The preacher gets on the path to memorable preaching before and during the occasion of preaching. It happens in the preparation time and in the delivery time. But this isn’t about triple-checking your word studies or strenuously stressing over the wording of your main point. This is about something far deeper.
What makes for preaching that is memorable? What makes for a sermon that doesn’t hinder the Word’s work in piercing and cutting the hearer’s heart so that surgery is possible?
Assuming that your preaching is true and centered around the gospel, there are two additional things to strive after in your preaching.
2 Simple, Yet Compelling Traits of Memorable Preaching
1. Passion
Passion can be genuine, but for some, it can be artificially manufactured. Artificial passion is easy to see and painful to observe. But genuine passion? Yes, genuine passion is not just seen, it is felt from a mile away. It is moving to observe because when it is observed, it is experienced.
Memorable preaching is passionate preaching. [tweet that]
Why?
Because genuinely passionate preaching tells everyone who cares to listen, this truth is vitally important.
When you’re passionate about what you’re preaching, you show your congregation and first-time guests that you deeply care about what you’re saying.
And that’s contagious.
When people see that you care deeply and believe deeply in what you’re preaching, they take notice.
But, what does passion look like?
Passion flows through the preacher’s personality.
The passionate version of you is going to look different than the passionate version of me. And rightly so.
Friend, be you. Don’t try to be the celebrity pastor you know a portion of your church regularly listens to.
God has placed you in their lives to lead them, teach them, and shepherd them to the Good Shepherd by being who God made you to be.
The entrance to passion’s gates?
True passion will happen after God wrecks you.
From my experience, I have found that God tends to use two things to wreck me: (1) a story or experience of struggle – someone else or myself and (2) prayer.
Charles Spurgeon told this to his students at The Pastors’ College:
If you can dip your pens into your hearts, appealing in earnestness to the Lord, you will write well; and if you can gather your matter on your knees at the gate of heaven, you will not fail to speak well. – Lectures to My Students, p. 44
In order to preach passionately, you must allow God to search your heart and bring out something that has caused you pain but in God’s hands, has been redeemed for His purposes.
When you’ve walked through the valley of difficulty, you become the passionate pleader for those who are in that forsaken place now – telling them to keep going and to trust Him through it.
We remember the people who help us in our times of need. Make your preaching be a voice of passionate hope for your congregation.
2. Compassion
If your passion doesn’t result in compassion, you have missed God’s next stage of work in you.
Unlike passion, you cannot fake compassion. It has to be real. And when it is real? That changes everything.
Why?
Because compassionate preaching is memorable preaching. [tweet that]
You know the saying by John Maxwell, “people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.”
Here’s a secret: many of the people who will attend your church this coming weekend are skeptical of you, the church, and God. This likely isn’t because of something you have done. Many people’s trust in institutions is diminishing because they’ve seen power wrongfully handled too many times to count. Additionally, many people are not starting with a foundational belief in the goodness of God.
To put it simply: today’s church attendees and church guests have a lot of walls up.
But…
Compassion powerfully breaks walls down.
Compassionate preaching lets the truth cut its hearers while not causing the hearer to attack the messenger.
When you preach with compassion, you are telling the congregation that you not only care about what God’s word says but you also care about them. And that is huge!
People pay attention to people who care about them. They listen to what they say. They consider what they say. And they reflect on what they say.
To use some biblical imagery: compassionate preaching helps till the soil of the hearer’s heart.
D. Martin Lloyd Jones says it well:
To love to preach is one thing, to love those to whom we preach is quite another. – Preaching and Preachers
The entrance to compassion’s gates?
True compassion happens when your awareness is elevated.
Compassionate preaching is prepared in counseling sessions, coffee meetings, and impromptu prayer sessions. It is bred out of someone pouring their hearts out before us. And it is birthed out of our awareness of those moments.
If you despise your congregation, you’ll be a terrible preacher. [tweet that]
If you love your congregation, you’ll be a gifted preacher.
It doesn’t matter how eloquent you are – when you preach without love, you sound horrendous. [tweet that]
If you want to increase your compassion, increase the amount of time you’re spending with people. And then go to God in prayer and ask Him to give you a deep sense of their struggle so you can compassionately communicate the hope He wants to give them.
Memorable Preaching
The preacher who passionately and compassionately heralds the gospel will always be effective.
Brandon Kelley is a pastor at The Crossing on the east side of Cincinnati. He is the managing editor of Ministry Pass, co-founder of RookiePreacher.com, and the author of Preaching Sticky Sermons. You can connect with him on Twitter @BrandonKelley_.
