For years now my kids and I have used baseball hitting as a metaphor for preaching success. When we hear a sermon we will discuss whether the preacher struck out, hit a single, double, triple, or a home run. While we never had strict criteria for evaluating a sermon’s success, in what follows I suggest some possibilities.
Truth
For a sermon to be a single, it needs to be true. A sermon cannot reach first base if the main point of the sermon and its central corollaries are not all true statements. I say the main point and central corollaries because it’s rare to hear a sermon in which some minor comment that is untrue isn’t said, usually it’s some kind of an overstatement. A preacher may get some statistics wrong, or have the problem I often seem to have with getting calculations correct. Such mistakes are bad enough, but a surprising number of sermons have main themes or central points that are false. Some preachers herald a health and wealth gospel; some preachers state, in effect, that you need to work your way into God’s good graces; some preachers tell you that you can improve yourself by trying harder.
Biblical
If a sermon gets to first base, it will get no further if it is not biblical. The Bible doesn’t teach every truth, it has very little on quantum mechanics or even on how to drive a car. A sermon can be true without saying something that is taught in the Bible. One common example of this occurs when a preacher spends a whole sermon explain something that is really pop psychology, and may be true enough, yet doesn’t announce any revealed truths at all. Or a preacher takes some effort retelling a Bible story, and then draws some comparison between the main characters and people today. No doubt this can be done so that nothing false is said–no doubt it’s true we need to have more courage like David did when we confront the Goliaths in our lives. Yet such moral truths are thin gruel for people who have come for a real meal. A sermon which is not biblical never gets to second base.
Textual
To get to third base, a sermon needs not only to be true and biblical, it must also be textual. This is not exactly the same as being biblical. A biblical sermon simply needs to be something revealed somewhere in the bible, to be textual a sermon has to express truths revealed in the text on which the sermon is based.
Relevant
Finally, to be a home run a sermon needs to be true, biblical, textual, and relevant. Some sermons are very good at explaining theological, spiritual, or moral truths without ever showing how such truths make any difference in the life of anyone. Such sermons languish on third base. Home run sermons always have some clear and specific applications showing how the textual truths uncovered can and should affect the real lives of those who hear it. A sermon should include how this word from the Lord matters, for example, to a teenage boy, or a stay at home mom, or a retired widower.
No preacher hits all home runs. Still, like Babe Ruth, a preacher ought always to aim for the fences.
The renewal of preaching
by Richard Lischer*
“The renewal of preaching will not begin with a new form or style of the sermon. It never has. The poet says, ‘I gave up fire for form till I was cold.’ No, not form. In fact, renewal will not begin with the sermon at all. It begins with those who make sermons. The first step in the recovery of preaching is the renewal of our faith in the priority of Jesus Christ and the priority of his language toward the world. In Luke’s account of the confusion at Pentecost (Acts 2), he does not tell us that the Holy Spirit created only one language or that there had ever only been one language of faith. ‘Each one heard them speaking in his [or her] own language’ (Acts 2:6). The miracle of Pentecost is that there is one Lord surrounded by many languages and world-views, who cannot be translated away. He must be restored to the center of our theology and church life.
“This recentering also takes place by means of language, but not the language of homiletics. Where do sermons come from? They come from prayer, worship, and the daily witness of ordinary Christians. We will not fix preaching by tinkering with our sermons by relearning the distinctive language of the church’s faith.
“It begins and ends in self-abandonment to the word of God.”
*Taken from Richard Lischer, “The Interrupted Sermon,” Interpretation 50 (1996): 179-180.
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