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2007-11-20 issue:

How to prevent death by sermon

by John Longhurst

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The sermon may not be dead, but that doesn’t mean a poorly delivered one won’t bore a congregation to death. How can preachers prevent death by sermon?

Sharon Bowman, author of the book Preventing Death by Lecture, says that if adults are asked to sit and listen to a lecture for more than seven minutes, “their minds begin to drift.” Her solution? Speakers should break their presentations into seven-minute segments. In between segments, they should move about the stage, ask questions of the audience, write a key message or thought on a blackboard or flip chart, tell a story or a joke, show a picture, get people to stand up and stretch—anything to keep them engaged.

In an article in The Salvationist titled “How to Prevent Death by Sermon,” Kim Garreffa writes about one pastor who found a novel way to illustrate the idea of Christ as the bread of life. Before church started, he placed bread machines throughout the sanctuary, timing them to bake loaves of bread during the service. While he spoke, the aroma of fresh bread wafted throughout the congregation; at the end of the service, the members used the bread for Communion.

“Although this congregation had participated in Communion many times before, guess which service they never forgot?” she writes, noting that the aroma of freshly baked bread still reminds her of that sermon.

At another church, Garreffa says people were handed pieces of charcoal and told to hold them throughout the service. “As the service progressed, our hands became black. Eventually we were led in a devotional on sin and confession that related the contamination of our hands to the contamination of sin in our hearts. We then practiced a time of confession by laying our charcoal at the base of a cross and washing our hands in bowls provided for us. Six months later I can still vividly recall that service.”

Chad Moir is a Lutheran pastor starting a new ministry to young adults in Saskatoon. He is incorporating lessons he learned in previous churches, where he sometimes left the pulpit to walk among the congregation or invite them to ask questions during the sermon.

“They could ask questions or ask me to clarify things I said,” he recalls, adding that it wasn’t easy. “It took effort to get out of my comfort zone,” he says.

Moir may be on to something: Research suggests that people remember less of what they hear but most of what they are able to participate in. Or, as an old saying puts it: “I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.”

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