Expository Preaching – Introductions

The Introduction

Some preaching theorists instruct preachers that the Introduction should be developed as the final step in sermon construction. As Vines and Shaddix argued, “Most preachers find it rather difficult to introduce something before they know what they are introducing.”[1] This indeed is logical advice, but again, it really comes down to a preacher’s style, study habits, and understanding of his listeners.

There have been many times when after I had determined the propositional direction of a sermon that ideas for introducing it began to pop into my mind. I had not yet developed the preaching outline or completed an in-depth analysis of the text. But I felt comfortable enough to move ahead with developing the Introduction. The point simply is this: Theoretically it is probably best to save the creation of the Introduction as the final step. There are times, however, when our creative juices really get going and we go ahead and write out the Introduction. Should our analysis of the text reveal an exegetical misunderstanding on our part, we can simply discard or alter the Introduction we developed.

What to Remember Before We Introduce

As noted, when the preacher begins his in-depth analysis of the ancient text he will see things that strike his spiritual fancy. Many preachers will find themselves enamored with things such as the chiastic or grammatical structure of the text, historical truisms of a narrative, and/or indirect or secondary teachings of a passage. Because (as I tell my students) there is something different about us preachers (we love things our listeners typically do not) we tend to want to share, as soon as possible, all the things we discovered in our study.

We tend to want to share background data, grammatical aspects, and any other tidbits we considered important. The problem is that oftentimes these findings are indeed important, but if they are not related to what we are proposing (the proposition) then they should not be included in the message. If we do use them, then they should be referenced only briefly. This is why I tell my students to never, Never, NEVER open any sermon with historical/background/grammatical data.

The reason we want to avoid this preacheristic tendency is blaringly obvious. Again, we preachers tend to be fascinated with biblical data that our listeners simply do not (or can not) relate to. David Henderson argued that there remains a significant disconnect between many preachers and the modern listener. He noted that people in today’s culture are bombarded by media messages and talking heads with messages they want listeners to accept. He further noted that the disconnect between preachers and listeners is often caused by the “meaningless” terminology preachers tend to use. He stated, “The problem is that they (the listeners) … don’t hear it (the Christian message) put meaningfully”[2] (parentheses added). Henderson reinforced the severity of the issue.  Well-meaning, and even God-fearing, people come to church services eager to hear a word of encouragement that will help them make sense of their lives. But, too often, they leave empty-handed because the preacher did not speak, at least to them, in meaningful terms.[3]

I will restate that all of our communication is not and cannot be designed to meet the day to day needs of our listeners. The relevanteers desire to relate biblical passages to practical and daily aspects of people’s lives such as: paying bills, raising children, handling stress, etc. The problem with such an approach is that many, if not most; biblical passages do not deal with those matters to significant degrees. In fact, I would argue that most passages simply remind the Christian of our need to live our lives for the glory of God. We are reminded to pray for the will of God to be accomplished, to see the Kingdom of Christ advance, and to see lost souls transformed by the glorious gospel of Jesus!

Having noted the above, however, Henderson’s concern should be seriously considered. Even passages that focus on advancing God’s kingdom can be explained in meaningful and spiritually productive ways. Therefore, it is in the Introduction of the message that the preacher will immediately begin to show the meaningfulness of the message to the listener. He will do this, NOT by sharing background data, but by staging the value of the passage in a creative Introduction.

More on Introductions in the posts to follow.

Tony Guthrie, PhD.

[email protected]

[1]Vines and Shaddix, Power in the Pulpit, 219.

[2] David W. Henderson, Culture Shift: Communicating God’s Truth to our Changing World, (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1998), 21-22.

[3] Ibid., 22.