7 Deadly Sins of Preaching

OK, so maybe calling them ‘sins’ is a bit over the top. For sure, no one is going to die because of them, either. But to call it ‘7 Easily-Avoidable Mistakes That Preachers Often Make’ doesn’t quite have the same ring to it. If gratuitous hyperbole had made the list of ‘sins’ (as well it might), then I guess I’ve breached that one already. Maybe it’s Eight Deadly Sins …   

You may not preach yourself, but read on and you may recognise some things you’ve noticed in others who do. Why do those who only listen to preaching need to be aware of them? In one sense, they don’t; but since preachers are tasked with—not to put too fine a point on it—speaking to us on God’s behalf, to be an informed audience is important. Preachers bear a significant responsibility, which is not to be undertaken lightly, and especially without accountability. The more informed the audience, the more effective the accountability.

Some of the ‘sins’ are to do with content, and others relate to style and delivery. The former category would feel like it’s more important in the scheme of things, but however good the content is on paper, it will bear limited fruit if we’ve already lost people’s attention five minutes into it. Put differently, there are plenty of very entertaining speakers doing the rounds whose content is, frankly, terrible, but they remain popular and in demand because of their style and delivery. Informed audiences will be able to tell the difference.       

The following are organised in a very deliberate order: the order in which they occurred to me …     

‘Sin’ #1: Being ‘religious’

Since a sermon is, by definition, a ‘religious’ talk, you may wonder how avoiding being religious is even an option. What I mean by being ‘religious’ is peppering a sermon with insider-only religious language (‘Christian-ese’), when many or most of the words, concepts, and phrases will be meaningless to the unchurched listener. Phrases like “As you know …” only work for the long-term Christian; why would someone from a non-church background ‘know’? And how are they supposed to know who this ‘Paul’ person is that you keep mentioning? Is he on staff? You may say, “These things are not a problem in my church, because we don’t get many unchurched guests and visitors—and even when we do, they tend not to stay.” Perhaps that is the problem. We need to work at choosing ‘normal’ everyday words to explain religious words and concepts, and to assume little or no prior knowledge in our audience, wherever possible. This is not easy—especially without unwittingly changing the meaning—which is why many preachers default towards the standard religious option.            

‘Sin’ #2: ‘Preaching sermons’, rather than ‘doing talks’

Many Christians faithfully attend church on Sundays because ‘it’s what we do.’ They don’t make week-by-week decisions based on what’s on offer this week (such as would drive a decision to, say, go to the cinema). Which is just as well, if what’s on offer in church this week is Fred continuing our exciting series on 2 Chronicles—this week, he’ll be unpacking chapter 5! ‘2 Chronicles, Chapter 5’ may be the title of a sermon, but it’s not the title of a talk. We ‘get away with it’, arguably, because it’s church. But increasingly, we aren’t getting away with it. More and more of our potential catchment make week-by-week decisions about what to do this Sunday. And the attraction of Fred preaching on ‘2 Chronicles, Chapter 5’ is probably not going to tip the balance in favour of church. This is all the more true when it comes to inviting unchurched friends and family. A talk needs to be relatable, relevant, practical, attention-grabbing, and attention-holding. Our goal is not for people to go away saying, “I learned so much about 2 Chronicles, chapter 5 this morning—who would have thought that they’d have sacrificed ‘so many sheep and cattle that they could not be recorded or counted’? Amazing! And I’d never heard of cherubim before—bonus!” So preachers, don’t think ‘sermon’—think ‘talk’. And give it a title that’s intriguing and compelling and doesn’t just work for your church audience. Make sure that it’s responding to questions people have, on subjects they care about. Too many sermons are answering questions that people don’t have, ignoring the ones they do. My minimum goal for any unchurched guest or visitor is for them to go away saying, “I rather enjoyed that—it was interesting. Made lots of sense.”   

‘Sin’ #3: Not being yourself

One of my favourite preachers to listen to is my friend Andy Kind. If only I could preach like him. But let’s be realistic—though I can learn from, and hopefully have learned from him, I will never be him. He’s a professional comedian by background, with many years’ experience. He’s done thousands of gigs and sermons. I simply can’t be him. It would be embarrassing for everyone if I tried. However, having sat in on one of his preaching courses—attended by lots of other people who also will never be able to be Andy when they preach—there’s plenty I can learn from him (and plenty for me to work on). To find out more about Andy’s preaching courses, check him out on social media (or drop me a line).

Finding ‘who we are’ as a speaker, building on our strengths, takes time, but as we said at the beginning, speaking well involves a combination of (i) content, and (ii) style and delivery. Finding our level—who we are—in both categories is important. If you’re not a trained theologian, please don’t try to speak and teach as if you are. Don’t ‘over-claim’, because trust me, you’ll get found out. If you’re not naturally gregarious and humorous, don’t try to tell lots of jokes—season things with a little engaging, self-deprecating humour by all means. But be yourself (‘you be you’). Do it only to the extent it comes naturally and is engaging, while also working on your weaker areas.   

