Diagnosing Your Preaching Problems: Examining Exegesis, Heart, and Delivery

After a dozen years of preaching, I hit a wall. I knew something was wrong with my preaching, but I didn’t know how to fix things. Part of the problem is that I didn’t have clarity about what was wrong.

Looking back, I wish that I had instituted a regular sermon review process, or even used some good diagnostic questions to put my finger on the problem.

I thought the problem was my delivery. I asked a mentor for feedback, which was a little unfair since he didn’t regularly listen to my preaching. He raised the possibility that the biggest problem may not be my delivery. He was right.

Preachers must focus on three areas of preaching. When trying to troubleshoot, it can be helpful to identify which area needs the most attention.

Exegesis

Good preaching begins with the text. The preacher is duty-bound to communicate the message of Scripture, and to make that the main message of the sermon. As Peter wrote, “If anyone speaks, let it be as one who speaks God’s words” (1 Peter 4:11). This is the foundation of a good sermon. Unless we get this right, nothing else matters.

In my younger years, I often rushed through exegesis to get to the sermon. I began to erect an imaginary wall in my sermon preparation. For half of the process, I couldn’t think about how I was going to preach the text. I forced myself to focus solely on the text itself and what it meant to the original audience, how it fit into the Scriptural story, and how it pointed to Christ.

Preaching isn’t all about homiletics. Until we get the message of the passage right, no amount of homiletical technique will help. The foundation of a good sermon is an accurate exegesis of the text and the determination to shape the sermon around the message of the text.

Heart

I appreciate Haddon Robinson’s definition of preaching:

Expository preaching is the communication of a biblical concept, derived from and transmitted through a historical, grammatical, and literary study of a passage in its context, which the Holy Spirit first applies to the personality and experience of the preacher, then through the preacher, applies to the hearers.

The text must first be applied to the personality and experience of the preacher. One of the preacher’s greatest challenges in preaching is the preacher’s own heart.

In his book The Heart of a Preacher, Rick Reed reminds us that “the hardest work of preaching is the heart work it requires. But while heart work is demanding, it’s also glorious.”

We shouldn’t stand up to preach until we’ve preached the message to ourselves, and until we’ve worshiped our way through the text and encountered the holiness of God and the grace of Jesus.

Delivery

Finally, a sermon should be delivered well. A skillful preacher understands how to speak clearly, to handle transitions well, to restate the main point, and to allow the text to speak to the congregation. A good preacher aims to avoid distracting the audience from the message of the text and how it applies to them.

That’s it. Those are the only three main areas of focus for every preacher. When trying to diagnose your preaching problems, it can help to identify which of these three areas needs the most attention.

The good news is that if your sermon communicates the message of the text, you’ve preached that message to yourself, you are walking with God, and you communicate that message skillfully, you’ve preached a good sermon. We’ll never preach perfect sermons, but we can preach good, biblical, helpful sermons. As we focus on these three areas, God uses imperfect preachers for his glory and for the good of the church.