FIVE WAYS TO TEST YOUR SERMONS

Excerpts from "THE MEASURE OF A MESSAGE" by Greg Laurie 

The scene: hot sun, turquoise-blue swimming pool, a diving board, and you smelling like a coconut. Can you see it? Now for the question: When I preach, do I springboard from the Word or into the Word? You might even be brave enough to do a time test on several messages. How much time did you spend on Bible content-how much on your own stories, insights or thoughts? You might be surprised. It's easy to get the morning going with, "Turn with me in your Bibles if you will. . ." But what happens next? Too often, after reading the passage, we're off-on an anecdote, a point of view, an issue of the day, a story about what happened at Wal-Mart last Tuesday. The Bible shouldn't just be our diving board; it should be our destination-the pool where we spend the most time. Of course, we need stories, examples, and humor. But the key question here is: Are my stories and observations helping to illuminate the Bible passage, or is the Bible there simply to help justify the importance of my stories? Is the Bible my end, or mostly a means to some other end? Unfortunately, for many Christians, the pastor's weekly teaching is the only doctrine they're going to get. More than that, it's the only invitation to spend time in the Word they're going to accept. We can easily start to convey a damaging message: The Bible has good ideas, but you really don't want to spend too much time there. But we must remember that God's words have spiritual power, not ours. God did not say "Your clever illustrations will not return void... ," but "My Word shall not return void..." And Paul told the Corinthians that his job was, "... to preach the gospel-not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made of none effect." (1 Cor 1:17).

2. The Green Lawn Test (measures coverage)

Scene: It's your day off. You're wearing baggy shorts and an Angels baseball cap, and you're following a fertilizer spreader back and forth across your lawn. Maybe the nitrogen has gotten to you! You don't look like you're having any actual thoughts. Question: If my church were a lawn, and my Bible teaching fertilizer, would my lawn be turning evenly green or a weird pattern of stripes and burn holes? We need to pull back and look at the big picture from time to time and check the coverage of our Bible ministry. There's nothing wrong with focusing on a given topic for a season (I recently finished a 5-part series on the Christian family). And we want to let the Holy Spirit guide us to the topics or passages our congregation needs to hear. However, we should be striving to preach the whole Word as thoroughly as possible over the course of time. When bidding good-bye to the elders at the Church of Ephesus, Paul said he had not failed "to declare the whole counsel of God." Could we make that same claim? There is the temptation for a speaker to "specialize" or ride a particular "hobby- horse." We should be a little worried, for example, if our church gets a particular label: "Oh, they're into spiritual gifts," or "He focuses on healing (or end times or successful living or the Pentateuch-or even evangelism)." I don't see any such specializing going on in the early church. Paul reminded Timothy: "All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: That the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works." (2 Tim 3:16-17). This is the advantage of preaching through books of the Bible. In fact, this preaching plan has many benefits:
#1 It will stretch us personally, getting us out of our little comfort zone.
#2 We know what we're preaching on next Sunday. (Ever spend all day Saturday trying to get a bead on what your topic ought to be?)
#3 It will force us to speak on topics we might otherwise avoid. (These will often turn out to be your best responded to messages because they are fresh.)
#4 We will (by default) end up declaring "The whole counsel of God."
See any burn holes or missed spots?

