Four Reasons Why Sermons Fail

Estimated reading time: 7 minutes

There’s an old story about a country preacher who found a box in his wife’s closet containing three eggs and 13 dollars. He asked his wife the reason for the box and its contents.

She responded: “Every time you preach a bad sermon, I put an egg in the box.” Thinking that three bad sermons were not too bad of an average, the preacher asked, “Why the 13 dollars?” She said, “Well, every time there are 12 eggs in the box, I sell the dozen for a dollar.”

No preacher plans to “lay an egg,” as they say. But the truth of the matter is that many of our sermons fail. They do not accomplish what sermons should or what we wish them to achieve.

Lloyd M. Perry’s Biblical Preaching for Today’s World contains a section that caught my attention as a young preacher. It’s titled “Why Do Some Speeches Fail?” In it, he sets forth a list of reasons that I have adopted for a lecture I gave regularly to my seminary students entitled, “Ten Reasons Why Sermons Fail” (Lloyd M. Perry, Biblical Preaching for Today’s World (Moody Press, 1973, pp. 174-176). Though not exhaustive, here are four reasons among the top ten that our sermons may fail as we preach to our churches throughout our ministry.

1. The preacher fails to distinguish between an essay and a sermon

A general malady has crept into our pulpits where preaching pastors preach from a manuscript instead of preaching extemporaneously. The major error is that they write for the eye, not the ear. The distinctions are immense. When we write, we write for the eye and take in the mind’s ability to focus on long arguments and sentences. The reader can also review or recap as he reads. When we preach, we preach for the ear and the eye, but we focus the eye on the person, not the manuscript. The best preaching is when we focus our eyes on our audience, not on our manuscripts—when conversing with our hearers personally and directly. This is called “extemporaneous preaching” and is the most effective way of communicating.

Learn to preach in this manner, and your sermons will rarely fail.

2. The preacher elaborates the obvious

Sermons that contain information the people already know or that is apparent in a casual reading of the text will result in boredom and loss of interest. It leaves the audience with no desire to return.

Some preachers try to solve the problem by elaborating with more words and cross-references. Wordiness without meaningful content is, as the saying goes, “A lot of noise, a lot of thunder, but no rain.”

There are a few ways we can make our sermons more interesting. Look for ways to get to the meat of the text and the sermon, to go beyond the obvious but not beyond the text. This calls for the hard work of interpretation and research of the passage.

The more we know about the passage, the more excited we will be about it and the more interesting we will make it for the audience. We can also vary the mode of reasoning in the sermon and the use of structure.

A certain “sameness” will develop in our sermon structure and delivery if we are not careful. Remember that “variety is the spice of life.” Create anticipation through the introduction and the proposition. Work toward a solution without giving it away. Our sermons should not only educate and edify but also exhort and excite.

3. The preacher assaults the dignity of the audience

How the preacher views his audience can determine the sermon’s success or failure. Our attitude toward our hearers can “turn them off” to us. Preachers can misinterpret the role the preacher or pastor has with his audience. We can develop a sense of “superiority” over them, and thus, we can assault the dignity of our audience. Our audience can discern what we think of them by how we address them. We either win them or lose them.

We can “preach down” to people by giving the impression we are better than they are. And we may forget that we are just servants of the Lord and servants of the people.

Notice how often the apostle Paul refers to himself as “a bond-servant of Christ Jesus” (Rom. 1:1). His exhortation to the Ephesian elders reveals his attitude towards them: “You yourselves know, from the first day that I set foot in Asia, how I was with you the whole time, serving the Lord with all humility and with tears and with trials which came upon me through the plots of the Jews” (Acts 20:18-19). We must remember the summary Paul made: “What then is Apollos? And What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed” (1 Cor. 3:5).

We can adopt a “holier than thou” attitude, treating our audience as worse sinners than ourselves. A preacher is but a converted sinner (cp. 1 Tim. 1:12-15). We dare not forget our past, nor should we ever forget our daily struggle to live a holy life. People and preachers share the same sins, struggles with what defiles us, and the same Savior who has saved us and will keep us faithful. We need to remind ourselves and our people as we preach that we preachers are also sinners.

Our preaching should not always be in the second person, “you,” but also include the “we” of our common humanity.

A preacher also assaults the dignity of his audience when he insults their intelligence by attempting to show in his preaching that he is smarter than they. In most instances, the pastor may be the most educated person in the church, but should be careful not to make it obvious. We assault their dignity when we use words they do not understand or express truths in ways they do not understand. Preaching aims to take the “mysteries of the kingdom” and make them understandable. God wrote the New Testament in Koine Greek to show us the importance of using everyday language to communicate His truth. John Wesley would share his sermons with the servant girls before preaching them to his people. D. L. Moody counsels preachers to “find the dumbest person in the audience” and preach to them.

The pastor must also be careful not to use the sacred desk as a “bully pulpit” to beat up on people, especially those who disagree with him. He has an authority not shared by the average parishioner, and this inequality is unacceptable when used to preach against a particular person in the audience.

We should not forget that “the populace sides with the underdog.” If we would succeed in our preaching, remember that “preaching is one beggar telling another beggar where to find bread.”

4. The preacher has no definite thing he seeks to accomplish

A sermon fails when it becomes an exercise in futility when the sermon goes nowhere, and when the preacher has no particular purpose of accomplishing with the text or the sermon. Biblical preaching aims to find the point of the passage, explain that specific point, and then apply the point to the audience. If we fail to understand what Biblical preaching is, our sermons are sure to fail.

Consider some of the misconceptions preachers have concerning preaching. Some see “exposition of Scripture” as an end in itself, that preaching is simply reading the text and then explaining the passage without identifying its moral truth or purpose. Some imitate radio preachers who preach “through the Bible” without any real purpose in mind concerning the text of the day. There is no clear proposition or statement of intent in far too many sermons. Still, others preach with no real or clear purpose that they want to accomplish. A sermon is a means to an end, not an end in itself. The sermon seeks to convey a divine truth found in Scripture with the express purpose of God’s people understanding God’s will for them and thus obeying or applying that truth to their lives. If a preacher conveys the meaning of the text and applies it, the sermon has not failed.

If the people understand the point of the sermon and fail to obey it, they have failed, not the preacher.