»	Timetable Semester 2
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»	31/7- Time to Turn off the Respirator?
»	23/7- A Word-Centred Life
»	15/7- The Legacy of Whitefield
»	23/6- Ordering your Private World
»	15/6- The Worldview Clash
»	10/6- Set your leaders free
»	31/5- These Inward Trials
»	27/5- The Surrendered Life
»	19/5- How not to do church
»	13/5- Leaving Christ: A Christian Epidemic
»	28/4- Knowing the Holy Spirit
»	23/4- Knowing Christ

The Shape of the Sermon

words by donald sunukjian in 'preaching to a shifting culture' (2004, baker , p113-128)

Preaching in the twenty first century provides opportunities for the preacher to shape sermons that reflect the text and are appropriate for the listener. As you finish your preparatory study, and are ready to shape your sermon, you have three basic elements or building blocks to work with:

1- the biblical author’s flow of thought

2- the single sentence which states the message in a nutshell

3- the relevant points of contact with your contemporary audience

Using these three elements, the final shape of your sermon will emerge as you answer two major questions:

1) Where will I place the single sentence?

2) Where will I place the contemporary relevance?

The Biblical Author’s Flow of Thought

From your exegetical study, you determine the biblical author’s flow of thought- the progression of ideas he is developing. Your sermon should retain his natural sequence of concepts, rather than rearrange them into some arbitrary list of points. The biblical author has a flow of thought he is trying to get across, with major statements or emphases, and minor supporting phrases. His concepts can be formed into an outline to show how his thinking progresses. This flow of thought should form the basic structure of our final sermon. Only as we present the same flow of ideas can we have confidence that we are preaching the “word of the Lord”.

The Single Sentence

Through his flow of ideas, the biblical author is communicating one large concept, one dominant idea, which can be expressed in a single sentence. This single sentence becomes our listener’s “take home truth.” You form the single take-home sentence by putting together “what you are talking about” and “what you are saying about it”. Another way of coming up with the single sentence is to determine from the author’s flow of thought “what question is he addressing” and “what answer is he giving?”.

The Relevant Points of Contact

The way to determine how the author’s flow of thought and Central Truth connect to your listeners is to ask, “What does this look like in our day? How does it show up in our contemporary situations? Where do we see it in our our day to day situations? ” The italicized words help us to focus on the real lives of our listeners and to come up with “pictures”- concrete instances, visual images, specific situations. These “pictures” can be current or past examples, or they can be anticipated situations that might realistically occur.

Where will I place the Single Sentence?

Once you have determined these three basic building blocks- you are ready to decide the first major question: Where will I place the single sentence in the flow of the sermon? Your answer to this question will produce an overall shape to the sermon that is either “deductive” or “indictive”. If you decide to place the single sentence in the Introduction, then you will create a “deductive” sermon- giving the take home truth within a few minutes of beginning the message. The main points then show how that truth is developed in the text. Conversely, if you only bring up the topic/question in the introduction- what you will talk about- but do not say what you are going to say about it, you have started an inductive sermon. The Central Truth will emerge later in the message, as the main points progress towards it.

Where will I place the contemporary relevance?

The final issue to be decided is: Where in the flow of the sermon will I make the connections with contemporary life? You might make them at the end of the message, after the entire biblical material has been developed without interruption for contemporary comment. This approach works best when the biblical author’s individual hunks or outline movements don’t seem to have any separate or particular connection to contemporary life; only his central truth comes across the centuries.

You might intersperse the unfolding relevancy throughout the message. This approach works well when a contemporary application can successively unfold in tandem with the individual biblical units.

You might wrap the contemporary situations around the biblical material. In visual form, this approach looks something like: Here is a problem we have today (relevance), They had a similar problem (Bible), Here is how they solved it (Bible), We should solve our problem in a similar manner (relevance).

Conclusion

By understanding the author’s flow of thought, being able to put the message in a nutshell, and by having relevant points of contact with the contemporary audience, the preacher has the building blocks for a good, clear sermon. In addition, by asking the questions, “Where will I place the single sentence?”, and “Where will I place the contemporary relevance?” the preacher is able to vary sermon shapes as he speaks to the men and women of the twenty-first century.