Tag Archives: Preaching

03.19.13
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5 Things about your Sermons

5 things your sermons must have blog postOne of the primary responsibilities of being a youth pastor is teaching. We teach a lot, and must develop our speaking. I have grown to love studying and teaching as much now than ever before. I do not consider myself a great speaker, but I am trying to improve my speaking to be the most effective for the Gospel’s sake that I possibly can be.

 

Here are 5 things that I am learning about the sermons that I preach: 

 

  1. Your sermons must be Passionate- Are you passionate about what you are speaking about? If not, do not expect many positive results from your audience. Passion is always a characteristic of the most effective speakers. 
  2. Your sermons must be original- Now, curriculum is one thing, but if you are googling or checking around what other preachers are speaking on a couple of days before you speak, there is a major problem. Look, back in the New Testament church, the primary responsibility of the preacher was to pray and study. So, make that your top priority. I hate hearing how preachers get sermon outlines from everyone else, and claim them as their own. Come on, we need integrity from our pulpits today.
  3. Your sermons must be Illustrative- I always write out my manuscript, and then go through it, and try to see how I can make it come alive to the audience. Make sure that you have illustrations, and have something to make it come alive and make it applicable to the lives of your audience.
  4. Your sermons must be modeled- One thing that I try to do is model and make sure that I am working on what I am teaching. Do not get up and teach on a subject that you are not modeling. For instance, be careful speaking on evangelism if you are not personally in the community evangelizing people. The audience (especially students) will know if you are faking. They can spot hypocrisy from a mile away.
  5. Your sermons must be prayed over- You should spend time praying about the points in your sermon. Spend time praying for your audience. Pray for the Holy Spirit to speak through you. Always remember that you cannot do anything on your own so you better be praying for God to speak through you, because with God, it means nothing!
03.20.12
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Guest Post: 10 Ways to Lose a Teen’s attention

Quick post—the top ten ways to completely bore and disconnect with those you teach:

1. Say something not worth hearing—This is basic, but if you want people to listen, start by saying something worth hearing. The number one reason we lose the attention of those we teach is that we’re not convincing them that what we have to say is important. Since there is nothing more important than teaching young people God’s Word, we’d better make it worth hearing.

2. Say something with no passion—Have you ever heard someone teach with no voice inflection, no dynamic—nothing but monotone droning. It’s miserably hypnotic. If you’re not passionate about what you teach, don’t expect anyone else to care about it either.

3. Talk down to them—Make your listeners think that you believe they are completely stupid. Come across like you are gracing them with your brilliance and you can’t believe they don’t already know this stuff. Insult them with sharp sarcasm, personal jabs, and harshness. This will shut them down for sure.

4. Yell or scream at them—There’s a difference between preaching with passion and just raising your voice out of sheer frustration, and teens can tell the difference immediately. Preaching will stir them, but plain old yelling will just irritate them.

5. Teach outside of their context—Have you ever heard someone teach truth in a way that had no practical connection to your life whatsoever? The connection between truth and real life is not always as obvious as we would like it to be. Keeping attention requires that we constantly ask of truth: “Why do you matter to real life?!”

6. Shoot from the hip—When we don’t prayerfully prepare substantive, biblical material, we shoot from the hip—speak off the cuff—frankly, RAMBLE. If you really want to shut teens down, just start rambling and come across like you have nothing to say that was worth premeditation.

7. Use no illustrations or personal insights—Jesus was a great story-teller. He connected truth to tangible application and real life situations. Listeners need to connect with the teacher or preacher in tangible ways, and nothing can kill a great truth better than failing to give it a personal, real-life connection.

8. Talk about nothing but yourself—Have you ever heard someone tell you how great they were for 45 minutes and call it a Sunday School lesson or a sermon? Sometimes we could title our lessons, “If You Would Do What I Do, You Would Be Great Too!” Personal illustrations are helpful, but teens shut down when we cross over into bragging and self-exaltation.

