What Makes a Good Church Sermon?

Sermons are very often related to Church by both Christians and Non-Christians alike. Sermons can often have characteristics such as being provocative, offensive, condemning, fire and brimstone, long, short, boring, wishy washy.... but does this mean they are bad? Since becoming a Christian I have always pondered on my opinion of what makes a good sermon?

Today at St. Andrews Church, the sermon was delivered by Revd George Kovoor, the Principal of Trinity College Bristol. St. Andrews is currently focusing on the whole reordering of the church for which they have been given the green light to proceed. However, there is a huge financial cost associated with this project and is subject to controversy with some folks both within the St. Andrews fellowship and outside.

Ok, but what has the reordering of St. Andrews have to do with the subject of this post? Well... what George spoke about was reordering... however, his message was strongly aimed at the reordering of those who make up the church... in other words, the people.

Yes he mentioned the need to faithfully, joyfully and sacrificially give, but he didn't not attribute this to just financial substance or the St. Andrews Reordering alone, instead the challenge was to treat our entire lives as an act of worship for God rather than just come for a sing song and social on a Sunday and place anything from 20p to £20 in the offering dish out of compulsiveness and false humility.

Now I would say the sermon delivered by George today had a fantastic mixture of characteristics, I personally felt that the sermon today was:

•    Exposing Problems within the Church 
•    Grounded in Scripture
•    Provocative and Challenging the Status Quo
•    Encouraging Assertive Action and Responsibility
•    Funny

In my opinion any good sermon must address or expose a particular issue whilst at the same time relating this to what it said in the scripture.

In order to be effective, I believe that sermons should be provocative... the moment a sermon upsets people by pushing them out of their comfort zones then it is effective... it forces them to take action on the point mentioned. If a sermon highlights an issue but does not provoke then its simply wishy washy and ineffective.

If a sermon is provocative (which I would hope it would be) then it should hopefully encourage a listener to take action rather than say "oh that was very good" and then do nothing else. By encouraging assertive action (to be assertive is to be confident) a sermon is very empowering for listeners. I also think it has the added bonus of encouraging listeners to take responsibility for their actions and empower them to reflect.

The icing on the cake for many with a sermon is if it is delivered in a lighthearted and humorous manner. However, the point of a sermon is not to have a laugh and a joke... the point is the subject it is about. Whilst I am not attempting to be a kill-joy here, sermon time is not the Church's comedy club and if anyone only listens to get a laugh... then they are listening for all the wrong reasons and thus will most likely take nothing away from it...

Fundamentally I feel that the purpose of a sermon is to teach, equip and encourage people to develop their relationship with God and draw closer to him in their daily lives and rely on him by Faith.

At the end of the day, I ultimately feel that a good sermon should address a subject/issue whilst at the same time provoking the audience by upsetting non-Godly status quos. It should always encourage assertive action and responsibility whilst ultimately being grounded in the scripture.

A good sermon should result in listeners taking responsibility for committed Godly action in their lives.

As for "bad" sermons, again, this is my opinion only, but I personally switch off to the sermon if:

•    it is full of condemnation
•    it is all hell, fire and brimstone
•    it is judgemental, sexist or homophobic
•    it is religious
•    it is hypocritical and insincere
•    the speaker is making it all about them / glory seeking (self-centered)

I think the reasons are quite obvious!

So back to the reordering point... reordering a building and reordering the Church are two very different things... Reordering a building does not change the people... Reordering the church surely means that every Christian is responsible for constantly reordering their lives so that Jesus is at the very centre of all they do?  

I'm sure that if all sermons were like the one delivered by the Revd. George Kovoor today, and with people taking action, then I think the church would look a whole lot different....