Sermon Delivery

Sermon delivery is the servant of sermon content.

This relationship must be understood and practiced if preaching is to be effective. What we preach is always more important than how we preach. Note carefully that the relationship between content and delivery is stated in the comparative degree: Content is more important than delivery. Delivery is important, but content is more important. This basic and specialized statement of a theology of proclamation is the foundation of this book. The purpose of this introduction is to present a basic theology of sermon delivery.

Our working definition of preaching is this: Preaching is a word from God applied to a contemporary congregation, communicated by a God-called person in a way that maximizes the message and minimizes the messenger.

Domenico Grasso concluded, “The object and content of the preaching of Jesus and the Apostles is the person of Christ.”1 “Unlike all other messages, the Christian message is identified with the Messenger, with the person of Christ.”2 According to Grasso, preaching should be identifiable with Christ.

Karl Barth felt that preaching should be the speaking of the Word of God. This speaking should involve the listener in the Word of God in a way that removes the barriers of time. In true biblical preaching, Barth contended, the listener should not think in terms of first century and twentieth century, but consider the central truth of the Word of God. Barth affirmed that biblical preaching dissolves the wall between the first-century word and twentieth-century man.3 But what should preaching do? “What is transmitted and what one seeks to have accepted is a person. And the goal to be obtained is adherence to a person.… The real problem of preaching consists in discovering how to … establish between God and man a community of life, so that man will not think of or see himself except in the light of God.”4

Schleiermacher taught that preaching should be an opportunity for the Word to rise forth from the spiritual union of the preacher with his listeners, and that preaching should give expression to the life in which preacher and congregation are thus joined.5

Perhaps Schleiermacher sounds a little “heady,” and more than a little idealistic. Clyde Fant writes, “The passionate desire to insure that the pure Word of God is proclaimed to the congregation has resulted in an almost superstitious depersonalization of the act of preaching. As a matter of practical fact, the Word does not ‘arise out of the Bible and proceed into the congregation.’ It proceeds into the congregation on the words of a very subjective human being who has struggled to interpret those words which he has found in the Bible and which God graces with his presence as the Word.”6

These excerpts are included to stimulate the preacher’s thinking about how one preaches. Such evaluation will sharpen understanding of the relation between text, sermon, and sermon delivery. Nebulous thinking results in nebulous preaching, and nebulous preaching is never appropriate.

Sermon content (what we preach) must be strong, clear, text-centered, and supported by effective delivery.

Who Should Preach: A God-Called Person

Communication is a diverse discipline that is foundational to preaching. When we preach, all that we are as Christian persons is focused on communicating a message from God. Our childhood experiences, our conversion experience, our models in preaching and pastoring, our self-image, our perception of what preaching should be and what preaching should do, and our various academic and theological studies are but a few of the resources we call on as we prepare to preach. When we deliver the sermon, these resources are brought into tension with individuals who have their own varying perceptions of who they are, who and what the preacher is, what preaching should be, and what it should do. Our varying backgrounds will either assist the preacher in achieving desired responses from the congregation or, at times, hinder the preacher from achieving desired responses. They may even elicit an undesired response from the congregation.

Communication is a fascinating, complex process. Broadly defined, communication means “to pass along information by talking, writing, or gesturing.” The process is not automatic. The steps to sermon delivery discussed in this book are designed to help Christian communicators bring their individual communication skills to maturity.

How We Should Preach: Maximizing the Message and Minimizing the Messenger

Sermon delivery derives its importance from its relationship to sermon content.

The goal of sermon delivery is to maximize the message and minimize the messenger.

The messenger is a critically important part of the preaching process, but the messenger is never more important than the message. As sermon delivery derives its importance from its relationship to sermon content, so the messenger derives importance from the message to be delivered. The preacher, for instance, is not like a mail deliverer. The person who delivers the mail has a noble vocation, but once the mail is delivered the task is completed. The preacher’s responsibilities continue beyond the mere delivery of the message.

