Beginnings and Endings 8.21.2025

 A sermon is not like following the yellow brick road, and you are not Dorothy Gale of Kansas.  The preaching event is not a road trip. You don’t just hop on where you happen to be. There is a start and there is a finish, a beginning and an end, a point of departure and an arrival. Yet a Biblical sermon—being content driven, defines the beginning and end by what goes on in the middle. Introductory and concluding words get us into the text and help us present conclusions to our congregation. The end of a sermon not only brings it full circle, but it also emphasizes the content of the text and the intent of the Biblical author. 

    If you have been following a well-constructed Sermon Calendar much of what it details will be the content of the various texts that you are preaching. The front matter and end matter is often handled in one of two fashions. 1) Largely ignored. 2) Too heavily emphasized. I would like to address this topic by discussing proportion and purpose. That is what allows us to align both the beginning and ending of a sermon with the middle. 

Composition

    How you write has an impact on what you write. Habits do not determine content, but they provide structure and a repeatable approach to the text at hand. It is for that reason that the primary content of as sermon, lesson, or address needs to be laid down before you figure out how to get into the material and how to get out of it. The sermon’s end is about comprehension, retention, and actuation. You can’t actuate something which is not understood. 

    So (despite the title of this essay) the critical matter is the content, the heart, the “guts” of what you will be saying. Biblical preaching and teaching must seek to communicate the intent of a passage of scripture to an audience. Rightly conceived the thesis at the heart of any sermon, lesson, or address should focus on rightly communicating the author’s intent. To do this means we don’t begin at the beginning, nor the end. Rather we should begin the compositional process in the middle. 

    Your habit of writing needs to hammer out content first so that you know rightly how to draw the lesson to a close. Beginning at the middle also gives you a target when thinking about how to get the “Plane into the air”. And you will find that this is liberating and puts you, the speaker, in control of the flightpath. Composing from the middle allows you to choose how to get into your material and what to make of it at the end. If you don’t know what you are going to say, or what it’s desired effect will be, you are asking the listener to structure the discourse and determine its direction. It is not fair, and each listener can easily misunderstand, or even purposefully draw conclusions which are significantly different from what you intend. 

Comprehension

    We write and speak to be understood. If we do not clearly understand the material ourselves communicating it to others will be problematic at best. Preaching and teaching is hard work and most of it is never seen in the pulpit or on the platform. We provide a path to comprehension for our auditors when we invest in study, prayer, and drafting which guarantees our personal comprehension of the text before we seek to persuade or inform others. 

    As we complete the heart of our message, we are ready, only then, to consider how to draw things to a close and what intellectual, emotional, and volitional outcomes we can legitimately expect from a faithful declaration of the text before us. Comprehension is essential because if we misunderstand the intent of the author, we may try to draw conclusions or expect results which, even if valid concerns, are not rightly derived from the text before us. 

    You must understand, to determine whether you have correctly grasped the intent of the author, particularly if you expect what you say to be understood by others. The idea that texts have different meanings determined by audience or reader, is the primary strategy, not of Biblical hermeneutics but of Postmodern reader-centered literary criticism. Who’d thunk that asking the questions “What does this say/mean to you?” or “What do you think?” do not yield Biblical answers but are actually the characteristic questions of our individual if not narcissistic culture?

Concentration

    Our aim is focus. If we know what we will say we can prompt our auditors to correct conclusions. Now we need to focus on the first step. At this point in the process, we can mark a clear path into the discourse. Here, we need concentration and clarity. You are aiming for specific results derived from the text. So, your introductory thoughts should concentrate on shared, parallel, or widely understood information that will bridge the gap between information your auditors already have and what you will provide in the discourse. 

    Generally speaking, there are lots of ways to get “into” a text. We write the middle first because that process eliminates many of the good ways you can get into the text, limiting your options based on your current framing of the content, leading to the conclusions you want from your audience. Yes, a sermon is one “Thing” but like any other complex entity it is made up of parts. Three primary parts. Beginning, middle, and end. They are presented—taught, preached, or discussed in that order--but they more easily written intentionally--from middle to end to the beginning. This process limits the chance that your auditors or readers will misunderstand or veer off track.

A Conclusion

    Any scheduled address whether weekly or for some special event is predicated on the idea that this one person can, at this time and place, bring a legitimate expression of God’s will. The speaker should be able to say, “Thus says the Lord.” If you are called to do so, then it is your responsibility to lead your listeners into the reception of that word. 

    It is a monumental task and a significant responsibility. And, despite all His experience with people like us preparing messages like this, Christ still chooses you and me to be His voice. Because we are filled with the Holy Spirit, we are provided the means to both understand the text of Scripture and to communicate it to others. This does not however, allow us to be slackers. We will still need to do the work. We will need to work through the text and try and climb into the mind of our congregation. We will need to hear what people say, then me must read what Scripture says, and do everything in our power, humbly according to the guidance of Word, Spirit, and Church to responsibly speak for our Master. You’ve got this. Understand your message. Be clear on your destination. Begin at the right point so that everyone makes the trip together. God has called you for this moment. You are the pilot.