We have all said it: “Boy, that was a really good sermon!” I am afraid, though, that brethren’s definition of what constitutes a good sermon has changed over the years, and not necessarily for the better.

Here are some things some brethren would suggest, today, to improve sermons:

“The sermon would be better if it were shorter.” “We live in the world of Twitter, preacher! People today think in sound bites and slogans. If it can’t be put in a Twitter post folks won’t listen. If it is any longer than a TikTok video, people will tune you out.” Paul didn’t seem to agree. He preached until midnight once, putting one young man to sleep (Acts 20:7-9). The Jews once gathered and listened attentively to the Law preached and explained from morning until midday (Nehemiah 8:3). When it was over they all said, “Amen, Amen!” (vs. 6). Stephen the martyr finished his earthly discourse with a sermon summarizing a couple thousand years of Hebrew history (Acts 7:1-54). His audience did not miss a syllable of it, and immediately realized Stephen was condemning their own unbelief.

The length of a sermon is not the issue, it is the attention span of today’s hearer that is. People used to be able to digest buckets of truth, now folks want Jesus in a Dixie Cup.

“The sermon would be better with more professional slides.” We preachers have many tools at our disposal when we preach. One of the most helpful is PowerPoint. Long gone are the days of acetate charts burned through a copy machine and projected on something that looked like a submarine periscope. Now, charts can be made inside a computer and shown through a powerful projector. There are palettes of colors available to the preacher as well as animated text.

While these are useful if used tastefully and sparingly, the opposite can be true. Charts that are “over the top” can distract from the sermon. You can argue with me on this if you want to, that is your privilege, but folks, let’s face it - when you expect Porky Pig to explode from the screen at the end of a sermon saying “That’s all folks!” the sermon has become the technology. The truth gets buried beneath strobing colors and mindbending animations.

People who crave this kind of thing and insist that they “need” the visual stimulation to get something out of a sermon would not have made it through a Bible sermon. Thousands of pilgrims listened to Peter preach on Pentecost without anything more than his voice, the inspired word that he preached, the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus, his topic, and plentiful references to the Old Testament, as his aid (Acts 2:16- 17, 22, 25-28). At the end, his audience was fully convicted and demanded to know what to do to be saved (vs. 37-38).

What visual stimulation did Jesus employ for the three full chapters of the Sermon on the Mount to keep people interested (Matthew 5-7)? Jesus merely preached about true righteousness and contrasted it with the self-righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees. He used verbal illustrations when he spoke such as the “salt and the light” (Matthew 5:13-16), and similar devices. Jesus’ preaching was effective because it required people to actively listen and think without being spoon-fed with bright, colorful pictures. While charts can be helpful, they can also become a crutch that hinders people’s ability to think in their absence.

“The sermon would be better if it were less negative.” Here is a popular refrain from our day, a droning background gripe that has grown more deafening since the mid-1980’s. Younger Christians, and older ones, tired of spiritual warfare (1 Timothy 6:12), have said that gospel preaching has become “too negative.” They warn us that people are turned off by so much talk about “doctrine” and that we should spend more of our time preaching like Jesus.

Ironically, Jesus could be “rough as a corn cob” in His preaching. He excoriated those who turned the temple into a den of thieves (Matthew 21:12-13) while He turned over their tables and drove them out with a whip (Luke 19:45, John 2:15). He also spent an entire sermon naming scribes and Pharisees and calling them hypocrites (Matthew 23). If that were not enough, Jesus ridiculed Herod, calling him “that fox…” (Luke 13:32). Gasp! The Lord was blunt and direct, leaving no doubt what He meant.

Sermons are good, brethren, not because of technology, schemes, nor capitulation to the weak-minded; sermons are good, because they tell the truth, plainly (2 Timothy 4:2-4).

- West Columbia Bulletin, July 3, 2022