9. Speak with lots of distracting idiosyncrasies—You can completely derail your listeners every time you speak if you will just develop some nervous twitches, odd phrasing, annoying postures, or awkward gestures—like frantic pacing or ill-timed arm waving. Everybody in your youth group will be able to impersonate you, but they will never remember a single thing you teach. If you want a good litmus test on this—just ask someone to impersonate you. If they have a tough time, then you’ve probably done a good job at minimizing your idiosyncrasies.

10. Have no relationship with them beyond your platform—Never personally interact or develop a relationship with those you teach. Just be a distant, platform figure with no presence or concern for real people. Remember, the health and quality of your personal relationship with your listeners is what gives you the right to be heard in the first place.

BONUS—Make it NO FUN whatsoever! Have you ever known someone who was gifted at draining every ounce of fun right out of a room as soon as they stepped in? Guaranteed—if your listeners aren’t enjoying listening, they will quickly find something else more enjoyable to think about—it’s just human nature.

It’s pretty painful to try to listen to a lesson from a speaker that didn’t work to gain and maintain your attention! It’s even more painful to be that speaker! (Yes, I know this from far too much personal experience.) Let’s work to make God’s Word come alive to those we teach!

All right, now it’s your turn! How has someone else lost your attention over the years?

Cary Schmidt is the youth pastor at Lancaster Baptist Church in Lancaster, CA. He is blessed with a wife, and 3 children. Cary is an author, a sought after speaker, and an avid blogger. You can learn more about Cary through his blog at http://www.caryschmidt.com/

02.21.12
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7 major topics you should preach on each year in student ministry

I love the book, “the 7 checkpoints” by Andy Stanley. Andy is the lead pastor of North Point Community Church in Georgia. This is an excellent book that challenged me. It helped me and gave me some of my philosophy in our student ministry. He challenges us on 7 major things, and I have taken this, and applied it to our student ministry, well, some of it. Here are 5 things that I try to preach on each year in our student ministry. Obviously, I preach on many other things throughout the year, but I try to speak on these topics each year in different formats and designs:

  1. The Gospel- I try not to be judgmental, but in a student ministry our size, it is hard to believe that everyone in there is a believer. Also, if you are not having visitors enter your student ministry, something is wrong. The Gospel should be included in every student ministry setting. Sometimes, we speak specifically to the church, but somewhere, the Gospel needs to be implemented, and people need to be given a chance and explanation of how to accept Jesus into their lives.
  2. Relationships- Students need to be reminded of the importance of choosing Godly friends. They need to constantly be warned about the direction that they are headed can be determined by who they are hanging around. Students do not see the value of this principle, because they only see the “right now,” but as they get older, they do see that friends play a vital role in the direction that they are headed at the time.
  3. Choices/Decisions- Students need to be taught how to make Biblical decisions. After all, when they graduate youth group, they will be making some of the biggest decisions of their life with who to date and marry, what college to attend, what occupation to study, and where to work. We must teach them the importance of making good and wise decisions so that when they graduate, they can make wise decisions.
  4. Sharing their faith- Students have the biggest platform of anyone when it comes to sharing their faith. Many students attend rather large public schools, and come in contact with thousands of people each day. Some days, I only come in contact with the people who I work with here in the church office. Students are bombarded with people, and we must teach them the importance of sharing the Gospel with them, and teach them how to share the Gospel with others.
  5. Obedience to parents- Parents will echo this. I oftentimes send out a questionnaire to my parents asking them what topics would they like to see addressed to students, and this one is always mentioned. It is something that ALL students struggle with, and they need to be reminded about the Biblical principle of honoring and obeying their parents.
  6. Sex/Dating/Purity- This is a biggie! I addressed this recently, and it goes over well. It is something that you need to address regularly, because it is something that students are going to struggle with. Culture and Hollywood have distorted the view of sex to our students. Therefore, because they are bombarded with what culture and society thinks so heavily, we must give them what the Bible says about these things.
  7. Communication- I go through a series on communicating every year. I discuss social media, because that is the top way that students are communicating today. I also discuss gossip, and the dangers that it brings. It is important for students to understand that their words can destroy others. When speaking of this, make sure that you mention the importance of using your tongue for good like sharing the Gospel or building someone else up.