‘Sin’ #4: Thinking that ‘theology’ is an optional extra

The idea that some of us ‘don’t do theology’ is a myth. Everyone has theology, because theology is simply thoughts and ideas about God and the Christian life that we express through words. Since we all ‘have’ those—and all preachers are delivering them as their content—then we all ‘do’ theology. The only questions are (i) where we’re getting those thoughts and ideas from, and (ii) whether they’re any good or not.

Here’s a thought for preachers to reflect on: if you say something in a sermon, and someone comes up to you afterwards to say (very politely), “Where did you get such-and-such from?” would you know how to answer it? Many theologically untrained preachers may not. They may instinctively respond with something like, “Well, I thought everyone knew that”, or “I’ve heard that said many times” … The thing always to look out for in a sermon is the ingress of what we call ‘folk theology’—which, unfortunately, is more common than you might think. Folk theology is ideas that get passed around and become taken for granted simply because people have heard them said a few times, so they assume they must be right. A lot of Christian-ese catchphrases that are popular for posting on social media, well-meaning but theologically doubtful, fall into that category. For example, “God’s got this”, “God will never give you more than you can handle”, and “It’s all in God’s plan”. If possible, share your draft talk with someone who is theologically trained ahead of time, so you can head off any potential “oops” moments before they happen.   

‘Sin’ #5: ‘Using’ the Bible

Unfortunately, many preachers ‘use’ the Bible to support what they’ve already decided they want to say, often without realising that’s what they’re doing—finding Bible verses to prove it’s ‘biblical’. Typically, this involves taking individual verses from their original contexts and applying them as supposed standalone ‘truths’ in support. The problem with that approach is that once any verse is taken out of its context, it loses its scriptural moorings and can be taken to mean any number of things that the original writer may well not have had in mind. The goal of the preacher is to ‘bring out’ what is already there in the text. Not to ‘read in’ things that are not there. Technically, this is the difference between exegesis (good) and eisegesis (bad). When we say that a verse is offering an answer to something, we need to be sure it’s the same question that the verse was answering at the time (not a modern question that we’re superimposing on it). What a verse was saying then, and why it was saying it, are the first questions to ask. ‘Biblical’ is one of the most overused and misused words in the Christian vocabulary—not least because it purports to be authenticating something.

‘Sin’ #6: Writing a sermon like we write, not like we speak

Too many sermons sound like someone reading out an essay. However good the content is on paper, it’s very likely to be boring (except in the eyes of the preacher’s mum, of course). Reading out a written script is so often monotone. It’s usually obvious that it’s being read. Why? Because how we write is not how we speak. There’s nothing wrong with writing out the full text of a sermon and delivering it almost ‘word for word’—there are many advantages in that, not least in precision of expression and staying on time. However, we must write it the way we speak, not the way we write. The styles are very different. If we write it like that, it’s far less likely to come across as reading. Having good content on paper is not good enough, because we’re not handing out papers for people to read—we’re speaking it. And no one speaks as they write. We use half sentences, incomplete sentences, and we repeat things more. We use words and phrases in speaking that we wouldn’t use in writing (and vice versa). It's colloquial communication, not formal communication. We say ‘they’re’ and ‘don’t’ rather than ‘they are’ and ‘do not’. 

‘Sin’ #7: Being insufficiently aware of our audience

There are two aspects to this. One is, when you’re preparing your talk, you need to try to have a central, typical target audience in mind. You need to be pitching the content and delivery to that audience. Imagine you are speaking directly to that person—or that kind of person, from that kind of background, culture, education, or whatever. This person (real or imagined) should be ‘typical’ of that church or audience, such that your central content will end up relating to the most people. But then, don’t only pitch it to them. Take it ‘up a bit’ and ‘down a bit’ and ‘left a bit’ and ‘right a bit’, to relate to others as well. Make something you’ve just said a bit simpler, perhaps with a different example. Or add a little theological ‘extra’ for those for whom that will be interesting and helpful. Audience awareness enables our content to reach as wide a range of people as possible.     

The second aspect is to be sensitive to the range of circumstances that people in your audience find themselves in. So, for example, if you’re planning on waxing lyrical about the joys of marriage, be aware of the many single, widowed, or divorced people listening. Be aware of people suffering from mental health challenges, so don’t offer insensitive, simplistic ‘biblical solutions’ based on proof texts such as “Be anxious for nothing” (Philippians 4:6). There will be people in the audience struggling to make ends meet, so beware regaling them with stories of how God spoke to you during the two-week luxury cruise in the Caribbean that you’ve just come back from—something that you may mention without batting an eyelid, but many listening to you cannot even dream of. Life can be painful enough already without a preacher insensitively adding to that.  

Bonus ‘Sin’: All ‘content’ but no ‘personal stories’

This one is a ‘bonus’ sin and nearly didn’t make the cut, because it’s the fault that I think I personally am the most guilty of. I’d like to have left it out, using the excuse of word count. I know that I tend to think ‘content and substance’ and to instinctively feel that personal stories about me are a waste of some of my precious 30 minutes. Compounding the problem is that I genuinely find it hard to think of personal stories! But that could be many years’ lack of practice! But in a sense, the stories are not the point. The point is for people to be able to relate to us as a real person, who doesn’t have everything figured out, and doesn’t get everything right. To be willing to be open and vulnerable and offer real-life examples of the things we’re talking about from our own lives and experience. I’m very much talking to myself on this one.