How you begin your sermon is vital. It can mean the difference between your listeners checking out or deciding to pay close attention. The things you say at the beginning of a sermon are what your listeners subconsciously use to build a framework for your whole message. If your thoughts are murky and unclear, you’re laying an unstable foundation.

But the way you end a sermon is just as important. If the closing of your message is disorganized and unclear, then your listeners will walk away feeling the same way about your message – that it was disorganized and unclear. I’ve written extensively about the important role you play as the communicator in setting the tone for how your audience perceives your message.

When I first began preaching I would prepare relentlessly for the first five minutes of my sermon. I wanted my opening thoughts to be perfect. I would prepare the opening remarks and the body of the sermon with careful detail. But when it came to the end of...

This is the last post of a three part series on the benefits of preparing sermons in a team. Part one discussed the different reasons why a lot of preachers prepare their sermons solo. Part two examined what happens as a result of preparing sermons alone.

For this final post I want to give you some practical tools for how to get started preparing your sermons in a team. This practice changed everything about the way I prepare sermons and enriched my preaching experience.

 It’s important to recognize what constitutes a team. For the purposes of sermon prep, a team could be a structured group that meets regularly or it could be an unstructured collection of people that you seek out to collaborate with. The point is that you are intentionally broadening the preparation process to more than just you.

Our preaching team is made up of our pastors who preach in the main services, the service programming coordinator, other staff members and a note...

1. They make your message seem contrived. Alliterated outlines can appear contrived and forced. Like the preacher just needed a matching, neat outline so he grabbed whatever word fit the others regardless of whether it was actually the best word that communicated the meaning he wanted. Like this:

God wants three things from you:

1. Surrender

2. Service

3....

If you haven’t read part one of this series, make sure to check it out. In that post I discuss four reasons why most preachers prepare their sermons alone. In this post I address the question of why it matters because you may be asking… So what if I prepare my sermons alone, what difference does it make?

When I went from solo preparation to a team based model my sermons improved dramatically. They became much more connected to my listeners. I am convinced that a purposeful team approach with intentional input from others at every stage of preparation has been THE thing that has most improved my sermons. In the final post of this series (part three) I will discuss exactly what this looks like for me and offer suggestions on how to get started. Before I get to that I want to address one question:

What’s wrong with preparing Sermons alone? 

 If almost everyone does it this way, then how could it be so bad? If you prepare your sermons alone...

Shorter sermons are almost always better. You might say, “Well, Matt Chandler speaks for an hour and he has hundreds of thousands of people listening to him!” Okay, sure, but he’s engaging, insightful and a captivating communicator. Not everybody can do what Matt Chandler does. But even if you can do all of those things for an hour, it doesn’t mean you should. Few public speakers can keep an audience’s attention for that long. Few should even try. Here are three reasons why shorter sermons are almost always better:

1. You don’t need to say everything in a single sermon. 

We often think back on a sermon and ask ourselves: Did I say all the words that I needed to say? The better question is: Did they hear what they needed to hear so they can do something with it? Part of the reason you may speak for a long time is you think you need to say everything…

Everything that you could possibly point out that is in a...

Pauses are great. They can add emphasis and give more weight to your point. A well-placed pause is a powerful public speaking tool that you should know how to use.

But the wonderful effect of a pause is destroyed by a terrible public speaking mistake preachers make: the audible pause. What’s an audible pause?

Well, um, it’s uh, um, I think it’s uh… (Sorry, just had to do that).

An audible pause is when you fill in the gaps of your speech with throw away words like “um” “uh” “you know” “like” and others.

These throw away words are a huge distraction, and every public speaker must deal with them if they are going to stand out. To audibly pause is natural. To quit audibly pausing is a lot of work, but it’s what separates the preachers from the donkeys. Here’s how to stop using throw away words in sermons:

1. Rehearse your sermons out loud. 
This is a vital step to...

My church has two Sunday services. The earlier service is a more traditional worship environment. This service tends to be attended by an older demographic. From my experience of preaching this service I have made some observations about preaching to older crowds:

1. Older crowds are way more receptive to young preachers than you might think.
Sometimes when I preach about a topic that I don’t think they’ll be comfortable with (social issues and vices), they surprise me with how positively they respond to it.

2. They appreciate straight-forward, tell-it-like-it-is kind of preaching.
If you don’t hold back, but just really give it to them, they’ll like it. As long as you’re not a young, know-it-all jerk about it. They’ve been around long enough to see through that stuff.

3. If you are funny, humor works with older crowds.
If you’re funny, they’ll laugh at your jokes. But not all of them. You’re speaking to a different generation...