What kind of sermons are you listening to?

Twenty five years ago today, I preached my first sermon. I had no formal or informal training on how to preach, but I felt nimetosha mboga. How hard could it be to stand in front of a group of people and make sense of a Bible text?

Having read a verse from the book of Peter that morning (I don’t recall whether it was 1 or 2 Peter), I looked forward to breaking it down for the Christian Union members gathering that evening. Fellowship time came, and after a lively, energetic African praise and worship set, a few announcements were made, two testimonies shared, and I was called to give God’s word. I walked to the pulpit with a spring in my step, which was hangover joy from the singing and dancing. With my focus text underlined in my Bible, I flipped open to the passage, read it, made a brief prayer, and tried in vain to retrieve my mental notes from my hippocampus. Nothing came up. My heart began racing. The school chapel had about 100 students in attendance that evening. Sweat started streaming down my back, and my lips became dry. I knew the Holy Spirit was not coming upon me then as I choked up. I tried to plough through the allocated 15 minutes, though. Full transparency, I don’t think I clocked in the allocated time. It felt like I was there for too long. In reality, I must have preached for five minutes.

The illustration I shared didn’t make sense; my exegesis of the text had no head or tail — it was just random, mutilated body parts of scripture. I distinctly remember my friend’s puzzled facial expression as I returned to my seat with no bounce. He had the face you make when in a management meeting and someone breaks wind, and you know who it is, but you can’t say!

I sat down for a long time after this experience before I could preach again. I spent time listening to sermons. I listened to local and international preachers — from my dad’s Harry Das and Reinhard Bonnke cassette tapes to God Channel’s televangelists, not forgetting my local church pastors, youth camps and conference speakers. I haven’t stopped listening since. Not a day goes by without me streaming a sermon, a podcast or an audiobook. My funnel of teachers has, however, become narrower. Many preachers I once listened to are no longer in my playlist. It is so because the more I listen to sermons, the more I notice the difference in messaging from the pulpit over the years.

Three kinds of sermons

Sermons can be delivered in three ways. A preacher can begin by identifying a felt need, then direct their audience to scripture to understand God’s view, and inspire them to emulate Jesus’ life, which aligns with the Bible’s teachings. You’ll recognise these “felt needs teachings” from their “pragmatic” titles like, “How to improve your marriage”, “How to succeed in your career”, “How to be a kingdom financier”, “How to manage your emotions”. The temptation for such preachers lies in twisting the meaning of the Bible verses to suit their sermon purposes. In the end, their messages are like Cocomelon jingles to believers’ ears. But how many Cocomelon sermons can you sing along with?

While felt needs can be a useful tool for new believers, unfamiliar with the Bible, to help them know how to live like Jesus, feeding on these sermons over a long time can lead to spiritual kwashiorkor. This is a severe malnutrition disease where one does not feed on the meat of the gospel. It mostly affects spiritual babies, leaving them wasting away with no muscle to stand when trials or prosperity come their way.

Other preachers start with what God’s word says about a subject and systematically break it down to show how hearers can live like Jesus. This popular approach to preaching has two extremes. Some preachers mindlessly take a verse out of context and run with it, while others make the Bible texts dead dry orthodoxy.

In between these two extremes are the preachers who recycle their denomination’s biases, systematised by their church’s fathers. Recently, I watched a pastor friend who has run with a verse on wealth. You’ll find him dressed in sleek designer suits, and his sermons somehow always end up being tied to this verse about money. This systematic preaching can be abused by practitioners who only imagine their camp of systematic dogmatics is the true Christian position. However, it offers some meat of God’s word, but if this is exclusively consumed for a long period, it will lead to denominational dogmatism.

Another approach for preachers to teach God’s word is to consider the whole biblical story, observing how specific passages impacted the original audience and how we can apply them to live like Jesus today. I prefer this method. A sermon prepared in this way does not need proof texts to support the preacher’s opinion as the preacher superimposes the felt need onto a Bible text, neither does it spray denominational bias to hearers of the message. The preacher and the listener are forced to understand the Bible on its terms. They are aware of the historical, cultural and theological themes present in a Bible text, which is biblical theology.

Two tips

Twenty five years later, I have learned not to put all trust in my hippocampus. I print out my sermons and have a soft copy at hand in case I lose the hard copy.

God has given me the privilege of teaching his people. Two things I have learned on how to prepare a good sermon from listening to the l sermons I have listened to:

1. Be a lifelong student of the Bible and stay in prayer. Saturate your mind with God’s word. Let the words you speak and the meditation of your heart be pleasing to God throughout the week. This can only be if you let God’s word cleanse you. As you become familiar with scripture, bathe the sermon in prayer. Pray for yourself to be of good health to preach. Rehearse the message at least 15 times before delivering it. Pray for the hearers that the word will bear fruit. Pray for those who will be secondary hearers of the sermon as your first hearers tell them about what they learned.
2. People go to church to be taken seriously. I have seen pastors wing their Sunday sermons in the name of feeling the Spirit leading them to talk about x or y, which they hadn’t prepared for. The same Holy Spirit can speak to you on Tuesday so that you rightly divide his word on Sunday. Take the people who come to church or to listen to your sermon on whatever platform seriously. Prepare well for them. Part of preparation includes having tools for study. Every minister needs a Bible dictionary, Bible atlas, Bible commentaries, and a good Bible at the very least, not including Christian living books. These resources are available online on subscription and some for free.

Armed with these two tips, filter the many preachers in our world today with the funnel of biblical theology. A foundation in biblical theology allows preachers to be upfront about their biases and the assumptions shaping their message. They are aware that their exposition is one fruitful way of looking at the Bible text at hand.