Sunday 27th January was a pretty awesome day for me. I preached my first ever sermon!
During the month of January, my Pastor invited 4 different people to share from the pulpit a message they believed would help build up our church. I was the last to preach and shared a sermon based on John 3:16 - possibly the most well known verse in the Bible.
Being my first ever sermon and trying to convey the topic of faith in the Gospel was a very challenging task for me. And I want to post it on my blog as a lasting reminder for me.
I welcome your feedback, your advice, your criticism, your anything really. I want to learn the art of delivering a sermon as I’ve been asked to do more in the future and so I’m asking you guys for advice. So go nuts and tell me what you think. Slides can be found here. And below is the video I made to share at the end
Congrats on the sermon. That’s cool to hear.
I just got invited to speak at a christian drug and alcohol rehab facility. I’m a lay guy, but I think I’m going to do it. I can’t pray that God will give me a chance to show love to hurt people and then pass up this kind of thing. Anyway, good to hear the sermon went well.
Jon
http://www.prodigaljohn.com
Hi LayGuy,
Onya for posting this - I just finished listening to it.
Hard to really discuss this kind of thing in blog comments, but I’ll give some quick feedback points:
- You spoke really well for a first sermon. Sounded confident and engaging.
- Good humour at times - the “wearing a belt” thing was definitely funny.
- The example of the rainbow dude was a useful way to draw people to the John 3:16 text.
- I liked the Joomla php code example, but maybe that’s just me
- The powerpoint looked great and I really like that format of showing the Scripture passages as well as a few main points and a picture or two.
A few things I think you could think through:
- I feel like the text is more about who Christ is as the fulfillment of the bronze snake story than what “you gotta” do (have faith)?
- In the original snake story, the people were desperate and God gave them salvation in the form of the bronze snake. I think a sermon could perhaps try to show our desperate need and then present Christ as the great saviour - and the call to have faith as the application of that.
- I can see where the “irrational” line of thought comes from, and Paul’s mention of the foolishness of what was preached. But I think Paul brings an incredible sense of awe before God’s ways, which you tended to move away from. The atonement is not just something we take purely on faith; it’s an incredible demonstration of God’s glory, and the whole OT gives us so much detail on how blood cleanses, on why it would need to be Christ’s blood to cleanse etc. I think in this case you were trying to make a good point (we need faith in the unseen), but you took a bit of an unconventional road to make it and risked some things in doing so.
I really hope this is helpful - I loved hearing your excitement about Jesus in the sermon and I love the way you put this post out for comment. As you know, I’m all for greater interaction on these things in Australia! If you wanted to discuss any of this in more detail, feel free to post up on the CityGospel forum - there’s a section there for discussing preaching/teaching.
In Him, Mick.
haven’t heard it yet, but just wanted to say congrats. the first one’s always nerve racking, now you’ve got it out of the way.
Hi Mick,
Thanks for your comments. I am my worst critic and having heard my sermon, I can poke a million holes through it. My issue with sermon preaching is that when I think about scripture, it’s more like a 3D picture with a lot of “given this, then that” kind of thoughts floating around. But when you talk there is only one communication channel - you can’t express all the other thoughts at the same time.
I hear where you are coming from in terms of all your comments and completely agree with them. However in the suburb we are planted, the mindset is extremely simple - and it gets really frustrating at times that people don’t want to, or simply can’t, look into things more deeply than surface level.
And that’s where I was trying to come from - a simple yet profound way, with a few examples thrown in about the irrational nature of faith. But thanks for your comments, I really appreciate them.
Lon,
Thanks for your words. You’ve nailed it when you say the first is always the hardest!
Great first sermon…
You hit the nail on the head… for what the true Gospel
is. Too bad only about a tithe of those that go by the
name of Christian do not know the true Gospel.
The harvest is truly white.
God Bless, BrotherMark
Keep on serving the Lord With His Saving Faith.