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Preaching Next-Level Sermons

Can you honestly say you are always happy with every sermon you preach? Are you pleased with how you preached the sermon? Did you feel as though your sermon connected with the congregation? Or would you have to admit there is room for improvement? If we are truthful, we all know there is much room for improvement in our sermons and how we preach them.

In this episode, we will consider Preaching Next-Level Sermons. I want to help us, as preachers, to take our preaching to the next level. 

But, you may be asking, “Isn’t biblically true content enough? Isn’t that enough if I preach the truth?”

Well, yes, biblical content is what we should always strive to deliver when we preach. But, no, biblical content alone is not all we need to consider when developing and preaching our sermons.

Consider this: Most of the people in your church have heard more sermons than they can count. Thus, they have probably heard plenty of sermons on the passage you’re preaching on Sunday. And it could be that they’ve already heard you preach a sermon on the passage. But this does not mean we should find a new text. it means we should take steps to elevate our sermon to the next level. This is what I want to help us achieve.

Leonard Sweet, in his book Giving Blood: A Fresh Paradigm For Preaching, puts it like this: 

“Preaching is nothing less than the craft of making the familiar strange… When our usual ways of ‘knowing’ the Scriptures have become too cozy and comfortable, only defamiliarization enables us to hear the challenging stories of judgment and the hope within and behind the texts. When we open the Scriptures up to new angles and locate them in different contexts, we allow people to become reacquainted with texts that can shine new light into their shadowed doubts and dilemmas.”

When we work hard to communicate the living word of God actively and freshly, we are pastoring and feeding our people well.

When approaching a familiar passage from a new angle, we connect new dots in people’s hearts, minds, and lives.

Today, I will give you 23 elements you can use in your sermons to spark new thoughts and connections to the text for your listeners. Are you ready? Let’s go.

1. The text
2. Takeaway(s)
3. Fears
4. Desires
5. Aches
6. Ultimate truths
7. True stories
8. Fiction stories
9. Imaginative stories
10. Cultural realities
11. Attitudes
12. Behaviors
13. Applied future
14. Personal Testimony
15. Transitions
16. Strongholds
17. Bottom line
18. Narratives
19. Experiences
20. Quotes
21. Images
22. Questions
23. Lies

In their proper place, all these elements can help your sermon connect, come alive, and be used by God to change those who hear you preach. Let’s put in the hard work necessary to take our sermons to the next level. Our preaching will evolve. Our listeners will experience a far greater impact. Our preaching will be exponentially better. We may even be more satisfied with the finished product.

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The podcast is a ministry of Dr. Alan Carr and The Sermon Notebook (http://www.sermonnotebook.org)