10 Ways to Half-Bake Your Sermon

By Peter Mead



Most preachers would claim to be, and believe they are, biblical preachers.  Trouble is, a lot of “biblical preaching” is only half-baked at best.  That is, the biblical part is incompletely developed.  Let me share some ways preachers only half-use a text:

1. Say just enough about the text to introduce what you want to say.

This is a common approach.  The text is read at the start of the message or before the message.  The preacher gives enough explanatory comments to get things going, then focuses in on what he wants to say rather than what the text itself is really saying.  Some do this blatantly with a two or three sentence transition between reading the text and moving on to the message of choice.  Others may spend longer and convince more listeners.

I was tracking with a message recently and this phase lasted fifteen minutes.  But from that point on, the text was never really influencing the message; it was the preacher’s subject of choice that determined the goal and thrust of it all.  Shame really, because the comments about the text whetted my appetite, but the message fell so flat.

In teaching I often say that no matter how smart you are, what you can make it say is not as good as what God made it say.  In this case I have to modify the saying: no matter how smart you are, what you go on to say instead is not as good as what could have been said if the text were truly preached.

Don’t bounce off the text, leaving it behind in search of your target.

2. Preach from the details, but don’t figure out how they work together to give the main idea.

This is fairly self-explanatory.  It is possible to make points from details in the text, but never get to the point of understanding or conveying the thrust of the whole text working together.  How do the details cohere?

3. Preach a generic message or idea from what could be any text.

We are all capable of preaching abstracted truths and generic messages and tying them to a text with tenuous connections.  Don’t preach a good message from a text.  Preach the message of the text.
In this series of posts I am offering ten ways that I see preachers half-using a preaching text.  The goal isn’t to critique, but to nudge us all to a higher view of the inspired text, a higher level of diligence in studying the text, and therefore a higher level of impact in our preaching of the text.  So we’ve already considered using the text as an intro to another message, or failing to see how the details cohere, or preaching a message only nominally tied to the text itself.

4. Use the content, but ignore the context.

I use the term use deliberately.  Sometimes the content of a passage could feel used because it isn’t understood in light of its context.  This could be a certain term or phrase that is plucked out of its setting in a sentence and used to make a point.  It could be the whole paragraph or section that is presented without awareness of how it fits in the flow of thought in the book.

I remember a conversation I had with a street preacher years ago.  There are some street preachers who do a tremendous work of communicating the gospel to a busy and distracted world.  This was not one of them.  We got into a discussion about the Bible and I asked him what his view of the Bible was.  “Oh, the Bible is like a treasure chest filled with jewels and treasures that we pick up and show to the world!”  Problem was, he was plucking phrases without context and shouting random references to washing in blood and becoming white as snow, etc.  It didn’t communicate.  It regularly offended (in the wrong way).

That street shouter was an extreme example, but let’s not be lesser examples of the same error.  Let’s be careful to always present a whole text in its context, rather than plucking the “useful” preaching bits and using, or abusing, them.

5. Use the context, but ignore the content.

I suppose this is a less common error, in my experience.  But it is possible.  I guess this happens more in the gospels.  The preacher preaches about the ministry of Jesus in general, but doesn’t present the unique details conveyed by the gospel writer in this particular instance.  (Or the preacher may preach the event accurately through harmonizing the gospels, but fail to preach the inspired text of the gospel in question.)  Contextually it is possible to say Jesus was doing such and such, but if you’re preaching a particular healing narrative, preach it with good awareness of the detail the writer chose to include.

Some of these may be errors you always diligently avoid.  But there may be one in here that makes you or I reconsider an aspect of our preaching.  Actually there may be occasions when we fall into some of these approaches, but feel it is necessary in those circumstances.  That is fine, there aren’t as many rules in preaching as people may think.  But it is good to step into them aware of the potential weakness of the decision, rather than as a habitual approach.

6. Impose a sermon structure instead of letting the text’s structure influence your message.

Those who are committed to preaching as a ministry governed by rules and tradition will regularly cross this line.  "For it to be a sermon it must have..." tends to lead to imposition of “correct structure” on Bible texts.  It is interesting how few texts genuinely offer a standard number of parallel and equally weighted points.

Much more often there is a flow of thought or plot, a combination of one dominant thought with supporting elements, or whatever.  Let’s be careful that we don’t abuse a text by forcing a sermonic grid onto it in an attempt to preach the text.  We may be left preaching a bruised and caged specimen.

7. Preach a preferred cross-reference

I remember listening to a set of lectures on tape (remember tapes?)  The cover said they were lectures on the Pastoral Epistles.  The labels on the tapes said the same.  Actually, the lecturer also kept referring to the Pastoral Epistles too.  But the overwhelming sense I got when listening to them was that the lecturer wished he were in Romans.  He went there constantly.  Maybe he felt he’d missed out when a more senior lecturer got to do the prized epistle.

When you preach a text, preach it.  It is inspired.  It is useful.  It is worth the effort to study it and understand it and preach it.  Don’t take the short-cut that may or may not be there to a more familiar, a more “preachable” or a more exciting text.

8. Preach a plethora of cross-references.

Every now and then I hear a preacher who seems to be entering the “who can reference the most Bible books in thirty minutes” competition.  Please don’t.  There are few good reasons to cross-reference, don’t do it otherwise.  (See here and here for the two main reasons in my opinion.)  Every moment taken in a cross-reference is time not used in preaching your preaching text; if it doesn’t add to the preaching of this text, don’t let your time be stolen.

9. Explain it, but don’t apply it.

This is a common error among those who say they are most committed to expository preaching.  They will give an in-depth explanation of the preaching passage, sometimes avoiding every item on the list so far.  Carefully explained text in context with focus on historical situation, authorial intent, and perhaps some linking into the broader sweep of theological and salvation history.  Solid stuff.  Then they stop.

One of the reasons I use Haddon Robinson’s label of “biblical preaching” for this site, rather than “expository preaching” is because of the baggage people have with the latter term.  Some people grew up listening to endless dry Bible lectures, and whenever they questioned its value they were silenced with a war cry for “faithful expository preaching!”  Problem is, preaching without emphasizing the relevance to the listeners is not expository preaching, no matter how good a Bible lecture it may be.

We simply can’t abdicate our role as preachers when it comes to applicational relevance and hide behind the notion that this is the work of the Holy Spirit.  This is to suggest that I can handle the illumination of the text, but will hand the baton over to the Spirit for application of the text.  Sorry, it is both/and.  The entire process of preparation and delivery, of explanation and application, is a process in which the Spirit is at work, and so is the preacher.  We must apply what we explain.

10. Commentary it, but don’t proclaim it.

This is another one for “expositors” to keep in mind.  Either due to a certain approach in training, or as learned behavior from examples observed, too many preachers preach sermon points that are actually commentary titles.  “The next point in my sermon is Saul’s Contention!”  Uh, no, that is the next subtitle in the commentary you are reading out to us.  There is a big difference between biblical commentary and biblical proclamation.

When we proclaim a text, we look to speak it out to our listeners.  Oral communication does not match written communication.  We don’t speak in titles, we speak in sentences.  Let me encourage you to make your points into full sentences, and why not make them contemporary rather than historical if possible?  This will keep us from sounding like we are reading our personal biblical commentary, and listeners are more likely to sense that God’s Word has been proclaimed and they have heard from Him.