Sermon Presentation Tips 7: The Pause

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sermon presentation tips

I heard from a friend that she falls asleep every time she is in church because the preacher reads his manuscript.  The problem may not have to do with the reading, but HOW the reading is done.

The preacher must learn to pause.  Many preachers make the mistake of not taking enough time to deliberate important points, especially regarding biblical principles and applications.  As a result, sometimes the audience remembers the illustration more than the main points.  Pausing between sentences has a dramatic effect.  Sometimes silence is more important than words.  Pausing can also allow the audience to take a mental breather.  In the case of a weighty matter, the audience can pause to think and absorb the full impact of the message before the preacher goes on the next point.  In the case of laughter, many preachers do not know how to use the audience’s laughter to their advantage.  Instead of allowing the impact of humor to drive home the point, the preacher hurries along to the point while the audience is still laughing.  Oddly enough, preachers can learn from comedians.  On TV, successful comedians have learned the timing of reentering the monologue in the midst of laughter.  The best time to do so is a second or so before the laughter totally dies down.  Again, the most important part of the application gets lost due to this lack of attention to such oratory detail.  For most preachers I have encountered, they can never pause enough.

What good will the pause do?  It does two things. First, it shows the preacher to be confident and in control.  Second, it allows the audience to take a mental breather in order to continue the journey of listening.  Everyone needs a break sometimes. Even the preacher.

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Sermon Presentation Tip 6: Fillers and Other Illnesses

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sermon presentation tip

If you watch interviews with athletes, you will inevitably find some more attractive than others, mostly based on their communication habits.  One of the worst communication habits is fillers.  Many talk with fillers such as “er, ah”.  These sounds make the speaker sound boring, diffident and unqualified. For us who communicate for a living, we need to get rid of them now.

The preacher can eliminate all filler words such as “er, ah”.  Instead, use those times for taking an extra breath.  Extra breath helps gather thoughts by keeping the voice healthy and the mind refreshed.  Another obvious disadvantage with fillers is that they make the preacher look like he or she does not know the subject matter.  Worse yet, they make the preaching look like it lacks conviction.  Both problems can deflate the preacher’s credibility, especially if the audience does not know him or her.  Thus, the preacher must be even more prepared when appearing as guest speaker.  The best ways to start getting rid of fillers is first to eliminate them from daily conversations and second to get enough sleep so that the brain can function during the sermon event.  It will take a while. Do not get frustrated. Keep trying.

Struggle Over Self-Improvement

Many of my students struggle with self-improvement.  Some who have read my books on preaching have decided, “What’s the point?  I have too many faults.”  Others take a more positive outlook and try to improve on EVERYTHING.  Neither approach is good.  Giving up is certainly not an option, if you want to last in church ministry.  Taking the obsessive compulsive approach is also harmful to relationships and our other pastoral duties.  What should we do?

Let me share a secret with you.  Even after written books on preaching, I still don’t live up to my own ideal.  Some of my listeners may soon find out that I actually do not fit the ideal I present in the book, not because I don’t want to but because I’m a fellow homiletic pilgrim.  I still can improve.  Quite often, my knowledge runs ahead of my presentation skills.

This is what I propose.  We should try to improve on one single aspect each month or even each quarter.  Practice makes progress.  Perfect practice makes perfect.  In other words, only repeated practice can break our bad habits.  Do not try to be ambitious.  Many try to do many things all at once.  At the end, they find that they’ve made only minimal improvement.  Sometimes, they make zero improvement even.  We must stay patient by running a marathon rather than sprints in our homiletical improvement.  I think every preacher can improve on something, even well-seasoned ones.  We have the rest of our lives to improve and perfect our craft.  Why hurry?

Two Cliches about Confidence

I think it was Martyn Lloyd-Jones who said that there were many miniature Martyn Lloyd-Jones running around England in this time.  What he means is that there’re a lot of imitators.  The cliché of “imitation is the highest form of flattery” is only a cliché when it comes to preaching.  In my years of teaching this discipline, I’ve come to the conclusion that each person is uniquely equipped by God to carry out the task.  No two people do it quite the same way. I think the biggest problem with imitation is insecurity.  Many people are not comfortable in their own skins.  Some hate their voices. Others feel nausea when they speak in public.  Still others think that they’re too short, ugly, fat, skinny, small, big, and you can fill in the blank.  Some may fill in two blanks.  The fact is, there is always something we don’t like about ourselves, but no one else knows about that “something.”

When we’re standing on the pulpit, we must realize that each of us is uniquely created for the task.  We should not try to be someone else, no matter how great that someone else is.  Some may imitate Joel Osteen because he’s such a great orator. Others hate him, but no one is going to sound like Joel Osteen other than Osteen himself.  Most men are hardly that handsome and almost none of us can dress quite as sharp.  Love him or hate him, he is Joel Osteen.  You are you, last time I checked.  Negatively, we have to accept that we can’t change certain things.  Positively, we have to affirm that each of us has qualities that those famous preachers do not have.  In order to be comfortable in our own skins, we should affirm the above qualities.

“Be yourself. Accept yourself, as God accepts you.”  This is yet another cliché we use only for junior high kids.  All of us know that we have things we need to change.  Being comfortable in our own skins does not mean we do not improve ourselves.  It also does not mean that we need to improve everything all at once. This goes for both preaching and life.  My suggestion is that I need to find one thing to improve upon until I perfect it and then go to the second item.

What am I trying to say in this post?  I can summarize it in this paradoxical sentence: be comfortable but not self-satisfied in your own skin.

By the way, I’m not going to tell you what I don’t like about myself, just in case you’re wondering.  Don’t bother asking …