Reviewing Your Work for Color, Tone, and Rhythm. 10.13.2022

    No one wants to be a boring preacher. Our prayer is that our preaching will engage our congregation and motivate them to bear fruit, grow more faithful, and to live with more focus. The source for this fruit, faith, and the focus must be Scripture. Scripture tells us what fruit to bear. Scripture reminds us that we must be faithful first, to Jesus. Scripture provides the information we each need to focus our faith and grow to maturity. 

    So, we want to engage people Biblically. When this is done well it draws people so far into the Biblical story that they see their own lives as an extension of the story of salvation we read in Scripture. When we fail, they yawn and tune us out. How can we be fully rooted while being culturally engaging? 

    For me, that means one thing. I’ve got to get better. During October, whilst writing my sermon calendar I am also focusing on what I can do to be a better preacher who is fully rooted in scripture and fully engaged with my congregation. I hope that you will benefit from my journey as you work to improve your own preaching. 

    This week we are going to talk about language. If you really wanted to get people’s attention you could include at least one cuss word in every sermon. This will likely not garner the kind of attention you are hoping for. There are other ways to use colorful language besides trotting out George Carlin’s big Seven. What we want to consider, this week is how we can write with color, tone, and rhythm. And the only way for you to grade yourself is to look at some of your past work. 

    This is far easier today than it has ever been. I will be preaching a series from Philippians in 2023. I need to review my most recent preaching from Philippians and see what I did then. As I write these words, I am going to access my Philippians preaching from 2012. And there it is! In addition to a more formal analysis of my exegesis and how I structured the sermons, I want to consider what I sounded like. Did I use fresh, vibrant language? How was my tone? Did I preach like a friend, a mentor, or a scold? Now, it may be necessary to use any or all those tones at one time or another, but when our tone becomes monotonous, the sheep can get tone-deaf. When I read portions of the sermon outline or manuscript does it roll off my tongue? Is it rhythmic and balanced or is it clumsy and dissonant? So, I just read through my outline for a sermon preached on August 15, 2010, from Philippians 1.1-2. Here is my appraisal.

1. The structure is good, clear, and easy to follow.

2. There are some passages where the language is colorful and paints a clear word picture. But for the most part, it is naked, and the preacher (me) will need to do the heavy lifting in presentation.

3. It is a detailed outline, but most of the points are not well fleshed out. I was making the transition to a more fully written manuscript and this sermon is a “tweener”. According to my current habits, this would be a good start, a fair first draft. I wouldn’t take it into the pulpit. 

4. There are a couple of salvageable word pictures. The introduction works, though it will need to be updated for 2022. It is possible to, and  I may rewrite and recast it. This series is not till next September so I have a long time to decide if and how I will actually incorporate this old material. 

    I will go through all these old Philippians sermons before the series begins, constantly considering what they “sound like.” For the most part, I will be satisfied with the exegesis. The text says what it says. As I grow older, I am growing more aware of each opportunity to preach and the need to be clear, colorful, and compelling every single time. Again, by colorful, I don’t mean either cussing or clowning around. I mean the deliberate, reflective choice of what I write. I mean balancing clarity and descriptive language and then having the discipline to deploy the words as they are written. 

    I still know how to preach without notes, can extemporize, and occasionally do. However, Sundays are not a surprise and I want to be the best workman that I can be. Every manuscript has some “air” in it where I can expand on the thoughts that are written. Yet, those words written, with the Holy Spirit as my partner in my study have been aged, pondered, edited, thought through, and prayed over. Why would I think that what jumps into my mind when I am animated in the pulpit will be more blessed than that which I labored over with deliberate, stubborn prayerfulness?