The words of wise men are heard in quiet more than the cry of him that ruleth among fools. (Ecclesiastes 9:17)

You might not think of Jordan Peterson as an entertainer. His events involve a lecture that lasts an hour and a half to two hours. He isn’t bombastic or edgy but deeply philosophical. If you watch one of these online, you’ll notice the rapt attention that his audience gives him – so quiet, if someone scratches their head, you can hear the dandruff fall. If you wish to attend one of his events, be prepared to shell out a minimum of $65. If you want to sit up close, the price will be closer to $150. This coming Friday, you can hear him in Nashville. There are less than 1,000 seats left in the 20,000-seat Bridgestone Arena. Or you could wait until next week and attend his show at the ~6,000-seat Radio City Music Hall. You’ll pay about $112 for a seat, but you’ll need to hurry – there are about 200 seats left.

Perhaps we could dismiss this as the product of fallen man seeking a saving answer to our depravity through moralistic philosophy. Preachers might struggle to fill an arena if they gave the seats away for free. Even the mega-churches tend to draw them in with music, then slip in a short, entertaining talk that some might identify as a “sermon.”

My point is not that preachers should try to be Jordan Peterson. The man is highly skilled at walking along the cliff’s edge of godless philosophy without slipping into Biblical Christianity. I mean to point out how manifestly false it is that you can’t hold an audience’s attention unless you include lots of bling and keep the sermon to a half hour. People will listen if you have something to say.

Previously, I presented the science of punchy preaching. Every discipline includes both a science and an art. The science refers to the technicalities, the fundamental rules that make the discipline what it is. I didn’t try to be exhaustive but to give a thumbnail sketch of what makes a sermon interesting. Now, I want to present the art of punchy preaching – the “how-to” practicalities if you wish to be interesting.

Consider what interests you in a speech or presentation. I’m guessing you like to hear stimulating material presented compellingly by a speaker who believes what they are saying and wishes to help you with it. At least, that’s what I enjoy, so we’ll go with that. Here are the four “E’s” of interest: energy, engagement, enrichment, and edification

Energy

If you know me, you might think it strange for me to argue, given my naturally bland personality. After all, I spent my first twenty years of preaching ministry with one shoe nailed to the platform. If I ever moved during preaching, older members felt their pacemakers kick in.

I’ll confess to being a recovering garden stake. But, I insist, energetic preaching doesn’t require you to set the rug on fire from your pacing. You don’t need a clown act to qualify as an energetic preacher. What you really need are overflowing passion buckets. You need “buy-in” – not from the congregation, but from yourself. Don’t preach because you are a preacher with a preaching service scheduled. Let the passage grab you, light you on fire, and blaze up in front of your church.

It can be hard to preach what you don’t feel. Ancient rhetoricians distinguished between enargia and energia, both of which give energy to a scene. According to the ancients, enargia involves vivid depiction that makes your audience feel what you don’t necessarily feel. Your description is so powerful that it produces an emotional response from the audience. Energia doesn’t require any supplement because the speaker feels intensely the emotion he wishes his audience to feel.

I think preachers should learn how to describe a scene or an event in a way that stirs the people and makes them feel it. But in preaching, we are dealing with eternal truth. The message of the Bible is a matter of life and death. We ought to feel intensely the urgency of our message. If we don’t, we should find something else to do.

Diligent study is essential. But sometimes, we should get out of the study and onto our knees. Set aside the commentaries, put away the study tools, open the passage, and plead with God to fill you with the message. I have an A.W. Tozer quote posted on the sidebar of my blog. Speaking of the indwelling Holy Spirit, Tozer describes a piece of iron left in the fire long enough to have the iron in the fire and the fire in the iron. When we let the Word of God dwell in us richly, the fire will be in the iron.

The text should set the preacher on fire, glowing with life, vitality, vigor, passion, and holy fire. He should be poised like a piece of steel, coiled like a spring, and when it comes time to preach, he should unleash the message God used to fire his soul.

That is interesting.

Engagement

The church should have the distinct idea that you are preaching to them, not someone else. Your high school speech teacher would stress eye contact’s vital role in this. I don’t disagree. I’m amazed at the number of preachers who don’t look at their audience, who look over their heads or at the back wall. No wonder the people feel as if they have been preached “at” instead of preached “to.”

A preacher should engage with his church. Notice the reaction to your sermon. Are people falling asleep? You can get mad or, you can get interesting. Are minds drifting? Scan eyeballs, and you’ll know. If you already do this, you know what I’m talking about. If you don’t, let me invite you to a time of discovery. Engage with the people as you preach; the information you gather will astound you. You will notice when a point confuses them. You’ll know if you touched a nerve. You will see who is troubled, who is persuaded, who supports what you are saying.

I’m opposed to hostile preaching. That doesn’t mean I reject negative preaching. When the Bible is negative, the preacher should be negative. But the preacher shouldn’t be antagonistic. Provoke them to love and good works, yes. But don’t goad them or needle them or aggravate them.

Instead, bring them along with you. Consider yourself to be in the same place where they are. You are a sinner in need of the same sanctifying grace as them. I fully believe this is why God chooses to set a man from among the people in the pulpit. God wants a preacher who is fully acquainted with the struggles of holiness and commitment and dedication so he can better direct the church on how to overcome in these areas.