3. The Good Nutrition Test (measures consumption)

Scene: You're in charge of dinner. You're wearing an apron and a silly grin. Why are the kids looking at you that way? The menu tonight turns out to be s'mores and root beer. Question: What kind of food is your church consuming? Are they growing mature on the meat of the Word or are most of them still eating out of the blender? Naturally, those in our congregations are at varying stages of maturity in the Lord. Just as a 5- week-old baby can't very well eat a steak, a mature adult probably isn't up for strained carrots. So how does a pastor manage to feed a hungry crowd at various stages of growth? The same way a parent manages to feed a family of five. She makes sure that the baby gets milk, and she makes sure that her teenagers get plenty of meat and veggies. If you looked at a sampling of your sermons, could they feed a hungry church family? For new believers, are you explaining complex ideas and cutting them into smaller pieces? For the "grown ups," have you offered further reading ideas, posed challenging questions and gone beyond the basics of salvation? Our churches, like our kids, usually have to be pulled along toward good eating habits. A sweet tooth shows up in the nursery. A taste for asparagus takes a little time and coaxing. At Harvest, our pastoral staff keeps a careful watch on how many of our church body show up for Bible studies. That, more than attendance at a concert or retreat, is a key sign of family health. The writer of Hebrews was distressed and frustrated when he addressed eating habits in the church: "... we have many things to say, and hard to be uttered, seeing ye are dull of hearing. For when for the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need that one teach you again which be the first principles of the oracles of God; and are become such as have need of milk, and not of strong meat.... Therefore leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on to perfection ..." (Hebrews 5:11-12; 6:1)

4. The Snooze Test (measures presentation)

Scene: It's the opening session of your class, "The Meaning of Everything." Great turnout. Since it's a pretty big subject, and a serious one, you walk up to the podium with armfuls of commentaries, a box of overheads, your reading glasses, and a "meaningful" expression. Suddenly, a plague of yawns hits the room. Question: Am I doing justice to the Bible's amazing stories and people, and its consistently surprising insights and principles? Or am I putting people to sleep with the Truth-just giving them what they expect? Remember what happened when Job tried to talk to God about life and suffering? God started talking about animals, not systematic theology. He talked about ostriches. That'll wake you up. God's delight in that silly ostrich provoked Job to let go of his pain long enough to see things in an entirely fresh way. Jesus communicated Bible truth through stories that were full of color, smells, and life. The Bible isn't boring, but it sure can get that way from the pulpit. As one old-time seminary professor used to say, one proof of the inspiration of Scripture is that it has withstood so much poor preaching. I cannot think of a worse torment for me personally than listening to bad preaching. You've probably heard the story of the preacher who was asked to give a message for a luncheon. He had been given 20 minutes to speak, but he was going way over his allotted time. The moderator tried to get his attention, pointing to his watch, but the preacher kept speaking. The moderator cleared his throat rather loudly, but that preacher was in his own world, oblivious to the time and the fact that people were falling asleep all around the room. The moderator began to pound down his gavel, indicating the preacher's time was up. Still he droned on. Finally, in complete frustration, the moderator threw his gavel at this long-winded preacher and missed him, hitting an elderly man who had fallen asleep in the front row. Waking from his sleep, the old man said, "Hit me again! I can still hear him!" It just seems to me to almost be a crime to take the power-packed, life-changing message of the Gospel and deliver it in a dull and boring manner. I've heard pastors speak who are incredibly creative with their own lives, but when it comes to the Bible, they leave their characters stuck to the flannel graph board-a cartoon, a label, or a type, nothing more. But God doesn't see any one of us that way.

5. The Emergency Landing Test (measures passion)

Scene: You're strapped in for take-off. The flight attendant is cheerfully rushing through the safety announcement about water landings and oxygen masks and nearest exits. You're already on your second magazine and don't even look up. The Question: Do I preach the Word as if I don't want to trouble my listeners, or as if I'm on an airplane that's going down? I mean, what if the plane was actually going down? What if we knew that we had 20 minutes before impact? What if the flight attendants sounded urgent instead of just on "auto play?" We would not only listen carefully, we would be studying every word of that pamphlet for help, and hopefully trying to help others follow the instructions. This is how we should be preaching the Bible-as if our life, and our congregation's lives, depended on knowing what it contains. Because they do. The early church studied the scriptures this way. We read in Acts 4: "And they continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in prayers." Paul's advice to Timothy is tinged in urgency and passion. It's exactly the kind of advice you'd give if you had only minutes left with your congregation: "Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine." One of my favorite definitions of good preaching came from Martin Lloyd Jones. He described it as "logic on fire." Some have the fire with no logic-lots of excitement, stories, jokes, passion, but no content to speak of. Others have the logic but no fire. They deliver a carefully crafted message but without that much-needed passion. But if you combine the two, you have an explosive combination.