What is the purpose of a Sermon? Part 4 Curiosity or life change

By Pastor David Cox

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 (posts 5/1/20)

What is the purpose of a sermon? This is an extremely important question to answer as far as the philosophy going on in the preacher’s head before we talk about any specific sermon or sermon creation in general.

Are sermons simply information classes where people are informed about the Bible as a piece of literature? Or are sermons actually persuasive dialogs with the purpose of changing people’s moral character. — David Cox

In reality, the vast majority of preachers do not present their sermons as something that could or is designed intelligently and with craft and expertise to change moral character. If that is their purpose, then they fail miserably at that because most people hearing the sermon cannot discern what that call to action is in the sermon.

Within speech development and craft, the term “call to action” is used with the idea that the entire presentation has some kind of point to it, something that the speaker wants the hearer or reader to do after they finish their speech. In business, a call to action is that the speaker wants the buy something. In the sermon in a church, the preacher who is designing his sermon correctly is wanting the congregation to make a moral decision about something he is presenting in his sermon.

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The Non-Applying of the Scriptures

By David Cox

Summary: I examine the tendency that I see in some preachers to not apply Scripture, just talk about it, explain it, and leave it at that. An application of Scripture means making it very clear how the scriptural principles involved are applied to the believers’ lives.

See Sermons need Application

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What is the purpose of a Sermon? Part 1

Why do we preach? What is the purpose of our preaching a sermon?

By Pastor David Cox

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 (posts 5/1/20)

Although this would seem silly to ask, the answer might be surprising. Why do we preach on Sunday morning to a group of people? If we don’t understand what we are doing and why we are doing it, then we can never really do it right nor excellently. Without getting too involved in the whole of the Bible, let’s try to clarify why we preach a sermon.

 




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