Preaching Tips

by Tim Isbell

As a local church pastor for 18 years, I wanted to use a broad range of preaching techniques in order to communicate to the broad range of parishioners and visitors. And I wanted to hold the attention of regulars. So I curated the ideas on this webpage to keep me from always preaching in the same style/format. Every week I read a small section of these notes. I've annotated the file with the best information I can remember about where that concept came from. Unfortunately, I cannot recall where the source of all of them. So if you recognize where some of them came from please let me know and I’ll annotate this website.

Blessings, Tim

Preaching Tips

“Good preaching (living) is like a person standing on a street corner pointing upward into the sky.  Of course, a crowd gathers. Everyone cranes their neck upward to see whatever it is that the person who is pointing upward sees.” (Karl Barth)

There are 2 pillars of security for preachers. The first is that we must be obedient to the call to preach. The second is the power that is in Scripture.

Don’t start with a need and look for a scripture; start with the scripture and ask what need it addresses or what question it answers. (This is one of the primary reasons I used the Revised Common Lectionary to guide my preaching calendar. For more the lectionary, see Lectionary Basics and Lectionary Preaching).

If I’m to preach effectively, I must be free from a need for approval and applause. Until I get to this point, my preaching is just trying to fill up something in me that I can never fill.

People are searching for peace and/or purpose.

Storytelling principles:

Ask people to email questions on an upcoming message topic and then factor these into a future sermon.

People don’t come to church for a Ted Talk; they come to meet God.

Preach as if there’s a broken heart in every row.

If you're dry in your heart, preach on grace - not on judgment. When you're broken and in tears, then you can preach on judgment.

Testimonies are the most evangelistic things we do. Who can argue with someone’s story?  Look for ways to embed them inside the sermon.

The preacher is less a scholar and more a sage; less a lecturer and more a poet, prophet, and priest.

To hold someone’s attention: Break their guessing machine and then fix it. Make them commit to an answer early (sometimes even through a quiz or a hand-raising question), it holds their attention. Don't fix it until the last 1/3 of the sermon.

Put away the video projector occasionally and use low-tech visuals (like a coach in the locker room at half-time).

We need to transform public worship from a weekly show or lecture to a weekly experience of group spiritual formation.

Far more important than building a great sermon is training to become the kind of person who speaks all of our words in front of God.  Become a person who always speaks either to God or in his presence - never in his absence.

Ask yourself, "Does this message have the elements of an EPIC worship service: Experience, Participation, Imagery, Connection?"

A Christian sermon always gets to the New Testament somehow. (If you could preach it in a synagogue, it's not a Christian sermon.)

In studying a passage, ask 3 questions:

The 4 S’s of a good talk: Simple, Scripture, Stories, Short.

Be sure you know exactly what response you want and plan for that?

More questions to ask as you prepare:

Where is my target this particular Sunday? Is it:

How to listen to great preachers: Don’t apply what you first notice in a great preacher, because that is usually their very special gift and you probably can’t mimic it if you try. There’s seldom any way to emulate their primary gift, but look at their “craftsmanship.” That you can learn from.  

Inductive – Deductive preaching

When Jesus talked to crowds or with people likely to disagree with him he generally used an inductive style. When he talked with his disciples, who recognized (at least) more of who he was, then he became more like a teacher and he used a deductive style. Throughout the Bible we see God using both styles, both stories, and inductive techniques and expository/deductive techniques. We do well to vary our style, too.

Inductive preaching

Deductive preaching


Haddon Robinson tips

What’s the BIG IDEA of the message? (People don’t remember outlines, but they might remember the single big idea). Characteristics of the big idea:

Two questions to discover what the biblical writer means:

Here’s an example: “The baptism of the Holy Spirit means if you belong to Jesus Christ, you belong to everyone else who belongs to Jesus Christ.”

SUBJECT: The baptism of the Holy Spirit

COMPLEMENT: ... if you belong to Jesus Christ, you belong to everyone else who belongs to Jesus Christ.

The Bible is a book of ideas. There are only 8-9 really “great” ideas in Scripture, but I never heard what Haddon Robinson considered were those great ideas. This prompted me to gather the New Life preaching team and develop our own list. This is captured in the sermon series: The 10 Big Ideas of Christian Faith.


Rob Bell tips

These notes came from Bell's "Creating an Experience" presentation at the Willow Creek Association 2003 Preaching Conference.

Start with the text, then ask yourself "What does God want to unleash from this text to our congregation?"

Sometimes Bell has 3 apparently separate teachings going at the same time, which finally come together at the very end.

Dig deep into the historical context. People need to know that the Bible is about real people and real times, just like the real people and real times that we live in. It is not a story about people in a different world. It is a story about people in a world just like we are in. Two examples:

Experiential dimension – make it hard for parishioners to just be spectators. Look for ways for them to experience the message from the moment they come into the worship area. What can you have them do, say, feel, etc? Engage them at different levels. Consider yourself an artist with all these dimensions available. Examples:

Use silence. You don’t have to talk the whole time to be preaching. We have mystery on our side.  The very nature of truth is that it brings up deeper questions. Beware of trite answers that sound final. 

What if your preaching was so a part of you that it was like telling about your wedding day, or about your kids, or some story you just tell? The harder you work on preparation the more it is likely to become a part of you. Then let it flow.

We don’t need people who sing the notes off the charts, we need soul singers. 

We need people who can’t wait to worship or they’ll explode. 

Drummers set the rhythm for songs. Rhythm is a reflection of how God made the world.  If the drummer is off, the whole song is off. If our life rhythm is off, our whole life is off. God made the world in 6 days, then he rested 1. 


Eugene Lowrey's The Homiletical Plot

Lowrey's book offers an intriguing form of inductive preaching. My experience is that preaching material does not often lend itself to this form, but when you can package your material in this style it is really effective. And it is a really fun way to preach. Look for some opportunities to try this approach.

Good sermons are like the old TV detective series "Columbo." Viewers knew at the outset who did the crime, but we watched to see how Columbo would figure it out. Our parishioners know at the outset of our sermons that somehow the answer will be Jesus, but they follow us because they want to see how we get to Jesus.  


The Heath brothers Made to Stick

These ideas are from the book Made to Stick (Random House) by the Heath brothers. It is a business book about how to communicate so that ideas stick in the minds of listeners. 

Blessings, Tim