Preaching with Balance (Preaching Point #9)

Over the years I’ve taught preaching in university courses and mentored a number of preaching apprentices and preachers-in-training.  This series summarizes some of the most basic yet most useful preaching points I’ve emphasized in these settings.

Preaching Point #9: The Missionary Factor: Preaching must balance both God’s story (text) and the listener’s story (life) rather than focusing solely on one or the other.

Elements within our culture and the Gospel lead to this suggestion regarding sermon form and content.  First, the post-Christian and postmodern culture has created listeners who are highly pragmatic.  This suggests that it will be important for the sermon to find ways to tie the truth of the gospel to specific life situations.  Postmoderns want a spirituality which makes a difference in their daily lives.  This is partially the result of a society which has become geared toward the consumer and which argues that “what works is better.”[i]

But not only are pragmatic issues a priority in today’s culture, they are also important in the Gospel.  The Gospels and epistles contain timeless truths/stories that are applied with reference to specific circumstances in the lives of the readers.  Scripture is “occasional”—written to specific people at a specific time to address a specific life situation.  In addition, the Gospels are widely recognized as having been written to specific audiences as an attempt to address specific situations in their lives.

In this common ground between culture and Gospel we find help in thinking about sermon form.  Sermons ought to adopt structures which help ensure the sermon is rooted both in text and in life.  The text (or “then”) in the sermon provides the sermon’s root.  Then/ Text provides the ultimate authority behind preaching.  It is in this sense that preaching ought to continue to be “expository.”  But the life application (or the “now”) provides the sermon’s relevance.

This has been one of Paul Scott Wilson’s greatest contributions to sermon structure.[ii]  Wilson argues that the sermon ideally consists of four “pages”: page 1 is devoted to a specific issue within the text; page 2 illustrates and applies that issue in contemporary life; page 3 returns to the text; page 4 illustrates and applies that issue in contemporary life.  Thus, the sermon not only moves vertically from particulars to a general conclusion in an inductive and narrative fashion, but it also moves horizontally back and forth between text and life application (diagram below).