Preacher's Block

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

Recently, I shared a couple tips about creating tension in your sermon (you can check out past preaching tips here). Here’s another tip about a practical way to create tension in your sermon:

You can create tension in your sermon through props. A couple weeks ago, I walked to the pulpit with a plastic sword and a backpack on. The tension I created was: “What is Hunter about to do with the sword and backpack?” I knew that the sword was going to be distracting, so about 3 minutes into my sermon, I pulled out the sword and used it as an illustration. That resolved the conflict about the sword. But I didn’t think the backpack would be quite as distracting, so I let people sit with the question of “What’s the backpack for?” until the end of the sermon. About 20 minutes in, I finally explained the backpack. Sometimes it’s best to hide a prop until it’s ready to be used because it would be too distracting otherwise. But other times, it’s best to have people wonder what the prop is for, which will engage them more in the sermon until you resolve that tension.