Conclusion

Preaching and Those Few Key Sentences

/ Peter Mead / 1 Comment

How many hundreds of sentences are used in a sermon?  And they all matter.  But they don’t all matter as much as a few of them.  I suppose I would suggest the following sentences as worthy of extra effort:

1. The Main Idea. Hours might be spent crafting and honing the main sentence for a message.  That would be hours well spent.  The main idea is the boss of everything in the message, it is the filter through which much extraneous “good stuff” is sloughed off.  It is the burning hot focus that is to be seared into the heart and mind of the listener.  It brings together understanding of the passage with emphasis on the life-changing relevance for the listener.  The main idea really is all it’s cracked up to be, and it’s absence will only confirm that billing!

2. The first sentence. It’s great to start the message with an arresting introduction.  Instead of beating around the bush until you get into your stride, much better to start with a bang.  It may be a startling sentence.  It may be an intriguing sentence.  It may be a contemporary paraphrase of that infinitely powerful sentence, “once upon a time . . . ” (narratives do grip listeners fast!)

3. Transition sentences. I think transitions are oft-neglected.  A good message with poor transitions will lose people.  Give some extra effort to transitioning slowly, smoothly, safely.  Keep your passengers in the car when you take the turns.

4. The final sentence. That last sentence can ring in the ears as silence descends and you move to take your seat.  Despite the best efforts of over anxious worship leaders or people chairing meetings, the final sentence can resonate in a life.  Don’t fizzle to a halting stop.  Stop.  Clear.  Precise.  Having arrived at your destination.  Having achieved your goal.  Having parked the message with exactly the final sentence you determined.

Preaching may involve hundreds of sentences, but a few of them are worth extra careful crafting!

Don’t Dilute By Distraction – Part 2

/ Peter Mead / 1 Comment

In the closing stages of a message, the last leg of the journey, it is easy to lose the focus and momentum of a message.  Yesterday I raised the issue of introducing other texts, which can (not always, but often) dilute the force of the ending of a message.  Here’s another:

Don’t dilute by adding unnecessary new images. After twenty or thirty minutes where the overarching image has been the tender care of a mother for her child, the preacher decides to throw another image into the mix in the closing moments – perhaps the care of a shepherd for the lambs, or a coach for his team, or whatever.  Often a new image, a new illustration, a new set of vocabulary, when introduced in the final leg of a sermon will undermine the strength of what has gone before, or totally overwhelm the message (such as a moving story that is so powerful it makes every other element of the message, including the Bible, mere introduction).  Again, it is not always true.  Sometimes a pithy anecdote, a moving illustration, a well turned phrase, may serve to close a message well…but only sometimes…and not a very big sometimes either.

The final thrust of a message is a critical leg of the journey.  It’s the time to consolidate, not dilute.  A time to pull elements together and drive them home, not add new information that shatters the unity of the whole.

Don’t Dilute By Distraction

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Just a quick thought relating to the concluding movement of a message. This includes the conclusion, but might also bring in the final movement or point of the message. During the final thrust, the crescendo of the message, do not dilute the focus of listeners. It is so easy to unnecessarily add new elements to a message at a time when the need is not variation, nor interest, but focus. For instance:

Don’t dilute by adding distracting texts. It’s so tempting to refer to another verse somewhere or other in the Bible. Often, not always, but often, this is a distraction rather than a help. Evaluate carefully before redirecting the gaze of the listeners to a passage, to wording, to a story, to a psalm, to anything that has not been the primary focus of the message. You may mention one verse, but their minds may blossom out in all sorts of bunny trails, or at the very least, the new information may dilute their focus. Be wary of adding texts in this final leg of the journey. (Sometimes a specific text, painstakingly chosen, and carefully used, may serve to close a message well…but only sometimes…a small sometimes.)

Tomorrow I will bring up another source of distraction that can dilute the end of a message.

Make Two Key Times Count

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I just saw a chart showing that there are two key times in any presentation.  I’ll describe the chart for you.  On the vertical axis, from 0 to 100%, is the scale of attention and retention.  On the horizontal axis, it reads “beginning … middle … end.”  The chart consists of a U-shaped curve.  Attention/retention are highest at the beginning and the end, but dip significantly in the middle.

This poses some concern for me as a preacher.  If this is true, then we need to consider whether we’ve packed the best meat in the middle of the sermon.  Surely we wouldn’t want to give a “meat sandwich” of a sermon if our listeners miss significant amounts of good meat, but take in all the white bread at the start and finish?  Perhaps we need to give more attention to the bread of the sandwich.  Too many sermons are fine steak in the middle of dry cheap white sliced bread.  We need to give more time to preparing our intros and conclusions (so the bread is a higher quality homebaked wholemeal something or other).

Ok, enough of the sandwich analogy, I’m starting to get distracted by my own hunger.  When we preach, let’s think carefully about how to maximize the value of our introduction – not just grabbing attention and building rapport, but also raising need for what is to follow and moving powerfully into the message in order to protect against an excessive dip in attention and focus.

Let’s think carefully about how to make the most of our conclusion – not just fizzling to a faded flop of a finish, but finishing strong, driving home the main idea, encouraging application of it and stopping with purpose.

If attention and retention are highest at the beginning and end of a message, let’s make these two key times count.

(If you want to see the chart and the suggestions given in that post, just click here.)

