Five Ways to Immediately Improve Your Preaching

hey what's up everybody what's up YouTube pastor Matt here hey today I want to do a very short video about five ways that you can immediately improve your preaching I know that there's a lot of men that subscribe to this channel mostly men in fact subscribe to this channel probably because of the ministry preaching Bible theology focused not saying women aren't interested in those things that I do happen to have a lot of young men that follow the channel and are pastors themselves so I wanted to talk today very quickly about a few things you can do to immediately improve your preaching let me jump into to number one be a book expositor be the kind of preacher that expose it's books of the Bible start with a book Galatians or Psalms or Song of Solomon or Romans and be a bible expositor working through books of the Bible section by section paragraph by paragraph line by line word by word and I promise you will that you will immediately be a more interesting preacher than you were before now I know there's a lot of guys out there that Andy Stanley's of the world that do and lots of other guys that do series based stuff series on family series on money series on giving whatever it is and there are there is a limited use for those things but be a bible expositor the bible is more interesting than anything that you have to say and not only that but working through books of the bible chapter by chapter paragraph by paragraph is gonna force you to deal with some of the things that you don't want to deal with and believe it or not those are actually some of the most important and interesting things that the bible has to say when you work through the difficulties of scripture rather than jumping over them to the three or four or five concepts that you know very well you're gonna force yourself deeper into the text and that is going to be richly rewarding for your preaching so be a through entire books of the bible expository preacher don't be a series guy series is every once in a while but most of the time exposition number two write out your sermon completely in manuscript form and then when you get into the pulpit ditch it and speak from the heart now that may sound like a paradox in it in a contradiction you but both of those practices are very worthwhile first of all writing out your entire sermon in manuscript form as you're preparing for it in the office will force you to study the text better than you would otherwise if you were to make yourself a simple outline you're going to find that when you get into the pulpit and you have a very bare skeletal outline the thing about the Trinity or whatever it is you probably haven't thought through it as well as you think you have now writing a full manuscript word by word write the whole thing out that's gonna force you to think in what's called a linear fashion or a lineal fashion where you're thinking through concepts preset by precept and you'll have a better idea of what you actually want to say when you get into the pulpit if you write it out thoroughly in manuscript form now the irony is when you get into the pulpit I say put the manuscript aside and speak from the heart you will have already prepared your thoughts in advance you know where you want to go you know your main doctrinal positions you know your main concepts you know which lines of Scripture you're gonna expose it so get out there and speak to the people from the heart you're gonna be a more winsome and intelligible speaker if you just get out there and speak what you have prepared so full manuscript and then lose the manuscript when you get into the pulpit third preach with your Bible open in your hand the whole time now if you watch me preaching on YouTube you'll notice that I carry my Bible around with me almost the entire time I'm preaching a sermon I don't always have it open flat open like this like I should but there's something that's both practically important and symbolically important when you preach with your Bible in your hand hopefully open throughout the sermon the practical significance is you are reminding yourself and you're reminding your people that what we're doing here is Bible teaching I'm not up here to give my political opinions or to entertain you I'm here to expose it the Word of God and so in as much as I have my Bible in my hand I am visibly reminding myself that my job is to get back to the text to preach the text and then symbolically it's important because you want your people to see what you're doing you want your people to get the idea that the reason you have your Bible in your hand as you're preaching from the pulpit area or for the chancel area or whatever you call it the platform the symbol of the open Bible speaks to the congregation that this is a Bible believing Bible teaching Church and believe it or not simply having your Bible with you as you preach is both practically and symbolically important to what you're doing as a Bible preacher okay next I know this is gonna be painful for some of you but drop the tech drop the tech stuff now I'm a guy that's spoken with PowerPoint behind me for a number of years and I'm beginning to move away from that process I used I used to have to have you know an image up behind me for whatever I was talking about if I did a illustration about a lost puppy I had to have a picture of a lost puppy up behind me you know the more I think about that the more I think that it actually detracts from the power of the spoken word and I am moving away from that and I still do it when I'm teaching concepts and I want to have a lot of scripture quotations on the screen on Wednesday nights but you know the the boomer generation thinks that stuff's pretty cool because it's new and they didn't have it when they were in school but if you talk to the Millennials today what they'll tell you is that it just reminds them of school and it looks like you're just the geography teacher up there gonna give another boring lesson so I would say this and a wise pastor told me this one time if you can't command the attention of your people by what you are saying with your mouth and by what you are exposing from God's Word then you are either not prepared to preach or you're not called to preach now don't you know don't take that out of context here I'm not saying if you use PowerPoint you're not called to be a preacher I'm just saying that there should be a gravitas there should be a weightiness there should be an importance a glory to what we are doing as expositors and we don't need the artificial stuff that comes with it we don't need the cool gadgets of the world now when I say drop the tech I have something else in mind besides just PowerPoint I've seen people preaching from their tablets quite a bit and there is sit there and they just scroll with their fingers and they comb through their outline and they'll speak a little bit and they'll just kind of scroll down they think as though the audience doesn't know what they're doing but we know we know we see what you're doing we all have tablets at home we know what you're doing with your hand they're on the pulpit you're scrolling through the tablet I find that utterly distracting and I would farm or rather simply have you using the paragraphs and the lines of the scriptures as your outline rather than working through your little technology there plus you know the reason I don't like technology and the pulpit to be honest as technology can fail you the last thing you ever want as a preacher is to get up there and to have your battery go dead on your iPad and then you're then then what then then you're really up the creek without a paddle as they say so ditch the text use the use the scripture speak from the heart speak powerfully and then finally this is the best thing you can do to to improve your sermons immediately is to quit imitating the preachers that you enjoy listening to you are not John Piper and neither am i you're not Mark Driscoll you're not David Platt you're not Tim Keller it is good to listen to a variety of preachers but the very moment we find ourselves imitating that preacher whether it's Matt Chandler or whoever else when we find ourselves imitating that person's cadence or their tone or the way they say things that's the moment we probably need to stop listening to that preacher you are not that guy you were a different guy you are a man that God has called to be in the pulpit and you be that person that is filled with the Spirit of God that has an infallible Holy Bible in your hand and has come ready and prepared to speak God's truth to the people on the Lord's Day all right well those are five things you can quickly do to immediately improve your preaching do all five of those and this Sunday you'll be a better preacher than you were last Sunday and thanks for checking in to this video what I'm going to do is post in the description of this video a bunch of sort of helped it inspired me in my preaching ministry I'm not the best preacher in the world that I'm not claiming to be but I have learned a few things in my time over the years and these are the some of the books in the description that have benefited me in my soul as I've endeavored to be a better preacher and expositor so check out the links in the description of this video and if this has been helpful to you please subscribe and/or share this video you don't have to but it'd be cool if you did thanks for checking in love you lots and we'll talk to you next time

Channel: Matthew Everhard

Views: 31,939

Rating: 4.9208574 out of 5

Keywords: Preaching, Preachers

Id: fxTJ_9s_lak

Length: 9min 22sec (562 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 04 2019