“Why should I pay attention?” That’s the first question I assume every listener asks on a Sunday morning when I step into the pulpit. 

I assume people ask this question because I ask this question. A couple of years ago, I stepped out of the pulpit and found myself in the congregation. I found myself saying, “20 minutes is a long time. You’ve had all week to prepare. What do you have for me?”

Most people believe the sermon will be a boring lecture from someone telling them what to do. 

Your First 180 Seconds

I believe we have 180 seconds to convince them to care because in the first three minutes, the entire congregation will decide whether to pay attention, zone out, or scroll on their phones. This is why YOUR FIRST 180 SECONDS ARE THE MOST IMPORTANT IN THE WHOLE SERMON!

If the first three minutes are the most important, then what should you put there? To answer that, I look to comedians. People pay good money to listen to them talk for an hour. This is why I think preachers can learn something from those who do stand-up. 

Think about how a comedian starts their act. They have a joke. They breathe heavy in the mic. They draw you in and engage your attention. Compared to comedians, most preachers fill their first five minutes with MINDLESS DRABBLE,  disclaimers, quick notes, announcements, and throw-away lines. “Boy, I’m blessed to preach to you today from God’s word. I’ve so enjoyed this study, and I think you’re going to like this sermon. Don’t forget next week is the potluck.” Sound familiar?

The church might remember the potluck, but after this introduction, they won’t remember the sermon. Not unless the pastor literally sets themself on fire or has a heart attack.

Structuring a Good Introduction

Part of the problem is how we structure our services. The preacher volunteers to do the announcements or “mention something” during their message. This takes up valuable real estate in your sermon. 

Comedians don’t waste the start of their message. Someone introduces them so they don’t have to take up time doing it themselves. If they introduce themselves, it’s at the end, “Don’t forget I’m Chuck McChuckles. Have a good night!” They understand that as soon as they speak, the stopwatch starts. 180 seconds goes quick. This is why we need to structure the service so we can begin our sermon with the planned message, not with announcements or greetings.

Additionally, we need to structure our sermons to have a strong opener! If I spend 10 hours working on a sermon, 2 of those hours go to the opening 5 minutes. I will work, hone, craft, shape, and polish the opening lines to convince the church to listen. 

I’ll be so familiar with it that I could deliver the introduction to my sermon without any notes – even if it’s not verbatim. My opener is structured and familiar, allowing me to make eye contact and even walk around. I want the introduction to feel conversational and engaging. I don’t memorize my whole sermon, so at some point I’ll return to my notes, but the plan is to have everyone hooked by then.

Good Openers

Crafting an engaging opener can be tricky. If you preach every week, it’s even more so because you can’t start your messages the same way week after week. Here are a few tools I like to use to draw people in when I’m preaching.

• ASMR sounds like a sigh, breathing into the microphone (I use a handheld), a whisper, something to make them look up from their bulletin (or phone) and simply wonder, “What’s going on?”
• Related jokes that have a memorable punch line. For example, a sermon on surrender (letting go and letting God), you could tell this, “Knock, knock.” (You might have to repeat this until the church responds with, “Who’s there…”) “Control freak…now you say, ‘Control freak who?’” This joke will remind them of control, their control issues, and the need to let it go!
• Real questions, not some ethereal, abstract, super-spiritual question, but a real question. Ask a question that makes them think! If your text is, “Thou shalt not steal.” Don’t ask, “Are you tempted to steal?” Ask, “If no one was watching and $300 fell out of a book you were skimming at the library, would you turn it in?” This question causes them to imagine a scene and then wrestle with their thoughts.
• News articles that have a compelling story or a set of statistics. For example, when I was preaching on humility, I shared a news article on the Dunning-Kruger effect. This scientifically observed phenomenon causes people with the least expertise to have the highest confidence. Enough said.
• Complaints can engage people fast! There is a reason rage-baiting is a real technique for drawing in social media views. When you complain about traffic, slow customer service (don’t mention the story), or kids leaving things around, people resonate with those experiences. That said, I try to keep this light-hearted, more Jerry Seinfeld, less Larry David.
• Crowdsource your sermon! Get the congregation involved by doing a poll (try a service like Mentimeter), raising their hands to survey opinions, making a list on a whiteboard, or having them turn and tell their neighbor something.

These are just some suggestions for creating an engaging opener. You can also use videos, stories, or an object lesson. Anything that causes people to lean in and listen works!

The Ending of the Beginning

As you engage the congregation, you are also introducing your topic. I like to say my BIG IDEA (read more on that here) at the beginning because later it serves as a callback. 

This is where the structure and art of comedy intersect with the practice of preaching. Jokes are funny, sure, but what elicits the biggest laughs are the callbacks. Callbacks are those jokes that refer back to a joke earlier in the set. It might be a catch phrase from a story that all of a sudden shows up relevant and hilarious in a bit or two later. Some comedians work hard to tie their whole set together with a recurring callback. Every time it shows up, it gets just a little funnier as new layers are added.

