Posts by danieljkoren:
The Secret to Impactful Preaching
Have you ever wanted to be more effective at sharing God’s truth with others? Here’s one big tip on how to preach effectively.
You have seen solid preaching. It’s the kind that becomes a landmark, a skyscraper in your mind that you never forget. You’ve seen people respond to good preaching. They wept, maybe they clapped and shouted, maybe they stood and worshipped the Lord.
You have also seen preaching that moved nothing. People snored instead of soared. The message was a house of cards, falling flat at the end.
You want to make a difference when you speak to people? Here’s some tips to help.
First, the foundation. Let’s assume you have been developing a deep prayer life and are hearing from the Lord. He gives you a message for the people you serve. You know how to study Scripture. Okay, those things are in place, and you are still struggling to keep attention and deliver a meaningful word to others? No surprise. Nobody can live on just a foundation.
Schooling trains us to study and speak in a way that is foreign to the human brain. Studious people love facts, statistics, and even parsing Greek verbs, if you know how. But we geeks often struggle with how to preach effectively and get the information to others in a way they will use and remember.
Next time you speak, write, or teach, remember there are three steps to structuring a lasting message. Follow these to connect with the human understanding and get to the heart.
- The walls. Share the principle or concept the Lord gave you for your listeners.
- The windows. Tell a story that illustrates the concept or shows it in action. Spurgeon said illustrations are the windows that let the light in. People can now see what you are talking about. The right brain cannot ignore a story. Use the right brain to get to the left, the information center.
- The door. Use a metaphor. Most sermons fail because they have no point of access. The metaphor helps people “get into it.” You will see a visible change in the audience when you preach or teach like this.
I imagine you are already doing the first two of those things. The last one is the key most people miss. Everything God does is a metaphor: sunrise, rain, birth, eating, seeds, and so on. Everything in creation is a metaphor for spiritual truth.
Jesus used metaphors all the time. A well-placed metaphor will make people weep, rejoice, or hate you, but the point will transfer. Metaphor gets to the emotions where decisions are made.
A metaphor can be very simple like this: “That man is a racecar with no engine.” Or it can be more complex like when Noah built a huge boat to rescue people. That ark became a metaphor for baptism. You could preach a whole sermon on that. Or, speaking of baptism, the crossing of the Red Sea was baptism: the people of Israel were “baptized” into Moses; we are baptized into Jesus. The Israelites left the land of Egypt where they had been slaves; we leave the sins that had enslaved us. The waters of the sea destroyed their enemy; on the other side of our baptism commitment, we now belong to Jesus and the oppressor cannot enslave us any longer.
So, that was a mild introduction to the idea of using metaphors in order to preach effectively.
How well-structured are your messages? It is not about having an introduction, three main points, and a conclusion. That’s like those commercially built houses that all look the same, and boring. True communication is much more dynamic and daring than that.
Jesus’s messages became lasting monuments. After His story of the man who built on the sand and the man who built on the rock, the people were moved with amazement. He spoke with authority and power like they had never seen before. He understood how to reach the heart.
A well-built message is a building people will come back to often. Some will move into that concept and base their life out of it. You do not just want to fill time when you teach or preach. Build something that lasts.
There is one other factor though in how to preach effectively. This concept will complete the message. We will talk about it next time. No building will last long without a roof.
In the meantime, try a few metaphors in your Bible studies or other ministry opportunities. Leave a comment to let us know how that spiritual construction project goes! Don’t forget the foundation and all the other materials as well.
Oh, and for bonus points, leave a comment of what the metaphor was in this article.