Teaching/Preaching Advice: Part 2, Work Backwards

Second thing: Work Backwards

Once you have picked the portion of Scipture you will preach on, or have picked the topic/Biblical principle you will teach about; pick the one thing you want people to walk away with. In same cases you may have several points (for example if you are teaching on the doctorine of the Holy Spirit you would want to teach on who He is, how He relates to/within the Trinity, and what He does, etc…), but try to keep those points to a minimum and focus only on what’s most important.

Now that you have the topic and the point (s), work backwards from that to determine how you will teach that point and what you will use to illustrate it (storys, props, relevant Scriptures, etc…)

Building a sermon from the ground up is very difficult because once you build one tier of it, you have to build another and another to eventually get to your point.

But if you work from the top to the bottom, all you have to do is drop a few ladders down to get people to the point (conclusion) you intended from the beginning.

This helps you keep your focus while you’re preparing and makes message much easier to understand for those you are speaking it to.

Once you have a clear path defined from the point of the message to its beginning, then you can go back through and add a few more illustrations to make the trip to the top even easier- as long as you don’t make the trip too long.