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 and getting these tips sent to your inbox every week, sign up here.

Sometimes, trying to be funny or memorable, us preachers can try to use acronyms or funny phrases to help people remember important parts of our sermon. However, you want to make sure that the memorable acronym/phrase isn’t a distraction from the main thing you’re trying to say. Maybe you’ve been in a worship service where someone keeps using a distracting phrase and all you can think is “Please don’t say that word/phrase again.”

For example, maybe you want to teach on faith, so you come up with a funny formula:

Waiting +
Trust =
Faith

…but all your people see is the acronym “WTF” (if you don’t know, look it up… or maybe don’t).

There is a way to avoid this. Before using an acronym or a funny phrase, make sure to look it up online to ensure that it’s not inappropriate. Mind you, every three and four letter acronym is an acronym for something… I randomly looked up AST and there’s at least 125 things it stands for. But if you search it and every website pulls up the same meaning for the acronym, there’s a good chance that it does mean that.

Here’s hoping this preaching tip can save you from some embarrassment!