Don Engebretson has 24 years of experience as a pastor and preacher. He also has an uncanny ability to sense what his listeners are experiencing as they sit through a sermon. In the July issue of Forum Letter by the American Lutheran Publicity Bureau, he wrote this article, “Pastor, Can We Talk About Your Sermon?” Here are some quotes:
Engbretson: The evaluation of a pastor’s peaching that truly counts comes ultimately from the pew. Yet even there the assessment varies from person to person. Opinions differ with the personalities and expectations of each person, not to mention their unique situation on a given day. That said, we should realize that most congregants don’t realistically anticipate the preacher to be an absolute dynamo in the pulpit. They don’t come expecting to hear a version of a polished television preacher. They accept their pastor as a “work-in-progress,” especially if the pastor is fresh out of seminary.
But they do have some criteria that are important for the preacher to know, whether just out of school or experienced with many seasons of preaching. The following is my sense of what they might say if they dared to be honest.
A letter to my pastor
Dear Pastor,
Please don’t be long-winded. I know what you want to say is important. I get it. But my attention span is
only so good. I’ve got restless kids in the back pew and I’m struggling just to catch even part of what you are saying.
Most Sundays I only get snippets, maybe only scattered sentences of words. I’m on water pills and pretty
soon I’m going to have to excuse myself and go to the restroom. I can’t make it the whole hour. I was up late with a sick family member last night and I’ll be honest, I’ll probably nod off from time to time. I worked a long shift in the ER and I’m not too alert either. I’ve got a lot of conflict and drama in my family and life right now and my mind keeps wandering. I’m easily distracted.
So get to your point. Keep it straightforward. Don’t repeat too much, but please help me to remember by repeating the main point from time to time. And be aware of the clock. Fifteen minutes is plenty. Realize that’s about the time I would expect a commercial and be able to get up and take a break anyway.
And try to be somewhat relevant. I realize you don’t want your sermon to be just a storytime for us. We really don’t want an endless string of anecdotal illustrations about the things you did and saw this past week.
Keep it simple, but show some life
I know you are educated a lot more than we are, with a master’s degree and all, but most of us here in the
pews are high school graduates. Some of us don’t read a lot. Most of our reading these days are text or online posts on Facebook; some of us scan the daily paper, but not a lot more.
So drop the big words. Drop the technical jargon. Or at least spend a minute explaining those words to us, but at the same time don’t use a lot of them. One or two are plenty. We are not trained to list to lectures from professors like you are.
We don’t care if you’ve memorized your sermon, or you have it all written out, or you’re working from and outline, or if you have a Greek Bible with marginal notes, or whatever. But do look at us. Acknowledge that we are there in the room with you. Sound like you are talking with us, not to us.
Give some hope
We know that it’s important to tell us about our sins. We get that, too. We mess up all the time. Tell it to us straight. But don’t let that be the sum total of what you are planning to say. Remember the typical ways we all sin and remind us of that. Get to the sins you know we wrestle with in our real day-to-day lives, like misusing God’s name, and gossiping, and not respecting parents, and hurting people both physically and verbally, and not treating our spouses with love and kindness. Just make sure they are our sins and not something you simply read about, or something that’s part of major debate among religious leaders.
But don’t forget to tell us that we are forgiven in Jesus’ name. That is critical! Don’t just tack it on to the end of your sermon. Some of us are drowning in our failures. We are wracked with guilt. We lose sleep and have headaches because of our regrets. We wonder at times if God will not get tired of us making mistakes and disobeying his Word. Throw us a lifeline! Give us real hope! Tell us God still loves us!
Sincerely,
The person in the pew who really wants to hear the Word
I was raised in a tradition were the advise to new preachers was ” Three points and a prayer”. We don’t remember much beyond leaving the sanctuary. But three points helps us to narrow down the main points and sort out the examples and applications. However, I would say I appreciate 20-25 minutes IF it is pertinent and guided by the Holy Spirit. The most important characteristics of a good sermon is that it is planned, guided and delivered in the Power of the Holy Spirit. Thank you Pastor Dave for doing that for us.