In the sermon, your BIG IDEA can be that callback. If you introduce it up front as a point of common agreement, it can then take on layers as you move through the message. For example, “Sometimes you have to laugh.” This was the big idea for a sermon on the birth of Isaac from Sarah’s point of view. The sermon opened with a frustrating story from a recent encounter with some bureaucracy. I said, “Sometimes you have to laugh.” Why? Because you can’t do anything else in the DMV.

As we moved through the message and traced Sarah’s pain of infertility, the phrase was layered with the idea that sometimes you have to laugh because you would cry. Later, Sarah laughs at the idea that she would bear a son. She laughs at the spark of hope she has for a son. Finally, Isaac is born. His name means laughter. 

At the end, we see that sometimes you have to laugh because it’s the only possible response to God’s amazing grace. “Sometimes you have to laugh” became a very meaningful phrase through the message. It was introduced and became a fixed point of reference throughout the sermon. By the end of your introduction, the church should have at least heard your BIG IDEA, even if they don’t fully know what it means yet.

Test Drive Your Introduction

When I worked at a church, I would often run my introduction material by the other staff. If it was a joke, I would just tell it and see their natural response. If it was an article or fact, I’d share it and see if they engaged. Now I bounce these ideas off my wife and kids…or anyone I meet! This helps me know whether what I think is engaging is truly engaging to others. 

Once I have something I like, then I practice it out loud. I’ll read through it a few times until I have the flow (not the wording) memorized. Then, when I drive, I’ll turn off the radio for 5 minutes and practice my introduction. I want to say it so frequently that it comes naturally when I deliver my sermon. The goal is to be able to look the congregation in the eyes and conversationally deliver my opener as if we were at coffee.

The conversational tone of the opener prompts people to drop their defenses, lean in, and engage with your message. Your carefully curated content shows that you are prepared and have something worth sharing. When combined in one introduction, you have a church full of people wondering, “What will come next?” There is nothing more a preacher could ask for.

Short Attention Spans Meet Infinite Choices

Whether it’s TV commercials, the internet, red dye #7, Chat GPT, social media, or microplastics, all of our attention spans have gotten shorter. Meanwhile, as our attention spans have shrunk, our options have been increasing exponentially! Right now, I can stream a dozen award-winning films. I can pull up a masterclass performance from a band everyone knows – on my phone! I can podcast and listen to the VERY BEST preaching in my car on the way to work.

Maybe this is why we’ve become more discerning (or critical). We have less attention to give and more excellent choices to give it to. I LOVE preaching! I’m always on the preacher’s side.

I look forward to church and hearing a good sermon. Yet, even I find my mind wandering.

After preaching full-time for close to 20 years, I stepped out of the pulpit. This break allowed me to survey the homiletical landscape and ask, “What kind of sermon do I like to hear? What kind of sermons do I want to preach?”

Boring Preaching

To be candid, I hadn’t really asked that question in almost two decades of preaching. I was focused on preaching every week, so I kept preaching the way I had been taught. I had EXCELLENT teachers, and they got me down the road just fine. Stepping from the pulpit into the pew for a few months allowed me to ask whether I was going down the road I wanted to travel.

The answer was yes and no. I was happy with my exegetical method – the study. I felt my tools and research discipline were in order. I was unhappy with my homiletical approach. I thought, “If I get bored preaching this, then they must be bored listening to this.”

As I prepared for my upcoming summer preaching gig, I decided to revisit my approach and look for a better way.

This led me to ask, “Who else talks in front of people?” (Stand-up comedians came to mind first, and I’ll write much more about that in the future.) I also marveled at the rise of interest in TED Talks. People were packing auditoriums, subscribing to podcasts, and posting links to their favorite LECTURES! What makes these different from sermons?

TED Talks vs. Sermons

TED Talks are shorter (think homilies, not sermons). These 5-15 minute lectures have a clear, one-sentence idea, and the speaker remains hyper-focused on it. If you want a quick fix for your sermons: shorten them! Make every word count! EVERY sentence, joke, story, and announcement should connect DIRECTLY back to your one-sentence theme.

One of the best compliments I ever received on my preaching came from someone on staff at another church. She attended a service at the chapel where I preach. Here, my sermons are more like homilies. She said, “You covered so much in 15 minutes! Every word mattered.” I thanked her for the compliment, but should have admitted that the sermon was originally 30 minutes long! I had simply taken it to the woodshed and whittled it down.

Preaching a homily is an art! I used to admire preachers who preached for 45-60 minutes and kept everyone engaged. (I’m looking at you, Erwin McManus…you warrior, poet, genius you.) Yet, the more I preach, the more I admire a pastor who can distill the same point, context, and emotional journey into 10 minutes. 45 minutes…that’s easy. 10 minutes require true inspiration.

President Woodrow Wilson is quoted as saying, “If I am to speak ten minutes, I need a week for preparation; if fifteen minutes, three days; if half an hour, two days; if an hour, I am ready now.” This president, who helped lead the world to peace after World War I, understood how hard it is to bring focus to a speech. Yet according to his timeline, we all have enough time to prepare a focused and compelling message. Sunday is coming, so let’s get ready!

