Many sermons suffer from just being stupid.

The Scriptures assure us that the Word of God will not return void. This assurance is given, in part, because many preachers will do their best to jack up a sermon. Think I’m being harsh? I’m really not.

Even People Who Use PC's Can Do Meaningful Study

While driving through Ft. Worth trying to find decent sports talk on the radio (which I’m confident doesn’t exist in DFW), I stumbled upon a radio preacher. Never in my life have I heard such a stream of disjointed and dislocated preaching. I cannot relay to you what he was talking about. It was a flow of platitudes, half-true conjectures, and dribble. I can’t imagine how it ended up on the radio. What’s more, all of us have known someone who stood before a Christian audience somewhere with the hope of letting “the Spirit speak.” That always sounds good, but as someone who trusts the Holy Spirit, I am shocked frequently by how incoherent the Spirit is.

Of course, it wasn’t the Spirit’s fault that the homily was so poorly structured, argued, and delivered.  It was the preacher’s fault. Simply put: He didn’t do his homework.

It may not sound spiritual to some, but good preaching requires analysis; it requires study! That’s not to dislocate the role of the Spirit, but it is to say that the best preachers you know get away, study, ponder, and write. There is an unfounded fear that study will produce academic and heady sermons. This is ridiculous. While there are some churches that are simply too heady for the common church-goer, the greater danger is the lack of study. I have seen this up close. A church that dismisses education, study, learning, and growth will not only fail The Great Commission, they will be an extremely immature fellowship. Discipleship cannot be done apart from careful analysis of the Biblical text. Therefore, when preparing to preach, the preacher needs to commit himself to the analytical context before writing the sermon.

Continue Reading…