Hi, Marilyn. Yes, three points and a prayer were traditional. But that was all in the preacher’s head. Nobody asked if the audience was listening and getting anything. I read an account of the planning one of the new Lutheran hymnals. The experts presented what they liked. There was no attempt to listen to the worshippers preferences.
I’ve also heard sermonettes make Christianettes. If the vast majority of our church members don’t read the Bible, go to Bible class, read Christian books (and admittedly that is an assumption but i think it’s true, when else will they learn if one of our main concerns is how short the sermon can be. Right now that’s important because services should be short because of virus exposure, I enjoy Lutheran Forum but I don’t think this was one of their better offerings. Bruce
Hi, Bruce It’s not the length that counts. Puritan sermons used to go on for hours, reading their notes. The listeners were committed to the community and put up with boring sermons. This was their one social event of the week. Note that motivational speakers typically go on for 45 minutes, and people pay to listen to them. That’s because they are very good, packing their message with stories, applications and illustration. Ask someone else to get feedback about your sermons. Through a third party you might get some honesty.
I compare sermons to my profession as a dental hygienist. When I first started, I used to give the whole spiel about brushing and flossing etc. being careful not to leave anything out. The patient would nod their head in agreement. Then I’d send them off with a bag full of things thinking I had done my job. But I came to realize that the patient would get home and question “What did she say again?” Too much or too technical information only confuses and turns people off. So, I learned to focus on one main thing, what I most wanted the patient to take away. Sermons are the same. What is the one thing the congregation should take away from the sermon? Make it clear. If a person can tell you on Wednesday what they heard on Sunday, then you got through to them. As Engebretson stated, “Keep it simple and show some life, but give some hope. And, in my opinion, hope is the real reason people go to church in the first place. Hope found in Christ.
I remember your excellent “poem” about hope in the listener. Is it OK if I run that next time in my =Pastor Dave’s Observations? I will assume it is. Thanks.
Pastor Luecke,
I totally agree that sermons should be to-the-point and easy to digest. I also love it when a pastor is honest and vulnerable so the congregation can see he/she is also a sinner just like the rest of us. I think it makes it easier to hear a challenging sermon.
The challenge is that there are times when what people need to hear is exactly what they do not want to hear? I’ve always appreciated my pastor’s unashamed preaching. He’s not always politically correct, but he preaches the Word and is messages are biblical.
Warm and fuzzy, feel-good sermons are appealing, but are they convicting? They might fill seats, but are they challenging people to live differently?
The flesh craves what it wants. However, sometimes the message that needs to be communicated may be unpleasant and/or difficult to hear.
I believe what makes a pastor “great” is his courage to preach even when the truth may hurt, offend or make people uncomfortable. People may even choose to leave a church over a sermon. Ultimately, the content in sermons should be based on God’s Word and not on society’s current definition of sin or what are the accepted norms.
Culture may change from generation to generation but God’s word NEVER changes.
I agree with you whole-heartedly that we always need to make sure messages align with the gospel. The gospel provides us so much hope – and who doesn’t need hope in this world?
“For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate to themselves teachers in accordance with their own desires, and will turn away their ears from the truth, and will turn aside to myths” (2 Timothy 4:3-4).
This is so beautiful on point and on time. Thanks
Thank you!
What I do think is important is teach the true meaning of the Bible verses that are read early in the service and not just assume the audience understands. As it was stated very few attend Bible studies or read the Bible on their own, even if they did the true meaning only goes as far as their current definitions of the words will take them. At least take a minute to set the stage and explain a little of the backdrop of the Scripture lessons being recited. Here is the opportunity to take the listeners on a deeper walk using little steps.
With all of the advances in communication, we have shortened attention spans of even adults. What good is it if we pack a sermon with theology and lose them after 15-20 minutes? Most of the people sitting on the pew are not interested in dispensational theology, soteriology, or any of the other “ologies.” They just want to know how to hack it on Monday. Unfortunately most of us are not the gifted speakers we think we are. (thankfully some are).
I wonder frequently if seminaries and colleges are no longer teaching basic public speaking..
Well said. I am curious whether some professor somewhere will use this short essay. I would if I were a professor of homiletics.