by Barney Wells, DMin
Director, The Fred Craddock Center for Preaching Excellence
Now that you have carefully, meticulously crafted your “big ides” sentence, the next task is to plan the sermon form. At this point, you have clear statement of what the text says to your audience and you have an expected response, but the sermon that accomplishes that big idea could take many forms. It could be a traditional deductive sermon with parallel alliterative points derived from and supporting your big idea. It could be an inductive sermon that asks questions of the text and lets the audience supply the implied answers. It could be a narrative sermon, either first person or third person. Dr. David Schmidt of Concordia Seminary in St. Louis lists over thirty different sermon forms, grouped into three main types, so rather than try to replicate that here, just check out the link. Not only are there many forms to consider for your sermon, the sermon does not have to be all one form. It could start as a first-person narrative then as deductive sermon or a third-person narrative. So how do you choose?
It doesn’t have to be as complicated as it sounds. You don’t have to master and consider dozens of sermon forms at once. You know where the text says your audience should end up at the end of the sermon. Consider what forms will best take them there. Reflect on your own process of letting the text soak into your heart; ask what the movement of your own soul looked like in that process.
Consider an analogy of Google Maps. When I travel anywhere I haven’t been before, and often even for trips to places I have been, I tell Google Maps my destination and it usually suggests multiple routes. One may be the shortest in driving time, another the shortest in miles, another may avoid tolls or construction delays, and another may be a more scenic route. I then look at those routes and consider which one will best take me to the destination, given the purpose and timing of my trip. Choosing a sermon form is a similar process. While there isn’t a Google Maps for the sermonic journey (there are apps that claim to write your sermon for you and help with sermon form selection, most default to the basic deductive model, and their use raises a number of ethical and theological questions), you can still use an analogous process.
Dr. Craddock talked about the hard chair part of sermon crafting, and the soft chair part. The hard chair was at the desk where the exegesis was done. The soft chair part was the sitting (or walking, running, jogging, driving) and pondering how to best connect the big idea to the audience. Try thinking of three or four forms in which the sermon could be presented and develop each one far enough to see how it might work as the “route” to the destination the big idea has for your audience. Then consider which one seems most appropriate for your audience, your own skills and comfort level, and the genre of the text.
Once you have “chosen the route,” you can start packing for the trip. We will look at that next week.