In every area of life we naturally have a default mode. It’s what comes naturally. It’s the way we function without adding thought and effort. This is true in any relationship, any hobby, and also in any preaching. If you are preaching for the first time, you are probably all thought and effort. You’re probably trying to fill the time, survive the experience and not make a fool of yourself. But for those of us who’ve preached a few times, perhaps its time to evaluate ourselves and push beyond default. In this post I will suggest some default modes I’ve observed in myself and others. In part two I will suggest some ways to crank it up a level.
Default Mode – Bible Fact Presenter. It is easy to study a passage at length and then fill the preaching slot with facts you have gleaned in the process. Historical awareness and Bible trivia may impress people to a certain extent, but this approach will usually hide from questions about purpose. What is the sermon supposed to achieve? Just because your information comes from the Bible or is about the Bible, does not make it a truly biblical sermon. The passage has not been inspired, recorded, copied, canonized and translated just to be a source of trivia.
Default Mode – Ethical Exhorter. It is easy to define a purpose, irrespective of the nuances of a passage, and then harangue the listeners. Some preachers never say anything strong, but others can’t seem to say anything but. Again, some people will be impressed by passionate finger pointing. Indeed, some people seem to have a strange theology that affirms the need to receive a verbal thrashing from the pulpit, somehow fulfilling a kind of personal penitence. The Bible does exhort us in many ways, but it does so much more, and listeners are also complex creatures. We must carefully consider our sermon purpose in light of the text’s purpose and the need of our listeners.
Default Mode – Plodding Passage Guide. Given a biblical passage and a piece of time, it is easy to methodically plod through the passage trying to run out of passage and time at the same moment in the meeting. In this approach every phrase or sentence in the passage is considered equal, given equal explanation and roughly equal time. In reality time will often start to slip away and the last part of the passage will often be short-changed. All Scripture is inspired and every word counts, but not every word counts equally in a sentence or a section. Sometimes a significant proportion of a text may require very little explanation or development, while another part may require diligent focus in our presentation.
Peter has responded to a comment on this post.
Biblical Preaching 
As an audience member it is very tedious to listen to any of these sermon patterns, especially after the New Preacher “grace period” has worn off.
Do you think there is a 4th category of default preaching… a hybrid of all three?
I’d much rather see a preacher fumble through an interesting and expansive idea that makes me wonder why it was so hard to express than hear spot on narration of a low-watt exposition.
I absolutely agree that there can be hybrid versions too. Sometimes a combination of these is common to a culture. I can think of one culture that tends to produce fact presenter / exhorters. Another I know well seems to churn out fact presenter / passage guides. I suppose people copy what they hear and so naturally the result is a similarity between successive generations within a culture. However, I also think there are a lot more defaults people fall into, myself included. I’ll be adding another post at some point with more of them. It’s easy to criticize, but my goal is to stimulate us to push beyond default. Thanks for the helpful comment Ben.