Experimenting With Preaching
Preachers sometimes joke that sermons are “three points and a poem.” That is an exaggeration but we can easily get into a rut.
I will confess that I prefer a teaching model, where I exegete the text and present and an application that arises from the text. Expository sermons should be the cornerstone of our preaching.
But that doesn’t mean that we can’t experiment once in a while. At a previous church, I used to blend drama and preaching together. It was a lot of fun.
While I wouldn’t want to do that on a weekly basis, I recently experimented by preaching a dramatic monologue. My passage was the betrayal by Judas and the cutting off of the high priest’s servant’s ear.
You can find the text and video for my sermon here.
Was this even a sermon? Sure it was. I did the research on the text. I picked out contextual issues. I stayed closely with the text. In fact, notice that I don’t identify myself as Peter, even though John 18:10 says it was Peter because Luke never says it.
I won’t do this every week, but it was nice to do it this time. I got a good response from people in my congregation. They were engaged and they seemed to get the message of the text.
In what ways have you experimented with preaching?