Eye contact is good; I would argue that it is necessary. But if you wish to engage your people, you must engage with them. Catch their tears, cheer their hearts, unburden them, share life with them, be involved with them outside the pulpit, and you will find it much easier to engage them from the pulpit.

You aren’t a hired gun brought in to put on a display of gunplay in the dusty street at sundown. You’re a shepherd in the service of the Chief Shepherd, called to walk among the sheep and lead them from pasture to pasture. Know their needs, their struggles, and their delights. Then, you are prepared to engage them.

I don’t know how to prepare a sermon without thinking of the people hearing it. I hope you don’t either. Don’t let yourself get distracted by the adversaries. Don’t allow resentments to creep into your sermon prep. Seek to bless the people, think of how your sermon might do that, and then prepare.

Engagement outside of the pulpit makes engagement in the pulpit quite simple. Early in my pastoral ministry, it dawned on me that if the Lord tarried and allowed me to continue in the same church for forty years (my prayer request), the people would hear me preach at least 4,000 sermons. For a moment, I was struck by the folly of this. Who wants to listen to the same jokes, illustrations, and quirks that many times?

It was in these thoughts that I came to see God’s wisdom. He isn’t interested in entertainment. He aims for engagement. He knits hearts together. He intertwines our lives. About half of the parents in our church grew up in our church. I taught them in high school. Now, I’m teaching their kids. That kind of investment builds fruitful relationships.

Make sure your preaching connects with your people. People find that interesting.

Enrichment

People are more interested when they think listening to you will add something to their lives. For this, I’m going off of my own YouTube habits. We won’t discuss the poison of “shorts” on YouTube or “reels” on Facebook. But I doubt I’m all that different from most people. If the video is more than ten minutes, I make a pretty quick decision about whether or not to keep listening. I don’t care to spend an hour watching something I doubt will add anything to my life.

Every part of Scripture is profitable. Some preachers excel at drawing out the profit in the passage and presenting it to the church. But some could make a piece of chocolate cake seem unappetizing.

They won’t be enriched if you don’t know how the passage should enrich the people. If the passage hasn’t already blessed you, it won’t bless the people. This is why, again, I urge preachers to spend more time meditating on the passage. By all means, use a commentary. But then, set the commentaries aside and let the Word of God dwell in you richly.

I don’t have stellar recommendations for infusing your sermons with rich content. The Bible is rich, so you don’t need to invent anything to get there. Unfortunately, we have grown so accustomed to shallow, superficial preaching that we hardly know how to look beneath the surface. My suggestion? Find the richness of the passage for yourself first. If you have been helped, you will find it easier to help others.

But I would plead with you, preacher. Don’t be content to stand up and rattle off all the facts from the passage. Know the historical setting and the thrust of the passage. But look for the things that will enrich the people. Before you stand up to preach, have a good idea of what you are excited for the church to hear. When you can’t wait to tell the church, they will find that interesting.

Edification

Most people will listen if they think you want to bless them. If you seek to bless the church, the people will be more interested in what you say. I sat through the most recent State of the Union address, where our President lectured the nation for an hour. Apparently, we’ve been bad. Very bad. I listened out of civic duty rather than genuine interest. I found his tone tedious and off-putting. But it also reminded me of the several times when I was a little crotchety from the pulpit. I’m not inclined to sit and listen while you dress me down unless I can’t find an excuse to leave. I’m guessing you feel the same way.

Treat your sermons like a weight-lifting session. Weight-lifting builds muscle by tearing up the bad muscle. You can expect some initial soreness if you slack off for a while. But as they say, pain is weakness leaving the body. If you lift, you know the feeling. You hate it, but you love it (as the P90x guy said).

Good preaching builds even as it tears down. The building is more evident after some sermons than others, and a preacher shouldn’t swing for the fences with every at-bat. I heard a stat once: in the course of a year, most preachers preach maybe three or four “good” sermons – sermons that everyone talks about. Think of it like your wife’s cooking. All her meals are great, of course. You might not remember what she cooked Tuesday three weeks ago. She isn’t cooking one for the storybooks every meal. But there are a handful of grand slam home runs in there, and you could probably tell me about all of those.

The church is built by faithful application of the pure Word of God to the people’s lives. When a new building is being constructed, progress seems very slow for a while. Then, the changes are startling and dramatic. Then, once again, progress seems almost imperceptible.

Preaching is a lot like that. You’ll drive many nails and hang a lot of drywall before the building is finished. Look for ways to profit the church with every sermon. If you have that in mind as you stand before the church, the people will be built. And the things that build us interest us.  

Preachers have more than a few hurdles and obstacles to overcome. Churches grow accustomed to the cadence and tenor of our voices until we sound like the teacher in Peanuts. They know most of our jokes and might grow a little weary with our humor. They have many distractions; sometimes, we are the distraction. We have annoying idiosyncrasies and bad habits. They have troubles and trials. Sometimes, they are upset with someone. Sometimes, they have a big event planned for immediately after the sermon. Holding their attention three or four times a week, fifty-two weeks a year, can be tricky.

But preacher, you have one job. Connect them to God through His Word. That’s a great work. We deal with the most essential subjects, the most vital truths, the life-altering, life-giving Word of God. Surely, it is worth the effort to enter the pulpit alive with the truth, poised, ready to deliver, invested in the message and the people, rivers of living water flowing from our bellies, intent on building up the most holy faith of the people of God. If we enter the pulpit that way, the people’s interest will come quite naturally.