Kris Barnett, one of my Anderson University colleagues, recently stepped into my office after hearing a speaker at a nearby conference, and said, “You know your sermon might be struggling if you say, ‘But I digress,’ and the congregation can’t determine what you digressed from.” He then rattled off a few more zingers, each of which he insists was visible in the work of this notorious guest preacher, including:<\/p>\n
• You say, “Now we will return to the text,” and the congregation cannot recall ever being in a text.
• The original language phrase that dominates your message doesn’t actually appear in your focal text.
• One of the primary points of your sermon actually contradicts your primary Scripture text.
• Your sermon points are so loosely connected that they would make a better sermon series than a sermon.
• Your sermon points are so loosely connected that they wouldn’t even make a good sermon series.
• At the conclusion of the message you ask, “What is the point of what I am saying?” and no one in the room, including you, can articulate a response.<\/p>\n
It got me thinking about some less-than-stellar sermons I have observed…OK…and that I have delivered. How do you know when things aren’t going well? You know your sermon is in trouble when…
• The kids start leaving to go to children’s church—and half the adults go with them.
• Your listeners all start posting Twitter messages during your message, and the hash tag is #this-is-so-boring!
• Your church forms a pastor search committee before you reach the third point of the message.
• Your mom gets up and leaves 10 minutes into the message.
• You are at the eighth point of your outline, and you’re not quite halfway through the message.
• Folks decide to tune into the latest online Charles Stanley or Chuck Swindoll message while you are still preaching.
• The deacons all decide to pray for you in another room while you’re still preaching.
• You are dreaming you are preaching—then wake up and realize you are!<\/p>\n
Here’s praying that you don’t have one of those Sundays any time soon!<\/p>\n
Kris Barnett, one of my Anderson University colleagues, recently stepped into my office after hearing a speaker at a nearby conference, and said, “You know your sermon might be struggling if you say, ‘But I digress,’ and the congregation can’t determine what you digressed from.” He then rattled off a few more zingers, each of … Continue reading “Back Page Pulpit: You know the sermon is in trouble when”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34226"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34226\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}