Preaching is disciple-making. Our purpose in preaching is to grow fully developed followers of Jesus Christ. We must not neglect the often forgotten word in the Great Commission given to us by Jesus when he called us to teach the people “to observe ALL that I commanded you” (Mt. 28:20). As Paul told the Ephesian elders, “I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole purpose of God” (Acts 20:27). Expository preaching is the best way to achieve the purpose of disciple-making in corporate worship.Every preacher follows a method. The SAFNS funnel is mine. It is not unique to me. Nothing we teach or write about is unique. We stand on the shoulders of others in our ministries. I have taught it at the Bible college level, in the seminary classroom and workshops both here and abroad. I have practiced and honed this method beginning with my first sermon 45 years ago. Here, in summary, is the SAFNS method. Read more…
We preach our hearts out Sunday after Sunday. Nothing much seems to change! Change comes slowly in small-town churches. The same people sit in the same seats occasionally supplemented by a new family in town. Growth is slow with frequent setbacks. Resources for ministry are limited. “Nice sermon, pastor,” people say as they leave. “Good job.” Another Sunday done. All good. Little changes. Lord, is anybody listening?
Satisfaction is the enemy of improvement. We have to want to improve our preaching before we can improve our sermons. A pastor recently asked me about the purpose behind the preaching cohorts. I explained that the objective is to gather with other pastors to improve our preaching. His response was all too common. He said, “I’m pretty satisfied with my preaching. It is something I think I do well at and enjoy doing.” Here is the danger we all face. We start to settle. What we are doing works. Why fix what is working? We become satisfied, so we stop improving. 
Apostolic preaching was intentionally persuasive. Rhetoric is the art of persuasion. Therefore, apostolic preaching was rhetorical without being dependent on rhetoric. Unfortunately, the church in the first few centuries moved away from the apostolic model of limited rhetoric to a culturally popular model of professional rhetoric. As society accepted the church, preachers adopted a professional model for preaching, and the sermon took on the rhetorical style of the culture. Modern sermons, too, can bear little resemblance to the apostolic model in our desire to be culturally relevant. Why? What changed? 
The atheist philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche wrote, “he who knows himself to be profound endeavors to be clear; he who would like to appear profound endeavors to be obscure.” Too many homileticians labor to sound profound as they seek to make their books academic. Thankfully, not David Helm. His book, Expositional Preaching: How We Speak God’s Word Today, is short, lucid and insightful. I have read many books on preaching in recent years and, I must confess, when I picked this one up I wondered if anything worthwhile could come from such a short text. I was wrong. These 112 pages are as helpful a text on preaching as I have read in some time.
Should the main idea of the sermon follow the main idea of the biblical passage in expository preaching? The question strikes at the heart of what we do. Text-driven preaching answers “yes” to the question. The text should drive the sermon otherwise we are in danger of using the text to support our ideas instead of submitting our ideas to the authority of the text. I agree.
Easter Sunday was great. Monday morning, not so much!
Applying the Bible to people today is the toughest task I face in preaching. Listeners want to know what a book written so long ago has to say to them now. It is not hard for the preacher to be relevant. That is the easy part. All I have to do is preach what people want to hear. No! The hard task is showing listeners that the Bible is relevant to their lives. The challenge is connecting the text with the application so that the Bible speaks, not me! The temptation for every preacher is to mishandle the text in our desire to be relevant. Sermons mislead more often in application than information making it our most significant challenge. 