When I first became a pastor, I used to get fairly disconcerted when I would look out into the congregation as I preached and saw someone sleeping. As a Presbyterian minister, I supposed I’ve had to grow accustomed to the sight of people sleeping in church, especially considering the age of many of my congregants.
It doesn’t bother me as much any more, but every once in a while I’ll see someone who is sleeping pretty soundly. I mean the head-leaned-back-mouth-wide-open-snoring-to-beat-the-band kind of sleeping. Just recently, I spied one of my members dead asleep right in the middle of my sermon. I raised my voice and even pounded the edge of the pulpit a couple of times as I preached to see if I could awaken him. No such luck. As he walked out the door after the service, he shook my hand and said to me, “That was really good today!” Honestly, I didn’t know if he meant my sermon (which he slept through) or his nap (which was more likely).
Those kinds of moments have happened far too frequently in my preaching career. I try not to take it personally, but it does make me wonder just how many of my other parishioners are “sleeping” through my sermons. In other words, how many of the people telling me “good sermon” on the way out the door really heard it?
I believe that the sermon should be an event. I want my church members to walk out the door feeling like they experienced something extraordinary—that they were there when it happened. They should walk out stunned, shaken, messed up and wrecked – am I right?
But how do we accomplish this as preachers? Surely, this is an impossible task to accomplish each and every week. The fact of the matter is: I believe that preachers can make each sermon an event, but it will take preparation, planning and intentionality. Here’s a short primer on what I’ve been working on at our church to help us to accomplish this monumental task:
1. We acknowledge that sermon planning can’t happen in a vacuum. If you aren’t finding some way to plan and prepare your sermons collaboratively, then you need to change that. I have monthly meetings with a team to do creative planning and preparation and we have weekly evaluations of our worship services to see if we accomplished our goals.
2. I preach on one thing. Each of my sermons is focused on one central idea, and we also craft the worship service around that idea as well. The days of “three points and a poem” are long gone.
3. I begin with the end in mind. This is an old Steven Covey-ism, but it works. I’ve begun asking myself as I begin crafting my sermon, “What do I want people to do with this?” I believe in preaching for transformation, so I have to be clear about the kind of transformation I am hoping for in response. Which leads me to the last thing… .
4. Give people a way to respond. We always try to offer our church members a chance to respond to what they have heard. Sometimes it’s a simple invitation to prayer. Or we might offer the chance to do something like light a candle, renew their baptism, be anointed with oil, etc. Every Sunday we also invite our congregation to respond by sharing the Lord’s Supper, which is a powerful reminder of the transformation Jesus can effect in us all.
This is by no means an exhaustive list, but it’s a good place to begin as we strive to keep our hearers from sleeping through our sermons—both literally and figuratively!
Leon Bloder is a preacher, a poet, a would-be writer, a husband, a father, a son, a dreamer, a sinner, a pastor, a fellow-traveler and a failed artist. He is talentless, but well-connected. He stumbles after Jesus, but hopes beyond hope that he is stumbling in the right direction. Leon has been married to Merideth for 22 years, is the father of three awesome boys, and serves in ministry at the First Presbyterian Church of Eustis in Eustis, Florida. Visit his website.
