijacked Preaching)

I remember when I became a Christian at the age of 17. All I wanted was someone to teach me the Bible, someone who knew the Bible, loved the Bible and simply explained it to me without pulpit antics or goofy gimmicks to get me to like the Bible.

As our Apostle Paul instructed Pastor Timothy (2 Timothy 3:14-4:5):

“But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. 

“I 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, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching. For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. As for you, always be sober-minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.”

Lest you think I am a complete iconoclast, I will grant that add-ons can be helpful, but they are not preaching, they are add-ons. All I am asking for is a more thoughtful and prayerful reconsideration of what we are doing when we are preaching the Word of God, the Holy Scripture.