The One Big Idea
We preachers are indebted to Professor Haddon Robinson for insisting that we ask, “What’s the big idea?” about our sermon.
One. Big. Idea.
Not three ideas. Not five principles. Not a comprehensive overview of the entire book of Romans. One idea that your congregation can remember on Monday morning when they’re sitting in traffic or standing at the breakroom coffee pot.
If you can’t state your big idea in a single sentence, you don’t have one yet. Keep working.
When “Boring” Might Be Necessary
I’m not saying you should never bore parts of your audience. A child is bored with instructions on how to drive a car, but the typical 15-year-old may absorb every word. A teenager may tune out talk of retirement planning, but the 60-year-olds will hang on every detail.
Context matters. Background sometimes matters. Explanation sometimes matters.
But—and this is critical—you cannot use “it’s necessary” as an excuse for lazy communication.
If background is necessary, make it as brief and clear as possible. Find the vivid detail that brings it to life. Don’t read from your research notes. Don’t include every fact you learned. Distill it down to the one thing they actually need to know to understand your point.
Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin once quoted her mentor Barbara Tuchman on writing methodology: “Research a while, then stop and write. Research more, then write more. If you wait until you’ve done all the research, you’re swamped by information and have no idea where to begin.”
The same is true for preaching. If you try to include all your research in the sermon, you’re not teaching—you’re drowning your congregation in data.
The Hard Truth Nobody Wants to Hear
Sometimes preaching is boring because the preacher hasn’t done the work.
Not the research work—you did plenty of that. The hard work. The work of:
- Cutting what doesn’t serve the main idea
- Finding the question people are actually asking
- Making abstract truth concrete and urgent
- Removing every word that doesn’t earn its place
- Preaching the sermon to yourself first and asking if it changes anything
It’s easier to ramble through your notes than to craft a sermon so sharp it cuts.
It’s easier to include everything you learned than to choose the one thing that matters most.
It’s easier to talk about the text than to let the text do what it was meant to do: comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.
But easy preaching makes for sleepy congregations. And sleepy congregations don’t change the world.