If you have another format that you use in your student ministry, please share. I would love to hear it. You can comment below:

11.14.11
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How Do I prepare a Sermon

Sermon Central is a great resource that I use regularly. They provide a collection of sermons, illustrations, visuals, and videos that can be a major help to you for your sermon prep. They also send out blogs regularly. Recently I came across a blog entitled, “How Mark Driscoll prepares his sermons.” This caught my eye quick, because I like Mark Driscoll and I like preaching. So, I read it, and it brought about some great thoughts. You can read the blog here. It gave me the topic for my next blog post and here it is. How do I prepare a sermon? Here is how I go about preparing a sermon:

  1. Pray – Every good sermon must start with prayer. Prayer is our connection to God and the Word is His connection to us. Before every sermon, I spend a great deal of time in prayer. What do I pray for? I pray for what topic/passage to speak on. I pray that God would give me the main thought that He wants me to communicate to the people. I pray for lost souls and how I can include the Gospel in this message. I pray for the saints who need to be challenged but also encouraged. I pray for decisions to be made. I pray for clarity of the passage as well as effective communication of the truth that God wants me to deliver! We have tons of things to pray for, and prayer is where preaching begins! By the way, your personal quiet time is extremely important for God to speak to you and give you direction on preaching and sermons.
  2. Collect – I spend time collecting articles, statistics, books, resources, illustrations, visuals, videos, and blog posts about the sermon that I will be speaking on. For instance, I speak every Wednesday to our students. So, on Thursday, I will begin collecting these things up until the next Wednesday when I preach. It brings about much thought and direction for your message during the week before sitting down and writing it all out.
  3. Decide – By Monday, I most definitely have a really good idea of where God is taking the sermon. This is where you need to get your main idea and thought nailed down in your mind so everything around it and can point people to that main thought.
  4. Study – I read an estimate of about 7 commentaries of each passage that I speak on. I also look online at resources and sermons. Here are some of my favorite commentators: Warren Wiersbe, H.A. Ironside, John MacArthur, John Piper, Oliver Green, J. Vernon McGee, Matthew Henry, and The Bible Knowledge Commentary. Some resources online that I use are Desiring God, Grace to you, The Resurgence, Blue Letter Bible,  Sermon Central, and of course Google. Here are some of the resources that I use for media: Sermon Central, Youtube, The Skit Guys, Share Faith, and Graceway Media.
  5. Examine – I spend specific time as I prepare my sermons examining my heart to make sure I am living what I am speaking. This is where most preachers go wrong. If you are not living what you are speaking, it is invalid and ultimately vain. I am not saying you must be perfect, but God should be developing the main idea you are speaking on in your life. Normally, I am convicted before I speak. Do not run from this, this is a very good thing.
  6. Write – I write about 70% of what I believe God wants me to say down on a script. I bold the main point down on my script. I typically bring it all up to preach, and God just brings the thoughts to my mind, which is great so I am not tied down to my notes. I am big on points. I think a message should have action points. People should leave church with a challenge or a reminder. So, during this, I create my action points.
  7. Prepare – When the script of my sermon is complete, I then create my power-point and outline for our students. This is important to do after you are completely done with your script. The reason is if you try to do both at the same time, you may change it on the script, and not on the power-point, and things get messed up. I use power-point and an outline for our students every Wednesday. The students are very visual, and so seeing the thoughts on the screen along with writing down things themselves is extremely helpful and beneficial.
  8. Invitation – I try to prepare what the Lord wants during the response time (invitation) ahead of time.
  9. Pray – Prayer should begin your sermon prep, be the center of your prep, and should conclude your prep. Prayer is where it starts and ends!
  10. Deliver – This is where you rely solely on the Spirit to speak through you!

Sermon Prep is different with every person. So, I am not saying my method is the best or only method. I think it is one of the many methods. It works for me. If you have any thoughts or just want to share how you prepare a sermon, let me know. I do encourage you to read the post about how Mark Driscoll prepares a sermon. You can read it here.