Home Pastors Preaching & Teaching Before You Preach, Nail Down the Answers to These Two Vital Questions

Before You Preach, Nail Down the Answers to These Two Vital Questions

To set a desired response, define ahead of time what it looks like to apply your message. If your objective is met, the response will complement it perfectly.

A desired response to it helps ensure that your listeners walk away from your sermon knowing exactly how they can apply the message to their lives.

Example desired responses: When people walk away from this sermon they will …

—take a step toward living in light of their identity in Christ.

—begin an intentional daily prayer time.

—understand God’s redemptive work in history and trust him with their future.

embrace how all of life points to Jesus and his redeeming work.

—study this passage further and apply it to their lives.

—begin giving financially to their local church.

Coming up with a desired response: I ask some questions of the sermon to decide on a desired response.

What would it look like to apply this text?

How would my life be different if I actually believed this?

What is the most important step to take to apply this message?

How does this message hit home in people’s lives?

How does this message challenge, convict, motivate or comfort people? 

Desired responses are flexible. God works on different people in different ways through the same message. So I am not disappointed if someone applies my message in a way other than I desired. There may be dozens of ways to apply a message.

The desired response is a preparation aid. If I know what my message could look like if someone put it on like a jacket and wore it out, then it helps me prepare with the end in mind.

For every sermon I preach, I nail down the objective and the desired response as part of my preparation process. This initial stage is accomplished in a team, which I wrote about in a three-part series on preaching teams.

Conclusion

The objective and desired response is mostly for you to know. I’m not suggesting you get up and say, “OK, everyone, my objective is … and my desired response is … .” That would most likely produce a collective yawn. When you have clearly defined your objective and desired response, they will come out in your message. You don’t have to announce them. They will work themselves out naturally as you preach in a way that matches your objective and aims at your desired response.

On the other hand, if you don’t have an objective your listeners will know that you don’t. If you don’t know how your sermon could be applied, your listeners probably won’t know either. You must know these, and be confident in them.

This is why I make answering these two questions a top priority early on in my prep process. What about you? How do you think through what you want your sermon accomplish?