Preacher's Block

This preaching tip was shared by one of Preacher’s Block’s co-founders, Hunter Bethea. If you’re interested in joining the most focused preachers in the world, sign up here.

This week’s Preaching Tip is something I learned from Eugene Lowry’s great book on preaching, The Homiletical Plot:

It can be good and helpful to create tension (or, as Lowry calls it “upsetting the equilibrium”) in your sermons. This tension is a way of engaging the listener to want to know how you’re going to resolve the tension. As Lowry puts it “The first step in the sermon as preached is to upset the equilibrium of the listeners in such a way as to engage them in the sermon theme.” In fact, when you create tension, some people may think, “I’ve always wondered that!” The purpose of creating tension isn’t to put people into a faith crisis (don’t create that much tension), but rather to make them think and engage them in the sermon.