Proclaimer Blog
Keep it focussed!
A Sunday away recently brought home to me afresh how very important it is not to overload our sermons with cognitive content. The sermon had five long sub-points to the first point. All worthy. All true. But far too much for me to grasp or hold on to (and I am trained to listen to sermons; it’s my job).
At Cornhill we sometimes use the crèche test. A young mother has left her baby in the crèche for the first time; during the sermon she is paying at most 30% attention, because she is worrying about her baby. When she goes to the crèche at the end, a crèche helper asks her about the sermon. If she says, “Well, it all sounded good and worthy, and he said a lot of things, but I don’t really know what he said” it’s a failure. If she says, “I missed a fair bit of it, but the big thrust was this…” (and gets it right), and the big thrust of the sermon is the main thrust of the passage, hey presto! the whole exercise looks more promising.
It reminds me to make sure I leave enough of my preparation on my desk and to work hard at keeping a clear focus to the sermon, and to work hard to make sure the main focus of the sermon is indeed the main focus of the passage. Easy to say. Hard work to do.