What Laypeople Taught Me About Preaching

by

Ordained Ministry

Special to United Methodist Insight | Aug. 5, 2025

When I graduated from seminary in the 1950s, I was sure that a good sermon should last for 20 minutes and contain three points with illustrations, but during 40 years in the pulpit, laypeople taught me some things about preaching that I did not learn in seminary.

My first appointment was to a small church in a mining town in eastern Arizona. I had been there for about six weeks when Bob B. said to me, "Ed, I like your sermons, but you use too many big words that I don't understand." That hurt a bit because I was trying hard not to use the jargon we had used in seminary. Bob agreed to bring paper and pencil to worship and write down the words he did not understand. The next Sunday, be brought me his first list – three words – love, faith, and grace. By "big words" Bob didn't mean long words or technical jargon. He meant important words that ministers use all the time without telling people what they mean. Bob made me develop the habit of explaining “big words" every time I use them.

In my second appointment, a church in a farming town west of Phoenix, Uel M. came out of worship one Sunday and said, "Ed I like your sermons, except that you try to cover so much that I can't keep up with all of it." Where did we get the idea that a three-point sermon is sacred? Even if we were taught "three points" in seminary or learned it from a respected preacher, does that make it what our listeners need or want? Uel made me do a better job by covering less.

My third appointment was to a church in the pineapple country of Oahu. It was hard to find Sunday School teachers during the summer, so one year, we decided to forgo Sunday School and design the worship service to be more "child friendly." About two weeks after I had agreed to this experiment, the Sunday school superintendent phoned and said, "Ed, we have a problem." I said, "What's that?", and she said, "The pastor.  God hasn't made children who sit still for 20 minutes. We think no sermon should be more than 10 minutes." Oh, that was hard work. I had to lay aside so much of the stuff I liked. But it worked. The children listened better, and so did the adults. And I have preached for ten minutes ever since.

My fourth lesson came from a lay preacher we heard on vacation. He began his sermon by saying, "I wrote down everything I wanted to say about this topic, and it comes to 27 pages. That's a bit long, so I'll try to cut out some of it." He should have cut a lot more. But he made me realize that we often ask ourselves the wrong question. Instead of asking, "What do I want to say about this?" we should ask, "What do people need to hear about this?" We preachers usually want to say more than people need to hear either because we are filling in the 20 minutes or because we don't want to leave out "good stuff" that we like.

So, I gradually learned. Study so that you know what you are talking about. Settle on one thing that people need to hear. Address that one idea in words that all the people can understand. Do it in ten minutes or less. And the people will listen.

The Rev. Edwin B. Womack of San Luis Obispo, Calif., is a retired United Methodist elder, serving for 60 years in the California-Pacific Annual Conference and its predecessors.