If you are a preacher of long standing, I wonder how your experience compares with mine? When Methodism gave me a note to preach over 40 years ago, my only formal support and advice on the craft of sermon writing came from the Superintendent Minister as he read through my first attempt (which if I spoke slowly, lasted about 10 minutes). He commented that originality of thought was likely to be hard to come by. For the past 35 years as an accredited Local Preacher, I have been proving him right.

Eleven years after being admitted as a Local Preacher, a friend who had failed the new Worship and Preaching exam asked me to help her prepare for a re-sit. I had to stay a chapter ahead of her in the text book. She passed – and in a curious kind of way, so did I. That friendly help also led to my appointment as Circuit Tutor and that’s how Methodism has kept training and developing me as a preacher ever since. Without that exposure to initial training of Local Preachers, I could easily have stayed with what had come to feel comfortable in the way of sermon preparation.

The latest version of ‘Faith & Worship’ offers very helpful initial training on the craft of sermon writing, but close encounter with tutoring and assessment of the training programme (and even closer encounter with my own sermon preparation) has shown me just how difficult it is follow one basic guideline from Unit 2: ‘…express the aim of your sermon in the following form: “To explore X in order to do Y”.

Let’s deal with ‘exploring X’ first. This part seems to come fairly easily to most preachers, particularly when we use the lectionary. Although many of us played ‘hunt the link’ with an earlier lectionary as we struggled to find common ground between readings, the present lectionary invites us just to use any one of the set readings as part of our sermon preparation. The Holy Spirit may lead us to preach on a different Bible passage or about a contemporary issue. Whichever route we take, what we preach on is not so difficult to decide (or have decided for us).

If someone asks a congregation what we’ve preached about, they are likely to give a fairly accurate response. Ask them why we’ve preached about it and the response can be less clear. I suggest that one reason for this ambiguity stems from preachers (myself included) not being clear about the purpose of a sermon – exploring X ‘in order to do Y’. Only on rare occasions have I been up-front with a congregation about a sermon’s aim. My experience in the pew is that many preachers either expect an aim to emerge during the sermon, or invite congregations to work out for themselves what the aim of a sermon might have been.

‘Faith and Worship’ Unit 2 suggests that the aim of a sermon could be to challenge, to comfort, to explain, to convert, to reprove, to encourage or to teach. It’s possible for us to prefer one or more of these aims for our sermons and to underplay some of the others. For example, I don’t think I’ve done much in the way of reproving. In my time I’ve been exposed to sermons that bring me up sharp or that suggest I should try harder. I suppose I’ve been wary of taking what could be seen as high moral ground when in reality I’m probably at sea level. Reflecting on my own practice of sermon preparation for this article makes me realise that I can choose the kinds of aims for a sermon that I feel comfortable with and can also find reasons why I avoid some other aims. Is this true for you too?

Recently in ‘Ichthus’, I commended a book on sermon preparation published by Cliff College. It was called ‘Learning to preach today’. In it, Achim Hartner and Holger Eschmann offer several types of sermon: pastoral, evangelistic, prophetic and teaching. This is a shorter list than ‘Faith & Worship’ but the book suggests very similar aims. It’s worth reading the book in full, but here is my attempt at a brief summary of reasons why preachers might choose to preach a particular type of sermon:

Pastoral sermon
Why?   
…to assure
…to convey a sense of security
…to comfort

Evangelistic sermon
Why?       
…to invite a response to God’s love and salvation
…to generate faith
…to encourage commitment

Prophetic sermon
Why?       
…to call or confront people so that they consider, change and act

Teaching sermon
Why?
…to strengthen understanding
…to equip people to share their faith and hope

With a little guide like this, it becomes much easier to describe for ourselves the aim of a sermon. For example, I’m exploring the parable of the Prodigal Son in order to… well, which would you choose (from the list in the box) for a congregation near you?

Let’s not get hung up about which comes first – content or aim. I remember being trained to become a teacher. Each lesson plan had to be presented first with aim and objectives before any description of what the activities in the lesson would be. As students we quickly learned to do everything the other way round. Activities were easier to devise. Once we’d done that, we’d find something appropriate as an aim that would satisfy our lecturer. Eventually, as we got the hang of what we were doing (and we knew the young people we were planning lessons for), the aim and content – why and what ­– came together fairly naturally. At last, we were doing what was best, not because regulations said so, but because it was sensible and it had become second nature to us.

There are no regulations about sermon aims, but there could be parallels between lesson plans and sermon preparation.

Also, let’s not get hung up about whether to announce a sermon’s aim to a congregation. From time to time, it might be a good idea. What really matters is that a congregation can identify the kind of purpose a sermon is serving. We need to make clear that a sermon is seeking to challenge or comfort or encourage or explain etc – preferably just one rather than several or many! The key is to have a sermon aim that is appropriate for a congregation at that particular point in time. When we do that, we avoid aimless sermons and we fulfil our calling as preachers.

So, what has been the aim of this article? Well, I hope it’s not been to reprove! Even if there has been some scope for challenge, I hope it has been encouraging – because that was my aim. After all, I myself need encouragement to continue to develop as a preacher…

Peter Relf is a Local Preacher in the Mansfield Circuit