The preacher may be compared to an ambassador who represents higher officials, nations, or kingdoms. The ambassador is entrusted to speak for another. The ambassador cultivates relationships with those being represented and also with those who receive this representative. These relationships help the ambassador know who is being represented and why. When the ambassador conveys a message, it is more likely to be communicated accurately and efficiently. Furthermore, those who receive the message need to know something about the messenger. The ambassador therefore must convince those receiving the message that the messenger is a person of expertise and integrity and possesses deep convictions about the message.

Why go through all this work? Why not just imitate some outstanding preacher? When God called you to preach, he saw something in you, some quality no one else has. He called you to be you, not someone else. To imitate someone else is tantamount to saying to God, “You used poor judgment in calling me, God. Since you obviously made a mistake, then I will help you correct it. Instead of being me, I will be someone else for you.” God knew what he was doing when he called you. To give him less than the best you can be by imitating someone else is to insult God’s judgment. Furthermore, persons who imitate other speakers almost always imitate their weaknesses rather than their strengths. (Even the best of preachers could stand improvement.) Persons who imitate them generally imitate their pitch patterns or some other distracting mannerism.

Rather than insulting God and perpetuating some inappropriate delivery style, dedicate yourself to being the best communicator God can make of you.

What are the criteria for measuring effectiveness in delivery? Are these criteria always subjective? Will they be the same in all preaching situations? in all denominations? in all regions of the country or world? for all the various styles of preaching? The complexities are endless, but some guidelines are available. They will be discussed in the next chapters of this book.

One additional aspect of sermon delivery should be discussed here.

Much of the communication of a sermon takes place before the first word is preached.

The pastoral role produces varying relationships between pastor and congregation. If these relationships are positive, the congregation will receive the pastor as a person of credibility, as someone in whom they can believe. Creating this positive feeling is as critical in preaching as it is in any form of communication (as, for example, the analogy of the ambassador cited earlier).

Every congregation or audience needs to know that the preacher or speaker is (1) a person of competence, a person “who knows what he is talking about”; (2) a person of integrity, a person who can be trusted, not a manipulator or exploiter; and (3) a person of vitality, a preacher who communicates a deep sense of belief in all that is said. The messenger’s credibility with the congregation is critical in preaching. When credibility is present the congregation is free to respond, to interact with the message as well as the messenger. Without it, the preacher faces a congregation that is fettered by a lack of confidence in the messenger and therefore the message. The apostle Paul faced a credibility problem in Corinth. He did not appeal to the Corinthians to defend his reputation so that he would be received, but so that his message would be received. Paul based his plea on an appeal to his integrity: “We are made manifest unto God; and I trust also are made manifest in your consciences” (). “Manifest” means literally, “to be turned inside out.” This was Paul’s way of saying, “I have no ulterior or suspicious motives. What you see is a man devoted to God’s service. What you get is what you see.”

This introduction has sketched a theology of sermon delivery. The following chapters are devoted to the mechanics of sermon delivery that support content, seeking to maximize the message and minimize the messenger.[1]

1 Domenico Grasso, The Preaching of God’s Message (South Bend, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1965), 8.

2 Ibid., 20.

3 Cf. particularly The Preaching of the Gospel, trans. B. E. Hooke (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1963); The Word of God and the Word of Men, trans. Douglas Horton, (1938); and Church Dogmatics, vol. 1, pt. 1, trans. G. T. Thomason (New York: Charles Scribner & Sons, 1936).

4 Barth, The Preaching of the Gospel, 21.

5 For example, see Religion: Speeches to Its Cultural Despisers, trans. John Omen (New York: Harper, 1958); George Cross, The Theology of Schleiermacher (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1911); and Schleiermacher’s Liturgies: Theorie & Praxis (Gšttingen: Vandenhocck and Ruprecht, 1963).

6 Clyde Fant, Preaching for Today (New York: Harper and Row, 1975), 33.

[1] Fasol, Al. A Complete Guide to Sermon Delivery. Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1996. Print.