If you’re a preacher and/or a teacher, maybe one of these tips for sermon or lesson delivery will be helpful to you as you think toward next weekend’s preaching and teaching opportunities:
- Pray about your delivery as well as your content. Don’t let any part of the preaching or teaching event go uncovered without prayer. The enemy always looks for open doors to hinder the proclamation of the Word – and he’ll often distract others by your delivery more than by your content.
- Know your introduction and conclusion so well that you don’t need notes. When you’re drawing people into the preaching or teaching event and then later challenging them to respond personally, you need full eye contact with them.
- Learn to be comfortable with silence. I get that it’s uncomfortable, both for the preacher or teacher and the audience. It’s awkward. Nevertheless, effective pauses and even seemingly long silences accompanied by direct eye contact can force an audience to think more deeply about what they just heard.
- Depend on nothing but the Word and the Spirit. I’m not arguing here that we don’t use notes, audio-visual resources, or public testimonies as part of a sermon or lesson. When we depend on them to strengthen our preaching or teaching more than we depend on the Word and the Spirit, however, we’re in trouble.
- Learn from others, but don’t try to be them. I watch the mannerisms and styles of some of my favorite preachers and teachers, and I want to pick up some of their good habits. I’m not who they are, however, so it’s useless to try to be them in a different body. All of us have our own style, and that’s okay.
- Keep working on delivery. We develop new habits (both good and bad) over time. Our rate of speech sometimes changes as we get older. We unintentionally become too dependent on notes if other responsibilities consume our study time. If we never evaluate ourselves, though, we never improve.
- Know that the greatest public delivery doesn’t matter if you’re privately not walking with the Lord. Sure, you might still impress people with your ability and charisma, but we’re not called to magnify ourselves. Our calling is to lift up Jesus via the power of the Spirit of God—and that seldom happens through preachers or teachers whose private lives are decidedly different from their public persona.
What would you add to this list?