Proclaimer Blog
Why I avoid publishing sermon titles
Some churches love to publish sermon titles. There's nothing fundamentally wrong with this practice. It can be a great way to give order and structure to a preaching series. But I have to admit that I dislike them. Here's why:
- they are restrictive in terms of passage. It sometimes happens that you have to break into a series. Perhaps a young guy dies in the church. Perhaps a game-changing vote happens in Parliament. Both occurred this week as it happens. Or what happens when, after careful study, you realise that your unit of Scripture must be two preaching units to do justice to it. What do you do with your series then? Now, I realise that this depends on the nature of the church you are in. If you are sharing a preaching ministry with a team and you are preaching occasionally, it's harder to be flexible about this – but most of us are not in that kind of rarified ministry. Publish your titles and you're in danger of publishing a straightjacket.
- more importantly perhaps, unless you've really studied the book hard, there is a real danger you'll get the titles unhelpfully wrong. I'm preaching Matthew 21.12-17 in 10 days time and my title is a given, "A house of prayer" – only, after studying, I've come to realise that this is not what the passage is about. My theme sentence, for what it is worth, is "Jesus as Messiah, exercises kingly authority in his temple house." Prayer is incidental here (please don't take that the wrong way!). No doubt the title was given in good faith. But I will have to do some backtracking when I come to preach it.
That's why I avoid publishing sermon titles.