You already know that you have got to apply in people's lives; you have just got to do more of it.

Preaching: How much of the sermon should be application versus explanation of the text.

Warren: I personally believe 50 percent. I know Bruce Wilkinson once did a study of great preachers. He went back and studied Spurgeon and Moody, Calvin and Finney, both Calvinists and Arminians. Then he studied contemporaries like Charles Stanley and Chuck Swindoll. He discovered that those guys were anywhere from 50 to 60 percent, some at 70 percent application.

What we normally do in a structure of a message is that we do interpretation and then application of a point, then the next interpretation and the next application, the next interpretation and the next application. I am suggesting that if you want to reach pagans you actually just reverse that procedure. You still get both -- it's just the way you do it. So instead of going through a long background on the Sermon on the Mount passage on worry and explaining, I stand up and say, "Isn't it a fact of life that we all deal with worry? Well, today we're going to look at six reasons why Jesus said that we shouldn't worry." Then you make your application the points of your message.

People don't remember much. If you're motivated you remember about seven bits of information; if you're not motivated you remember about two. So if they are only going to remember something what do I want them to remember? I want them to remember the application, the lessons, not a cute outline of text. The alliterated outline is not going to change their lives. So I say make your applications your points because the points are all they are going to remember.

It is more important to be clear than it is to be cute. So I'll say, "Here are the three things that you have learned." Here is the contemporary application and underneath it you go back and cover the background. Here is the point and you go back and cover the background. It is the exact same thing -- it is just the order -- and what that does is it increases retention and it increases interest.

As I go through these things, first I sit down and I start praying. I say, "Who is going to be there?" I start to think of one person. When a church gets as large as Saddleback, numbers really are irrelevant. There is no statistical difference between 15,000 on a weekend and 16,000 on a weekend -- it's just a big crowd! So what motivates me is not the number; what motivates me is the individual changed life.

I start thinking about people that I know that are going to be there. People that I have invited, like my back doctor who was an atheist Jew who came for Easter. I start thinking: "Now what is going to help this guy know about Christ?"

I use an average of 16 verses per message. We write the verses out, we put them on an outline. I do that for several reasons. First place, non-believers don't bring their Bibles to church. Second place, even if they did they wouldn't know how to find it. Third place, it saves time. I once timed a guy and he took about 8 or 9 minutes saying, "now turn to this and turn to this." I don't have that time. I want all of the time for preaching. I preach on an average of 50 to 55 minutes. Most people would think, well he is preaching sermonettes for Christianettes -- you know, that kind of stuff. I typically preach 50 to 55 minutes. You can do that if you can understand features.