How to Write Sermons People Remember

Plant Sermons in People's Memory

Preaching sermons people will remember is a challenge. Let's face it, you don't remember what you preached three months ago. Why should they?

Every church attender though has sermons they will never forget. Some sermons find a way to put roots down in our memory while others are like morning fog that fade with the rising of tomorrow's sun.

Apply these steps and principles to your sermons and you will have an increasing number of encounters with people who say 'I still remember that sermon.'

Instructions

1. BECOME INTERESTED.

   The key change that has to happen for most preachers is the move to stop trying to preach interesting sermons. The goal is for you to become interested, fascinated, challenged, convicted, and transformed. When that happens your sermons will naturally have more life, energy, passion, creativity, and motivation toward creative expression. You still will work at making sermons interesting, but only as a way of helping them catch what you have caught.

2. CONNECT SERMONS WITH LIFE.

   Sermons that are abstract explorations of doctrine are rarely remembered even from the introduction to the conclusion. Explore deep human needs, emotions, and powerful experiences in and through your sermons. Bridge the common areas of human life from multiple perspectives, and address the deepest human needs of love, belonging, security, meaning, and significance.

3. USE REPETITION.

   Space and repetition are the two primary keys to memory. Write out your sermons central theme. Consider using a very well crafted phrase as a refrain throughout the sermon. The repeated phrase will gain new and deeper meaning with each use if done well, and it will stick in the minds of the listener.

4. 

   USE VISUAL ELEMENTS.

   Your gestures and face are one visual element. Use intentional representative gestures that lock concepts in the minds of the listener. Your words can paint on mental canvases if you learn how to speak visually. Preach about sin as a favorite filthy teddy bear rather than sin as a problem or an abstract difficulty, for example. When appropriate, use actual visual items that can be serve as mental place markers.

5. USE EMOTION.

   For some reason, there are preachers who attempt to avoid all emotion whatsoever. This denies God's created order, and sets up an idol to reason and the mind. Address the emotions of life without manipulating them. Tell stories, parables, and give short windows into the real world of struggle, pain, celebration, and triumph. Communicate with your own passion about the subject.

6. WEAVE IN KEY QUESTIONS.

   Often the best application is a question. 'Think about this question every day this week. Post it somewhere where you will not be able to get away from it...'

   And here is a question for you: What sermons do you remember most, and what made them so memorable?
   Go and do likewise.

Tips & Warnings

• Interactive elements that involve all of the senses will be the most memorable. It's the genius of communion and baptism from a memory perspective.

Resources

• How to Write Creative Sermons
• How to Find Sermon Ideas