Lack of control. While preachers have little control over their audiences, they have great control over the preaching event. It is a one-person show. This control is a great advantage in crafting the sermon. You can design the sermon, shape the sermon, practice the sermon, and deliver the sermon exactly the way you want and, more importantly, the way God wants. After spending eight hours or more working on a sermon, you have a tightly polished product that can be very powerful in the hands of God. A wrong word, an heretical opinion, or a superior attitude from a dialoguing listener can destroy all that you have worked so hard to achieve. This is a great risk. All I can say is that sometime you have to take a risk. It's to do with faith. Play it completely safe and you inevitably miss the wind of the Spirit. Oh there are ways to minimize the risks, and I will explain them later, but somewhere we have to trust and risk. It may not work every time, but there will be occasions when God takes over. At the start it could be helpful to organize a few people who are ready to interact. You can also coach the whole congregation in appropriate interaction — what to do and what not to do. Sometimes you have to set the example by modeling appropriate responses. The type of questions is really the key and I will deal with this later in detail.

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Loss of status. There are not too many occasions when one person speaks and a whole audience listens in silence for 30 minutes. Preaching carries status. Think of all the people who listen to you speak every week and ask yourself, "Who else do they listen to regularly?" You have status as a preacher. Sharing the sermon with the audience undermines that status. You are no longer the expert. Well that is good because status has no place in Christian ministry! "The first will be last and the last will be first."

Unfamiliarity to the audience. Audiences are used to settling back and listening during the sermon and may find participation difficult to accept. Because the form is different, they may even feel that it is not really preaching at all, but merely a discussion or sharing time. This depends significantly on the style of worship with which the congregation is familiar. If worshippers are used to participating in the worship through testimony, sharing, prophecy, or verbal or physical response, they will probably adapt more easily to an interactive style of preaching. It may be worthwhile to work on more interactive worship before tackling an interactive sermon.

Loss of direction. A sermon with a strong head of steam and clear direction can easily be sidetracked by inappropriate comments, divisive views or rambling thoughts. This is certainly an obstacle that is not easily overcome because the preacher cannot determine who is to speak or what they will say. Sooner or later, if you try preaching interactively, you will experience a loss of direction. Let me offer two suggestions. The first is to constantly keep the main preaching idea and intention in mind. This will not prevent diversions occurring, but will help you more easily detect changes of direction and assist you to get the sermon back on track. The second is to stick to questions that look for experiences and feelings, not ideas and opinions. The response to these questions may still not provide support to the sermon but they are less likely to distort the sermon or distract the listeners. Examples of these types of questions are provided below.