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One of the most difficult things for any conscientious preacher to do is to evaluate
his or her own sermons. How well am I preaching? How are my sermons going? Is
what I am doing in the pulpit working? Is it connecting? Sometimes one turns to a
spouse with those questions: What did you think of my sermon today? It is a useful
thing to do; often a spouse can be a good gauge of the quality of one's pulpit work.

Sometimes, of course, parishioners are only too happy to tell the preacher how
things are going; as in, "not up to par lately, preacher;" or "you used to keep me
awake, but you're just not doing it very well these last few weeks. What's wrong?"
There are those parishioners, thank God, who always have a good word for you:
"Another wonderful sermon, Reverend." It's not a bad thing to hear.

What preachers by and large lack, however, is a set of working criteria that, over
time, can be used for one's own introspective evaluation of the sermons that one is
preparing and preaching. Often, the value of such criteria is not so much to look
back and assess past sermons as it is to keep constantly in front of oneself a
standard to which to aspire.

In my working with preachers and preaching students, I have spent a great deal of
time thinking about such standards. And, with a lot of feedback in seminars and
classes, what I take to be a good list has, to some extent, taken form.

Every sermon is-and should be-different, of course. When one preaches week upon
week upon week to essentially the same people, variety, without question, is the
spice of life; or at least the spice of pulpit life. Do things differently as often as you
can. But--having acknowledged the importance of variety, however, I suggest that
there are five things that EVERY sermon should do-if it is to be an effective,
communicative, and memorable sermon. And if it is to be the kind of sermon that
will cause people to want badly to come back again and again and again. No small
thing in today's church world.

Just like any good cake recipe-regardless of what kind of cake one is baking-there
are basic ingredients that are necessary for the blend if the cake is to be a good
cake. The same is true of the sermon. It, too, has a set of basic ingredients,
regardless of what kind of sermon one is preaching.

Here are the basic ingredients:

1. Every sermon must EDUCATE. This is not just for the "teaching" sermon.
People who hear a sermon want-indeed, they have a right-to learn something from
the sermon that they did not know before. It may be a Bible story or a piece of a
Bible story. It may be something about the background of a text. It may be some
historical notes. Something. Every good sermon, regardless of what kind it is,
teaches something. So, about each sermon, either looking back or in preparation,
ask yourself what the people know, or will know, after they hear what you have to
say.

2. Every sermon must INSPIRE. Granted, that is a very slippery word, "inspire."
My friend David Schlafer, great homiletician that he is, likes to talk about preaching
being "in-spirited." It is that idea here. The sermon must have elements in it that
lift the spirit; that give one a sense of being able to walk slightly off the ground as
one leaves. The world must be seen as brighter after the sermon than it was before.

How does one do that in a sermon? The answer is, in a thousand different ways. A
great story can inspire. Bringing a great biblical text to life can inspire. Calling
people to an specific collective task can inspire. What inspires the preacher in
preparing the sermon can usually inspire the congregants. The point-for now-is that
every sermon has to have within it the ingredient of inspiration; and in evaluating
past and present sermons, one asks: what did I say that created a sense of
inspiration for those who heard?

3. Every sermon must create a VISION. This is not the same as inspiration. This is
about imagining the future, conjuring what "could be," or even that "will be" if we
all put our shoulders to the plow. What could my life be like-or your life? What kind
of church could we have? What kind of change could we bring to this community?
Again, one can say it in a hundred ways, and with as much variety as one can
conjure up; but it is not that some sermons are to create a vision and some not; all
sermons must have a visionary ingredient if they are to do their best work.

4. Every sermon must be ENTERTAINING. This is not at all easy to talk about,
since so few sermons these days seem even to be concerned about it. Henry
Mitchell, another great homiletician, told a group of preaching teachers a few years
back that it was time to teach preachers how to entertain. Because, he said, the
opposite of entertaining is BORING!-it was his capital letters. This is not
entertainment in some crass sense, in some joke-telling, trivializing sense. This is
entertainment in the sense that everyone present is riveted to what the preacher is
doing and saying. It is entertainment that knows and enjoys humor, that
understands that laughter, whether overt or covert, is the stuff of which human
community and spirituality is built. Was it an entertaining sermon? Did people
really enjoy it? Did they have a good time during the sermon? It is a criterion that
every preacher should ask about every sermon.

5. Every sermon should be BEHAVIORAL. That is, it should urge people to do
something. Not tell them what to do-no one reacts well to that. But it should
propose constructive ways of behavior, based on what the sermon itself had laid
out. It is the "Go thou and do likewise," of Jesus' parables. We hear a good sermon
that gets out juices flowing, and then we want to know what we ought to do about it.
That is where a good sermon ought to bring the congregants. But the preacher
can't drop that ball there, suggesting "do whatever you want." No, the people have
a right to some concrete suggestions-let's call them that-as to some appropriate
ways to respond to what has been said. Every sermon needs these suggestions-put
in many different ways, but they need to be there.

Try out these criteria in your own sermons. I understand that you can construct
other, more theological or even biblical, criteria for your sermons. That is not the
point here, though. Here we are concerned with the sermon as sermon-regardless of
its theological or biblical orientation. These are the criteria that they all must meet.
Think of these five items as ingredients that need to be stirred into every sermon
your prepare and preach.

Mix these elements all together, and you will preach sermons that will not only
draw people into your worship services, but that will live in their memories for a lot
longer than you could ever have imagined.

--Joseph M. Webb