Make it Practical: The Key to Actionable Sermons

Do you wish your sermon stuck with your faith community beyond Sunday lunch? After all the study, prayer, and preparation for your sermons, it should have more staying power. It can, by making your sermons actionable and practical.

The key to delivering actionable sermons is to provide a practical application for personal transformation in your faith community. This is done by having an understanding of your culture, asking practical questions, and having a single call to action.

Introduction

Each week you preach a sermon to your faith community with the hopes they will experience life change and encounter Jesus beyond the four walls of the church. You hope they will take the life-changing content you present to them and apply it to their lives in order to actually see life change.

At the same time, you know a high percentage of your congregation is going to forget the content of your sermons before Monday morning rolls around. So, how do you extend the life of your sermons through actionable content?

Over the last few weeks, our Field Notes have been exploring how we as the Church, particularly church leaders, can combat the growing epidemic of Biblical illiteracy in the church. If you want to catch up on the series I want to encourage you to check these out:

One of the difficulties with sermon development and delivery is making sure that we find the balance between bringing God’s wonderfully colorful story to life while also motivating life change. If we only communicate the information of the Bible, then we reduce God’s word down to an epic tale. At the same time, if we are only using the scriptures to push people toward behavior compliance then we are reducing the scriptures to a billy club of morality. Neither was God’s intention for His word.

As pastors and ministry leaders we are given the privilege of communicating God’s word, which is also an enormous responsibility. Our aim should be to reveal the mystery of God and wonders in His word while also compelling individuals to emulate the life of Jesus Christ.

When we find this balance, members of our faith communities see the Bible as a manual leading them toward the best life God has created them for. They return daily to discover guidance for life’s issues and find principles to live by. When the Bible is allowed to transcend the age it was written and becomes the timeless Word of God, then men and women build an insatiable hunger for discovery in the scriptures.

This is why as communicators of scripture we need to provide a steady diet of expository sermons with engaging content that practically applies to the lives of our people.

We do this by understanding our culture, asking practical questions, presenting a clear transformation pathway, and having a single call to action.

#1 Understand Our Culture

Culture is the background operating system that dictates attitudes, behaviors, and decisions. Society has a culture, our communities have a culture, and our churches have a culture. In order to make our sermons apply practically in the lives of those we are speaking to, we have to understand the operating system, or culture, they are coming from.

The Apostle Paul was a master at this. He often would communicate to people from the cultural context they were living in. For example, he communicated to the Corinthians differently than he did to the Romans and Ephesians. Paul understood the value of speaking in the cultural context to make his words mean something to his hearers.

In the same way we need to understand the culture of our hearers in order to make our sermons more relatable, more impactful, and more practical. When we understand the culture, we know the issues our people are facing and we can communicate the practical application of scripture to their issues specifically.

#2 Ask Practical Questions

Many time when we are preaching, we have the tendency to talk about concepts we find in scripture and expect members of our faith community to apply it to their lives. Unfortunately, communicating concepts doesn’t always translate into practical application.

Using questions is an excellent way to help people see the concepts of scripture in an applicable way, however we can’t just ask conceptual questions. We need to ask practical questions.

Practical questions help people think about practical action. Conceptual questions seldom translate into action, but they are better used to convince people they need to take action. When we are asking conceptual questions we are building a Biblical case for change, however, we need to follow that up with practical questions to get them thinking past the concept to actions they need to take the following week.

#3 Clear Call to Action

This may be where too many sermons fall short. In my experience preaching sermons and listening to preachers, I feel we are good at presenting a salvation call to action because of the vital importance it holds to personal transformation and eternal relationship with Jesus Christ. We need to apply the same skill to having a clear call to action beyond salvation.

What is the primary action you want to communicate from your sermon? Is it to answer the call of service? Is it to give more consistently? Maybe you are giving a call for community engagement? Or you are calling your people to be more confident. How does that look in their everyday lives?

Our sermons should be driving toward a single call to action that is clear and understandable. As Andy Stanley says, it should be memorable and portable. The call to action should be something that can be remembered with ease and lived out in simplicity. It needs to go beyond “love your family” because that is too conceptual and isn’t a clear action step.

Instead, call your people to love their family by having a game night together, or making them dinner, or taking a vacation, or saying something encouraging to each member every day. Give your hearers easy to apply calls to action they can put into practice immediately.

Conclusion

When the people in your faith community see the scriptures come alive, they will return consistently to the Bible. In your preparation, spend the time dividing the word of God and crafting an engaging sermon, but don’t stop there. Finish by developing a practical application showing the Bible is alive, active, and practical. Reveal how the ancient text carries with it the power of God to change lives…daily.