Ep 12: How Do I Decide What to Preach?

Every week, preachers sit down to prepare a sermon. And every week, many of them start in the wrong place.

They open a commentary before they've asked the most important question: Who is actually sitting in front of me on Sunday?

In this episode, Dr Jonathan McClintock walks through a framework drawn from Calvin Miller's insight that the Sunday service is a gathering of troubles — a room full of people moving through private fog, reaching for God-words that might stop the hemorrhaging of their souls. The question isn't just what to preach. It's whether you've done the work to know who you're preaching to.

Three questions every preacher needs to answer before choosing a text:

1. Who is my audience? No public speaker faces the emotional breadth a pastor faces every single Sunday. Every hearer brings needs. The impact of your sermon depends on how well you've diagnosed the room. You're armed with a Bible full of band-aids — but diagnosis has to come before treatment.

2. What am I feeling in prayer? The Spirit's prompt in a preacher's quiet is worth more than an hour in the commentary stack. Before you sit down to study, sit down to pray. Ask three questions: Is this text for me? Is it for my congregation? Or is it for both of us?

3. What am I presently reading? If you are not reading, you have no business preaching. You cannot continually give out what you have not put in. And when you do read — let the Bible drive. Don't look for a passage to support your great thought. Let your great thought support the Bible.

Transcript

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How do I decide what to preach? Well, there's three questions every preacher needs to answer before choosing a text. Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Clear Preaching Podcast. I'm Jonathan McClintock, and today we're going to look at answering a question that many people have. I've heard this question often. I've answered it many times in preaching classes that I've taught. And it's a simple question, but it's one that many struggle with from time to time. And it's how do I determine what to preach? The Bible is full of texts, full of amazing truth that needs to be spoken, needs to be preached. In fact, Paul talks about the need to preach the whole counsel of God. Well, that's a daunting task. So where do I start this Sunday? How do I decide what to preach? No, Calvin Miller wrote in his book on preaching, he wrote about the Sunday service being a gathering of troubles. He said half of those who enter the church are moving in a privatized fog of their own ills. They are wounded, reaching out to snare the God words that fly at them between 11 and 12 o'clock. So the question we need to start with isn't just what to preach. The question really is, first of all, who you're preaching to. So I want to look at three questions real simply today. Three questions really before choosing a text, before deciding what to preach. First question is to ask yourself is who is my audience? You really need to exegete the pew before you exegete a text. Who am I preaching to? Who am I going to be addressing? Who is my audience? Now, as a pastor, might be easier to answer than maybe someone that is preaching at a church or an event that's filled with all types of different people that you may not even know. Whereas a pastor who has a congregation they preach to week in and week out, this might be a simpler question to ask. However, the makeup of your audience and who is in there can determine how you build that sermon out. So, first question, who's my audience? Second question I want you to ask yourself is what am I feeling in prayer? Prayer and preaching go hand in hand. You really shouldn't be preaching if you're not praying. I think we know that intuitively, but at times we'll get so busy with life that we won't even stop to pray. We just get in mode of sermon preparation. So, what am I feeling in prayer? Listening to the Spirit's prompting in the quietness of the preacher's heart. What am I feeling in prayer? So who's my audience? What am I feeling in prayer? And the third question you need to ask yourself is what am I presently reading? Because honestly, you cannot give out what you haven't put in. So, yes, this could be books and things that you have written that might have sparked ideas to search the scriptures to preach about. But most of the time, you need to ask yourself, where have I been reading in scripture? What have I been studying in scripture? Where have I been spending a lot of time in scripture lately? Because what the Spirit will squeeze out of you and pull out of you to preach is going to come from a place where you have spent a lot of time in reading and study and preparation. So let's take a couple minutes on each one of these questions and dig a little bit deeper. First of all, who is my audience? Now, really, no public speaker other than a pastor is ever called upon to speak to such wide emotional needs and maturity levels. If you are called to, uh if you're going to go speak to a group of sixth graders at a middle school somewhere, I mean, everybody there, either male or female, but they're in the sixth grade. The majority of them have a similar intellectual level. They've had similar classes that have brought them to this point. They're all coming from a similar place. So you don't have a wide range there. Whereas a church, you are standing at a pulpit reading from the Word of God and trying to declare that truth from God's word to reach an elderly couple that's in their early 80s. You're speaking to an 18-year-old recent high school graduate. You are talking to a young married couple that's been married four years and they're expecting their second child. You're talking to a 10-year-old who is just beginning to awaken in their spirituality. They're beginning to explore, okay, church is more than just coming and being with my friends. They begin to realize the reality of spiritual things. And it will go on and on and on. The divorced individual that was married for 25 years, and all of a sudden the marriage fell apart, and they're sitting back there halfway back on the right hand side. You're talking to a widow who just lost her husband of 45 years, and she's sitting there trying to power through and knowing she needs to be in the house of God because that's where her strength is founded. All these, you're trying to preach to all these varied emotional needs, maturity levels, spiritual growth, spiritual maturity levels. And so what an incredible challenge it is to speak to all these, but understanding who your audience is. The impact of the sermon depends on how well the preacher