A woman came up to me last Saturday night after I’d spoken for 25 minutes at a leadership banquet. “I love the way you speak out of the overflow.”
Any preacher would love hearing that.
What exactly does that mean, I wondered.
I’ll tell you what I hope it means. When I preach, my subject is so important to me, I could have gone on another hour without repeating the material or boring the listeners.
I hope that’s true.
I think it is.
A few weeks earlier, Mike McGuffee, a leader with the California Baptist Convention, after hearing me address his pastors several times over three days, had said on the drive to the airport, “Let’s see if I’ve figured out your preaching technique.”
“You build your sermon on one main point. You back it up by various scriptures, each one with a story to illustrate it.”
I was complimented. Until that moment, I guess I’d never thought of having an actual “technique” to my preaching. Mostly, it feels like they are slap-dash, a little of this and a lot of that, a good story here and a scriptural illustration there, whatever is necessary to drive home the point the Lord has burdened me with.
The sermon I preached last Sunday morning was made up of 5 points, not one.