Tuesday, December 3, 2013

What Are You Wanting the Sermon To Do?

What are you wanting the Sermon to do?

That is the question that I have for folks this day.  Really, what do you want to the Sermon to do, what is the goal of Christian preaching?

Now, the approach that I was trained, that I was taught, was that a Sermon is to be chiefly the proclamation of Christ Crucified for sinners.  That it's job was to show sinners their Savior.  Now, that is not to say that this is and must be the ONLY thing in the sermon, but it is the thing that makes  a sermon a sermon.

Is that the purpose of the sermon?

I know some like teaching - giving facts about the text and the like.  I would contend that Bible Study is a more appropriate forum for that, unless the facts enlighten the text so that the Gospel is more readily understood.

I know some like more instruction on living - and while that is part of the sermon, I'd contend that this actually is much better done one on one... because our lives are not generic.  I think back on my now almost 10 years in the parish, and I have given tons of direct, one on one advice... dealing with specific issues.  The sermon may deal with generalities, but the hard, concrete applications... that's almost always done much more one on one.

What do you want from the Sermon?  What are you expecting it to be?

1 comment:

the Old Adam said...

I want it to kill me. To cut me off at the knees. To remove any notion in my little pea brain or my twisted heart, that I have anything worth offering to God in defense of my righteousness.

Then I want Christ handed over to me…free of charge…to raise me again and give me new life in Himself.

That's all I want…in some form or another.