Negotiating The Red Zone: Taking Your Sermon To A Successful Conclusion
As though the Lord were working overtime to teach me on this subject, the next
sermon I heard was delivered by a veteran seminary professor who did the same
thing. An excellent message with effective exposition and apt illustrations
ground to a halt in the red zone, as though the learned preacher had given no
thought on what to do once he arrived at this end of the field. A good sermon
fizzled, the public invitation sputtered, and the congregation progressed on
to the next item in the order of worship. If anyone left church that day pondering
how close they had come to hearing a great sermon, I couldn't tell.
In Writer's Digest for December, 2004, Lauren Kessler quotes Joan Didion,
"It is easier to see the beginnings of things, and harder to see the ends."
With that line, Kessler introduces her article, "The Elegant Finish," which
deals with writing first-class conclusions to non-fiction pieces. Some of her
insights are helpful to preachers in search of effective climaxes to their sermons.
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Kessler asks why endings are so hard to write. For one thing, she finds, we
are taught in school that the opening is most important. Writers (speakers,
too) learn that they must grab people with their first words. Further, something
inside writers — and preachers — insists that once we figure out how to begin,
the rest will fall into place.
Kessler puts much of the blame on journalism schools that teach students to
tell the story, and that the story is over when they run out of material. That
way, there is no ending. It just stops, like a lot of sermons where the preacher
runs out of time or material or inspiration.
There is an old school of thought that says speeches and sermons are made up
of three parts: an introduction in which I tell what I'm going to tell, the
main body in which I tell it, and the conclusion where I summarize what I just
told. If one is preaching to kindergartners, that may be an effective approach.
Otherwise, it's an insult to the audience, assuming as it does that the hearers
are mentally impaired or did not listen the first time.
A sermon which lays its points before the people without ever tying them up
again at the end fails its audience in a lot of ways. Chiefly, it never lets
the congregation see the bigger picture, how the message fits into the larger
framework of God's plan for the world, the Kingdom, and themselves.
With Kessler's suggestions as our guide, I want to propose three approaches
for preachers in crafting more effective closings for sermons.
1.
"Think of the closing as a story."
The preacher may end with a story that brings the gist of the sermon home. The
old joke about the sermon being composed of three points and a poem is half
right. Something — a poem, story, illustration, something! — can be used at
the end to push the main message across the finish line.