We're always wondering if people are truly "getting" what we're trying to say -- if our preaching is really practical and applicable. One of my concerns over the years has been that if we're too focused on application (that is, at the end of each sermon we have two or three life-oriented ways people can apply the truth of what we've preached), pretty soon our people are going to have such a long "laundry list" of things to do that they won't do any of it anyway!
After more than 35 years of preaching (and trying faithfully to "apply" the text to daily living) here's the conclusion I've come to: As people sit week after week under the ministry of the Word, they will probably pick up a practical suggestion or two along the way that they find helpful.
But I am coming to realize that the greater impact is far more cumulative than immediate. Here's what I mean by that: Normally after a Sunday service several people will say something like, "Great sermon, Pastor, I really enjoyed it." Occasionally, someone will pick up on a particular point of that week's sermon and want to discuss it further or just make some comment about it. Those reactions are always encouraging; but I've learned not to be too seduced by them. In truth, within a few hours most people (sometimes even me!) will have forgotten most if not all of what I've said!
But over the course of several years I have observed that people seem to pick up on the major themes of my preaching and get the "big ideas" that I've tried to suggest from the texts. And, perhaps more importantly, they've learned how to examine those texts for themselves and develop their own applications. And that's when it's exciting! But it takes lots of time to get there.
There's a caution in this as well. Years ago I read a book by a Princeton Seminary prof, J. Randall Nichols entitled, Building the Word. Nichols suggested that most preachers are only capable of keeping a handle on six or seven catagories of ideas. And he noted that most of our sermons -- despite our attempts to diversify and to preach from all sorts of different texts -- had as their themes these six or seven categories. He point was not that we should try to break out of those categories, but simply that we should be aware of what our particular emphases are so that we can be sure to "spread out" our sermons among them and not be "one note" preachers.