Stage 8 – Message Details: Conclusions

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Haddon Robinson’s teaching and example always lurk in the back of my mind when it comes to conclusions. His teaching? “You can recover from a bad intro, but not from a bad conclusion.” His example? A consistent nailing of that last poignant and powerful line. Conclusions are easy – get to where you are going, review the journey briefly, encourage application of the idea and stop. But conclusions are hard – they are hard to give enough time for in preparation, they are hard to not modify and over-extend while preaching, they are hard to do well. The key is planning. First, plan to have enough time after preparing everything else in the message so that you can prepare the conclusion fully. Second, use that time and keep up the motivation in order to plan an effective conclusion. Third, generally stick to the conclusion you had planned when preaching, many extra thoughts become unnecessary extensions to a journey. Too many extensions will make the flight of the message uncomfortable and people will be reaching for the folded paper back in the pew in front of them!

Previously on this site – To put it simple, when you get to the end, stop. This is important, but you’ve got to know where you are going! Like flying a plane, your passengers value very highly your skill in landing the bird). The last line, as Haddon Robinson usually exemplifies is critical, so don’t miss that opportunity (although there are some opportunities to be missed). The main thing is to not short change the conclusion.

A Plea to the MC: Careful of Careless Closure

/ Peter Mead / 1 Comment

Perhaps an MC will read this post.  Perhaps a worship leader.  Perhaps one Sunday you will not preach, but will “chair” the service (as they say in England), for a visiting speaker.  I have a plea.  Please, please, please be careful what you say after the sermon.  Most of the time, it might be best to say nothing.  There’s nothing worse than a good sermon well preached, then the moment trashed by a jovial comment or mood-breaking notice.  Actually, there is something worse.

It’s worse when someone stands up after a sermon and tries to add a helpful comment.  Perhaps a summary of what the speaker has said.  Perhaps even an attempted exhortation in light of what the speaker has said.  As someone involved in missions work I am afraid only one example is spinning in my head, but it is the example par excellence for missions speakers down through the years.  Let me quote from an email I received last week:

One of my early attempts to share my passion for unreached nations took place in a small country church some years ago. I gave them my best . . . The pastor then felt it necessary to mitigate my remarks and blunt my passion for the unreached by assuring his flock, “We’re all missionaries to our neighborhoods and workplaces!” I was thoroughly deflated.

I have experienced it and I have seen it.  A preacher makes a strong case for missions to the unreached from God’s Word, then all that work is undermined by a well-intentioned, but horribly misplaced comment in closing.

I’ve learned that, whenever possible, if I see a way my message could be undermined, I make plans to avoid it.  If possible I will ask if I can close the service.  Sometimes I’d rather not be the one to pray and wrap things up.  I’m certainly not the best at it.  But at least I won’t undermine the whole thing.

This happens regularly to missions messages.  What other kind of message have you seen undermined by careless closure?

Land the Last Line

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It’s true every time we preach, but especially on Easter Sunday. It’s great to land the last line. Some people regularly finish with a bang, a really pregnant final sentence that absolutely nails it. Others among us struggle for consistency with the finish. It’s always easy to fizzle to a close or to stick on a generic statement like, “So that’s why it’s an interesting passage.” But that last line can really hang in the air, linger in the memory and stick in the heart.

As I’ve written before, the best time to plan the end is before you preach. Trying to pull a stunning conclusion out of mid-air is almost always a wasted effort. Sunukjian makes the suggestion that the concluding statement should be positive rather than negative, and a statement rather than a question. Perhaps I’ll share more on his suggestions another time. If in doubt, it is usually a great place to restate the main idea one last time.

So before preaching the Easter Sunday message, try to take a couple of minutes and run through the final few lines. What a great day to land a last line really well!

A Great Opportunity To Be Missed?

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The final moments of a sermon are highly strategic. The last opportunity to emphasize the main idea, drive home the application, stir motivation for response, etc. Then there is one other thing we may be inclined to include – an early advert for next Sunday’s continuation in the series, an early raising of need for what is to follow. I am not saying this should or should not be included, but I’d like to point out a couple of points to ponder before you choose to refer to series sermon today-plus-one:

Finish this sermon. Be sure to resolve the present sermon fully. Your mind may be wandering to the next in the series (or you may want to raise hope that next week will be better than this one), but be sure to preach a complete sermon now. This moment is primarily about today’s sermon, not next Sunday’s. (As you can tell from the site, I don’t recommend preaching through the text until time runs out and then picking up at the same point next time. Preach a complete unit of thought.)

Don’t undermine this sermon. It would be a waste of all that has gone before to end with something along the lines of, “. . . today was alright, but you don’t want to miss next week’s message! That one will really be something!”

Only dangle a carrot with care. Perhaps you are inspired by a well-written TV show that always leaves people at a cliffhanger and longing for next week’s episode. Remember that takes a high level of skill to pull off effectively. It is far easier to leave people disheartened and frustrated by doing this poorly. You may choose to leave some element of the sermon or text hanging in the air, but think it through carefully.

Let the title intrigue. Often all you need to stir interest in next week’s sermon is the title printed in the bulletin. The title is there to stir interest and to intrigue. I wrote a post on titles that may help – Titles: Tricky Little Things.

The end of this sermon may be an opportunity to motivate people to come for the next sermon. But think this through carefully, as it may just be a great way to undo the moment, dissipate focus and lose what you’ve been trying to achieve to this point. What do you think?