I preached at a church a few weeks ago and a friend, who was also a preacher, happened to be in the congregation. He kindly offered to give me feedback, which I was eager to receive.
All his comments were good, and got me thinking and reflecting on which ones to take on board and how.
One bit of feedback particularly got me thinking - he suggested an inadequacy in my sermon and proceeded to suggest how I could have remedied that inadequacy:
'The sermon is addressing the problem of fear. WHY are people afraid? How does this passage address that fear?...'
He proceeded to sketch out a very admirable 3 point sermon along these lines. It would have been great to listen to as a full sermon.
Afterwards I reflected on this feedback - would I now preach my sermon differently? Ultimately I concluded, this particular point was really suggesting an entirely different, and equally legitimate sermon. So while I might adjust my existing sermon a little to include a bit more of this angle, to really do it justice would be to write and preach a different sermon. And in so doing, many of the benefits of my existing sermon would be lost!
There are many different sermons that can be preached from one passage. Slightly different angles, emphases, applications:
- Spiritual psychology - getting under the skin of why we fear, or how we repent, or what worship looks like.
- Stirring the imagination - rich illustrations, stories and appeals, which awaken our imagination to interact with the teaching of Scripture.
- Learning and memory - an emphasis on 'big ideas', catchy headings and neat summaries to ensure our listeners can repeat what the 'sermon was about' straight afterwards.
- Extensive application - lots of time and focus on spelling out application and calling for those actions.
- Doctrinal depth - dealing with all the doctrinal points the passage touches on, and unpacking them at length.
- Exegetical commentary - big focus on context, structure, argument flow and points of difficulty related to translation/grammar/logic.
Each of us have preferences for some of these particular angles.
But we need to realise no one is always superior to the others. And perhaps we need to branch into some of the others to better round out our ministry.
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