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Do you find you are putting several hours of your week into developing your weekly sermon? Do you ever wonder if that is the most effective use of your time? In this post and the attached video, we are sharing Jim Putman’s method for creating effective sermons that hit the target of what his congregation needs the most.
For the past several years, Pastor Putman has used what he calls a ‘Sermon Team’. On a weekly basis, he meets with a group of people for an hour or so to flesh out a Biblical topic he will be preaching on. Here are the top 10 reasons he chooses to do this – and how it could benefit you and your people too.
- God speaks through his church. As you bring people into the development of your sermon, God will use his people to give you a deeper understanding and perspective. A round of Godly counsel in every area of your life is a good idea.
- If you are leading a disciple-making church, one of your jobs is to make sure your people are being discipled. Discipleship does not happen best in a 30-minute sermon. Therefore, it is not wise to put the bulk of your time every week into something that is not accomplishing the main goal of the church. If you look at Jesus’ time on earth, he spent more time debriefing and interacting one on one with his disciples than he did speaking to the crowds. If we follow his example of making disciples, we should do the same.
- You will get accurate feedback from multiple perspectives on your sermon before you preach it – enabling you to refine it into something that will be received and understood more readily and reach a larger percentage of your people.
- You will get a greater return on your time. If you spend 1 hour discussing your sermon with 10 people, you have the net result of 11 hours invested.
- You will be modeling to everyone else in the group that we work best as a team. That their opinions and perspective are valuable.
- You will be training your leaders in the process of building a sermon, and how to lead people by their example.
- All of the church planters sent out from our church participated in sermon team, and because of this they were better equipped not only to build a sermon but also how to better utilize and value those around them.
- If you include a variety of people on your sermon team, you will be able to keep your finger on the pulse of your church. As you hear some of the needs of different gender, age, and education levels of your people – you will be able to narrow the target and preach the things your people really need to hear.
- The benefits of having a team help your build out your sermon vs locking yourself in your office and working through it alone are immense on many levels.
- By listening to the questions being raised in this group, you will better know what questions you need to answer – which will help you narrow your topic to more accurately reach and grow the people in your congregation.
To hear more from Jim on this topic, watch the short video below!
DiscipleShift Training Q&A Session 9/16 from The DiscipleShift Training Team on Vimeo.