has diagnosed the audience. You are armed with this Bible full of band-aids, one author put it. And the question is whether you know where it hurts. Do you know where it hurts for those people sitting out there in the pews? All the varied experiences and where their minds are on that day. Many of it you might not fully understand, but we've got to exegete our audience and understand our audience so that we know where to apply God's word to the best of our ability. Now the rest of it will be up to the Spirit, but we have a role to play as preachers, and how do we diagnose our audience? That's going to play a major role in how well they receive the message, how well they understand the message, and how well the message is delivered to that audience. What does your congregation actually look like? What do they believe? Ask these questions. What do they believe? Many of them. The varied level of scriptural literacy, biblical literacy varies. I remember growing up and as a child, remember knowing so many Bible stories, and I spent time in memorizing scripture, and I the way I was raised, and even the children's ministry I was in, and then the youth group I graduated into. There were so many things that I understood and knew, and it wasn't because of me, it was because of what others taught me. And I knew some things that that sometimes, in many instances, in many congregations, kids and young people that age I was then, that they are now, that being that age now in church and kids' ministry and youth ministry, they don't know the same things. The biblical literacy has drastically dropped over the last several decades. And so understanding what people believe and what people know, what do they know about God, most of them know very little. Most of them, especially if you've got a congregation full of unchurched people who have not grown up around the church, and for that matter, some that have grown up around the church, they they know very little. And the challenge is helping these people come to terms with a God who requires something of them, is calling them to believe and act and live in a certain way. So, what do they believe and what do they know about God? And what are they actually wanting? What are their needs to diagnose this is so very important in order to effectively preach to the congregation sitting out there? It's very important we understand who our audience is. So, answer the question, think about the question. Who is my audience? Who's sitting out there as I'm preaching from this passage? How do I deliver this to that person sitting on the fourth row out there who is going through this particular thing or who has this experience or lack of experience in the church or what they're dealing with presently right now? Thinking through our audience and how do we address them with that text and that truth. Secondly, ask yourself, what are you feeling in prayer? Taking that audience that you are been thinking about and praying for that audience. I believe that, see, God, you know this. God knows who's going to be there this coming Sunday, the Sunday you're preparing for. God knows who's going to be there. God knows the intricacies of their lives. He knows the mindset they're going to be in. He knows the emotional state they're going to be in, and he knows the burdens they're going to be carrying and dragging in with them. You don't know that. We need the Spirit's help. We need illumination. We need understanding. So praying for the audience. And God, you know who's going to be there. Help me to craft this and prepare, lead me in my preparation so that what I write down in these notes today will resonate on Sunday. Praying for the audience, meditating on scripture while in prayer, taking that text to prayer. What are you feeling in prayer? Listening for the Spirit's prompt. These questions. You know, there's another question really to think through when you're praying about the audience and praying about the passage and praying about the message. You need to ask yourself, is this when you get an idea, when you get a thought, when God begins to things begin to kind of stir up in you, is this for me? Is this for the audience? Or is this for both of us? I don't want to get too far off into a tangent here, but there are times I have begun feeling and exploring a passage and begin praying, uh preparing things. And then as I was preparing, I was realizing, you know what, this is really just a personal thing with me and God right now. God's working on me in this, and this isn't for me to preach just yet. Uh I need to really internalize this. And God's this is for me. And I've had to set some things aside as far as sermon preparation and say, you know what, I need to take that again later on today in prayer or tomorrow in my devotion. I need to take that and really search that out. What's God teaching me here? And could possibly then eventually become a message that I'm to preach, but right now that's that's for me. And then there's other times where I'm not, I'm not necessarily feeling a specific passage for me personally, but the Spirit's showing me this is what you need to preach. This is for your audience, where they're going to be, where the people in the audience are going to be. And so I realize it's for the audience. It's not necessarily just for me, although, you know, the power of the preached word, it's going to obviously affect me as the as the purveyor of that word, as the communicator of that word, but it's for the audience. And then there's going to be those moments where it is for both. God hasn't quite done this in me just yet. He's working on me, but he's prompting me, okay, you might not have this down just yet, Jonathan, but I want you to preach this at the church too. God does that work in me and in the church at the same time. So there will be times it's for me. Set it aside, work on that until it's ready. And then there'll be times it's for the audience, the congregation. So preach that, whether you're feeling that deeply, that it's for you or not. And there's gonna be those moments where it's for both of you. There's those sermons that I know there are times we feel like as preachers, we realize, we understand we're we're weak in this area. We're not quite there in this area. How can I preach that message when God's still working on me? How can I struggling with my faith right now? How can I preach God's a healer and I'm struggling with this? There are going to be those very raw times and very challenging times for us as preachers when we've got to preach because it's true, when yet inside we're struggling. Now, sometimes those are moments for us to take a step back and realize okay, God is