Write A One-Point Sermon

Start with one salient, sticky, main point – a CRYSTAL CLEAR BIG IDEA. It’s the ONE THING someone should say when you ask, “What was the sermon about?” If you’ve studied preaching in the last 30-50 years, you’ve heard it called: The Big Idea, The Takeaway, The Main Idea, or 100 other names. It’s the single sentence you want people to remember after your sermon.

You are mistaken if you think you can preach more than one idea and have people remember your three points when they walk out the door. Sorry! People might remember one of the three, but most likely, they’ll forget them all because you didn’t spend enough time on one.

This is why you have to be clear. You have to fight to get a BIG IDEA and work it until it’s as quippy as a commercial. Then that idea becomes the governor of your entire sermon. It determines what makes it in and what gets cut. The BIG IDEA is what you’re introducing, explaining, and sending home with everyone in your church.

Make Every Word Count

There are a dozen different ways to shape a sermon. Some prefer a deductive, toastmaster-like approach: tell them what you’re going to tell them, tell them, and then tell them what you’ve told them. Others prefer an inductive approach, a Socratic inquisitive method, slowly uncovering the truth. Some prefer a story model, building the sermon with a narrative arc, complete with rising action. (I think this last one works best, but you don’t have to agree.)

Regardless of the method you choose, these six practices will help you ensure every word in your message counts.

1. Know the goal/where you’re going. Be specific about what change you are trying to inspire in your listeners. Write a mission statement for your sermon: “At the end of the message, my listeners will try .” Or it might be, “Listeners will be better informed about .” Or perhaps, “Listeners will feel more hopeful because __.” Start at the end and know what you want your listeners to think, feel, and do as a result of your message. Then set your gaze on that goal so every word moves you closer.
2. Outline every thought. I write out my messages with a three-page outline. It’s not quite a manuscript, but it’s close. This practice forces me to identify the major themes and supporting points, and quickly weeds out ideas that don’t belong. If you’ve never done this, take your last set of sermon notes and tab the sentences into an outline. It will quickly reveal which points have the most content and which ideas you didn’t need. (download sample)
3. Don’t always show your work. If you learned that the Greek word for “television” in your text meant an old school tube TV (like Jesus watched), you don’t have to say, “I looked this Greek word up. ‘Television’ in English is from the Greek word ’toobous’, meaning a tube TV.” You can keep all that research to yourself and let it simply inform your thoughts and story. For example, “The disciples were helping Matthew move his heavy tube TV. The kind your grandparents had that was encased in oak.” That’s more interesting and meaningful than a dictionary definition.
4. Make sure EVERYTHING moves the big idea forward. A preacher complained to me once that their congregation only remembered the jokes & stories. Here’s the truth: the ONLY thing your listeners will remember is the jokes and stories. This is why your jokes and stories need to move the big idea forward. Don’t throw a joke in just for a laugh! Use a joke to parody a reality you’re describing. It will create something memorable that your audience will take and retell.
5. Read it OUT LOUD! Written words hit a little differently than spoken words. This is why you need to read your messages out loud! Read them the way you intend to preach them and listen to yourself. If you hit a rough patch or are unsure of how something will go over, read it to someone you trust and get their advice. Never go into the pulpit with a sermon you’ve never heard!

Save Your Leftovers

One final word about the leftovers, because this method can be a bit ruthless on your research. It will make you toss hours of study out the window! If you’ve preached for any length of time, you know how much this hurts. You work for almost an hour, reading commentaries, chasing down a particular Greek word in multiple dictionaries, and finally, you learn the true range of meaning for a particular word. The problem is that the word means exactly what it means in English, or becomes irrelevant to the big idea you’re preaching. You spent an incredible amount of exegetical energy chasing rabbit trails only to find nothing at the end.

Don’t despair, keep your research notes and save them for future sermons. Don’t force them into the message. Unfortunately, many pulpiteers leave nothing out. They include everything they’ve learned, and their sermons sound like someone reading a book who stops to read every endnote as they encounter it. They kill their sermons by a thousand paper cuts.

Saving material isn’t as hard as it used to be. In the olden days, it hurt more. You had to physically pack up 5 (or 8) books and put them back on the shelves with nothing to show for it. Now we can hit “Ctrl + c” then “Ctrl + v” and save the research for another day. Almost all of my sermons have a page I don’t print labeled “Rejected Material.” I do that so when I come back to this text or topic in the future, I’ll have everything I’ve found.

Remember, the main point of the sermon isn’t how smart you are or how hard you studied. The main point is the BIG IDEA. It’s the one thing you want people to remember. Don’t cause them to forget because you wanted to parse a Greek word live on stage

We just wrapped up the first week of Advent Devotionals. If you’ve been with us, then you’ve learned the stories behind some of our favorite Christmas songs. You can click on any title below to read that day’s devotion. You can also subscribe to have them delivered to your inbox every morning!