Thinking About the Black Hole for Preaching

Thinking About the Black Hole For Preaching

Since the last post, I’ve been thinking about the black hole for preaching as described in that reflection.  I think of two of the preachers from my own personal past.  I grew up in a very conservative church in West Michigan.  Each of these pastors led the church of my childhood for about ten years.  It’s amazing to me at the moment that I can remember only one sermon preached in those twenty years.  Other than that, the sermons went into my black hole.  In fact, as a child, I developed a way to dump the message into the black hole while it was being preached.

So, what made me remember that one sermon?  It was preached by my pastor, in a black suit, white shirt and black tie.  That was normal.  He read the Scripture and preached from behind the pulpit.  That was usual.  But then something changed.  He walked from out behind the pulpit, took a page from his sermon, crumpled it up and threw it on the floor and stomped on it.  Shocking!  Surprising!  The interesting thing is that now, over fifty years later, I remember his point.  He described various ways that we ignore the Word of God in our daily lives, and said that, in effect, we were treating God’s Word as something to be discarded and then thrown away forcefully.

How Did This Message Avoid the Black Hole For Preaching?

We are thinking about the black hole for preaching, that phenomenon of people not remembering a message on Monday that a pastor preached on Sunday.  How did this message avoid the black hole for preaching?  There are several things to point to:

Emotion Avoids The Black Hole

The first thing about that message that kept it out of the black hole is that the pastor was emotional.  When people report about what sermons they remember, they regular point to emotion as one of the things they remember.

A few years ago, I had the opportunity to return to the church that I served for 23 years.  They were having their 50th anniversary as a congregation, and I, as one of the pastors of that time, was invited to participate.  The person who was summarizing the years I spent there as a preacher said in her presentation, “We will never forget your sermons on grace.”  What was so memorable about those sermons?  I got emotional.  I am still incredibly amazed at the grace of God, and sometimes can be moved to tears as I present the truth of the gospel to people.

In that sermon that I remember so well from years ago, the pastor made it obvious that his love for the Word of God made him break out of the carefully controlled presentation that was normal.

So, we are thinking about the black hole for preaching and your sermons.  Do you ever get emotional?  Does your audience ever see that what you are preaching is important to you?  Do they see that you continue to be moved by the truth of the Bible?  Do they ever see you angry about the mistreatment of the Word?

A word about this: you can’t do this all of the time, but occasionally your audience should see emotion coming from you.

Doing The Unexpected Avoids the Black Hole

The other major thing that made that sermon memorable to me was that the preacher did something totally unexpected.  He stepped out from behind the pulpit.  It was a little thing, but to a child watching, it was part of the revelation of the morning that made me sit up and pay attention.

Other memorable sermons for me involved a friend using a life ring and tossing it out to talk about how Jesus desires to rescue us.  In another, the pastor got out from behind the pulpit and sat on a stool.

And I remember the time a pastor walked out from behind the pulpit and stood in front of it to talk to us.  It was like he wanted to communicate directly to us.

What are the unexpected things that you might incorporate into your preaching?

Conclusion

We’ll continue this subject in the next post, but here is an article that you might find helpful in what research has shown makes a sermon memorable.