brewing something in me that's not quite ready to preach, and I need to make sure it's ready before I preach that. And God's calling me to, okay, set that aside. I'm going to work on that in you before you preach it. But there's going to be those times where the audience needs you to step up as the preacher and preach faith, even when you're like the man in scripture that says, Lord, I believe it helped my unbelief. And sometimes practical honesty here goes a long way. Sometimes we can we can express, you know what, I'm not quite there yet. But I have believed this word all my life, and every time I stake myself on this word and to this word, God comes through. He always backs up his word. So there are going to be those moments we've got to preach it. It's for either for us or it's for the people or it's for both of us. So who is my audience? Need to exegete your audience before you exegete the text. Know the needs, the mindsets, the wants, the things the audience is going through. What are you feeling in prayer? Bathing that message from the very beginning, even when you haven't even found the text yet. God, lead me, direct me, and then that whole process, bathe in prayer. The thirdly, the last thing is what am I presently reading? If you're not reading, an elder preacher told me this years ago, if you're not reading, you have no business preaching. You cannot continually give out if you are not putting in. And again, yes, there are there are those topical messages that you're gonna receive inspiration from uh a book you've been reading, other than the Bible. A Christian book, even maybe even a biography, you're gonna read about a president and something that was said, and you're gonna have this idea come to you. Yeah, that that could be a message. I need to go, I need to go see what scripture says about this. There are those times, of course, if you listen to me long enough, you know my preference is that I'm first looking at what I'm presently reading in scripture, what has been uh I I want I want to derive it as much from scripture as possible. So that's kind of the angle I'm taking. So what are you pre- What have you been spending a lot of time in? Where have you been spending a lot of time in scripture? Where have you been digging and mining truth? And where has the Spirit been speaking to you? Where have you been spending a lot of time in Scripture? Oftentimes our messages will come from that and from that direction. So promptings that you'll receive during your devotional times, thoughts that will come to your mind as you are reading and studying the scripture. Let the Bible drive you. In most instances, the wrong direction is you have a great thought, and then you go to the Bible, you go looking for a Bible passage to support it. And if we're not careful in those instances, the text becomes decoration for your idea more than driving your idea. Really, the right direction we want to lean most often is a passage or a truth captures you in your reading. And while you're a passage of scripture captures you while you're reading, while you're praying, and then your great thought is drawn out by what the text is already saying, and then the text stays in charge. That's the ideal where we let the text drive our preaching, not our great ideas that we got from a billboard, and then we go try to superimpose and read into the text. Now, I'm not saying that can't be done. I'm not saying that a great thought cannot be gotten outside of scripture, and then, oh, you know what? There's something that rings true because that's very biblical, and then we go find the Bible to say that. There's just a danger there if we're not careful, and if that's the way we always do it, then there are going to be times that we are going to force the scripture to say something it doesn't say. Now, if we just do it from time to time and it's not our every week practice, there are great thoughts we can receive outside the text that we know intuitive. That's very biblical. I want to find scripture that talks about that, and then we put the Bible in the driver's seat, let the Bible drive. The ideal is receiving ideas and thoughts during our Bible reading and our devotions and letting the text drive the idea, let the text drive the thought, let the text craft the thought for us. So my caution is don't look for the Bible to support your great thought, let your great thought support the Bible. All right. So the preacher who diagnoses well and steps into the text and the preparation of the sermon well is the one who has been able to answer these three questions before you open a commentary, before you even begin building that outline, before you get too far in the prep process, ask yourself these and answer these questions. Who's my audience? You want to know who's in the room. You want to know where the pain points are. You don't want to you want to know with all these band-aids you have access to in the Bible. You want to diagnose as much as possible what's going on in the audience so that you can craft the message from that text in a way that reaches them best. Who's my audience? What am I feeling in prayer? Sit in prayer before you sit and study. Sit in prayer before you sit and study. The spirit's prompt in that quiet place of the preacher is worth more than an hour in a stack of commentaries. So sit in prayer. And then thirdly, what have you been reading? I believe that the preacher who walks in the spirit and lives to hear the voice of the Spirit, directed by the Spirit, will be led in daily devotion, will be led in reading plans, will be read in what they dig into in Scripture. Read widely, read deeply, and let the text drive. I believe you need to read widely, even outside of scripture, read biographies, read, read all kinds of different books. But even in scripture, read widely. I know many of you automatically we automatically turn to Psalms. We're reading Psalms for devotion. Turn to Proverbs, reading Proverbs, we go to Acts, we go to a gospel, we go to an epistle. What about the minor prophets? And what about the Torah? And what about Revelation? And what about some of those books that we tend to avoid? Read widely, read deeply, and let the text drive. A preacher who is reading has something to give. A preacher who has stopped reading is borrowing on yesterday's supply. So there are puceers trying to remain anonymous in your church, and yet they cry out hey, look, I'm here, I'm bleeding. So we need to know our audience. We need to understand where the pain points are, pray for them, read widely, and preach accordingly. And when we do, God is going to help us reach the audience to whom He's called us to preach. Have a great week. God bless.