Sermon Form Over Function?

Have you ever sat in a sermon where the preacher gave you great information but never quite got you there in terms of how to actually apply it to your life? I remember as a young believer (maybe 6 months in to my walk with Christ), I boldly asked my pastor how I could apply all the amazing things he was preaching out of the book of Romans. This patient, lovely man picked his jaw up off the floor as if he was somehow partially insulted at my ignorance. Twenty some-odd years later and having sat through a lot more sermons and grown in maturity with age, I wish I could go back and apologize to him. The problem wasn't with his preaching, it was with my inability to connect the dots in what he was saying. I have a rather bad case of ADHD that wasn't identified in my youth and left me with a pretty gnarly impediment in my early years of adulthood, trying to navigate my new found life with Christ and still grow into a man in society... with people...

As a preacher, I found that the more difficult the theology or doctrine exposited in a sermon, the shorter and more focused the sermon should be. It's not a matter of intelligence or discipline, it is more a matter of not beating your flock to death longer than necessary to get a point across. In seminary, an idea was intimated that a sermon less than 45-55 minutes couldn't possibly begin to do justice to the exposition every sermon deserves. While I whole-heartedly believe that expositional preaching is the model every church should be following at least 98% of the time, I do disagree at the foundational idea that every good sermon needs to fill an entire hour to "do it justice."

Breaking a sermon into chunks of one good idea instead of the classic 3-point sermon could very well be the difference between a member of the church getting something out of the sermon or getting lost in the haze of glossed-over eyes. Exegetically speaking, the text should be allowed to dictate the outline of the sermon and the entire series, but this bring us back to the "form-over-function" debate - is the Word here for the church or is the church here for the Word? A faithful minister of the gospel will cling tightly to the Word as his source of wisdom, but he must first cling to Christ and the Holy Spirit to know what the congregation needs and to meet them where they are.

My problem, when I spoke to my pastor as a young believer, was that I had only known Christ for such a short time, I didn't understand half of what the pastor was saying because I hardly spoke the language. After all, it was on the book of Romans - Paul's powerhouse theological treatise preserved for us in the New Testament. My pastor did no disservice to me, as I later came to know how much he labored to make the sermons approachable and relevant for as many people as possible. A regret that I have carried is how I may have possibly demoralized him in my question and how I must have embarrassed myself in the process. But praise the Lord for Pastor Matt. He was a humble servant and helped walk me through a lot of the things I didn't understand. If he did take offense to my youthful ignorance, he never let me know it. I learned what it meant to exegete scripture from my conversations with him and have relied on them to this day.

All this is to say: if you're preaching, let the congregations need and the complexity of the text determine how much material you decide to cover. Take them back to what the word of God says, what it meant to those who read it originally, and how we can apply it to our lives today. Don't fall into the trap of thinking that you have to present a systematic theology of everything mentioned in your sermon - keep your eyes focused on shepherding the flock of God He has entrusted you with, showing them love and humility with all service.

Soli Deo Gloria