The Pastor’s Helper

By the time you finish reading this article, you’ll have ten tips for immediately improving your preaching! This is an interview of Rick that appeared in Preaching magazine.

Preaching: Where does preaching fit into the purpose-driven matrix?

Warren: The bigger the church gets, the more important the pulpit becomes because it is the rudder of the ship. Where else do you get an hour of undivided attention with all these people on a weekly basis?

Most pastors do not understand the power of preaching. But even more important than that is they don’t understand the purpose of preaching.

I probably have the largest library of books on preaching in America. I’ve read over 500 books on preaching. Maybe some seminary might come close to that, but I am sure that no pastor comes close to 500 books on preaching.

And as I’ve read them, the vast majority do not really understand that preaching is about transformation, not information.

So to understand the purpose of preaching, first you have to go back and look at a few things.

First, what is the purpose of God for man, and second what is the purpose of God for the Bible? Because once you understand those two things, your purpose for preaching becomes very clear.

What is the purpose of God for man? Well, the Bible tells us in Romans 8:29, “For those He foreknew He predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son.”

God’s purpose from the very beginning of time has been to make us like Jesus. It has been from the very beginning.

In fact, in Genesis He says to let us make man in our image. That has always been God’s purpose — to make man in His image. Not to make gods but to make us godly. To have the character of His son, to be conformed into the image of Christ. So He wanted to make us like Himself.

In Genesis there was the fall — Jesus came to restore what was there before. So the goal of all preaching has to be to produce Christ-likeness in an individual. Is that person becoming more and more like Jesus?

Now, what is the purpose of the Bible? Well, it says in 2 Timothy 3:16-17, “All scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be thoroughly furnished unto every good work.”

People misread that verse most of the time. The purpose of the Bible is not for doctrine, not for reproof, correction, or instruction in righteousness.

Those are all “for this” in the Greek. For this, for this, for this, in order that. The purpose is in order that.

So doctrine in itself is not the purpose of the Bible. Reproof in itself is not the purpose; correction and training are not the purposes. The bottom line is to change lives. “That the man of God may be thoroughly furnished unto every good work.” So every message must be preaching for life change.
“I hear people talk about life application preaching as if it were a genre or type of preaching. But I think if you don’t offer life application in your sermon, then you’re not preaching. It may be a lecture, it may be a study, it may be a commentary but it is not preaching.”

I hear people talk about life application preaching as if it were a genre or type of preaching. But I think if you don’t offer life application in your sermon, then you’re not preaching. It may be a lecture, it may be a study, it may be a commentary but it is not preaching.

To me, preaching is for life change, and I’m not the master of this. Your model shouldn’t be John the Baptist. It shouldn’t be John MacArthur, or Rick Warren, or Spurgeon, or Calvin or anybody. Make Jesus your model.

In my seminar on preaching, I keep coming back to, “Now let’s see how Jesus did it. Now, look how Jesus did it.”

You take the greatest sermon in the world — which is the Sermon on the Mount — and He starts off, “Let me tell you eight ways to be happy. Happy are you if you do this. You are happy if you do this.”

Then He talks about anger: “don’t get angry.” He talks about divorce: “don’t divorce.” He talks about worry — let me give you reasons why not to worry: “it’s unreasonable, it’s unnatural.”

He talks about all of these practical things and then He goes, “Now, if you put this into practice, you are a wise man. If you don’t, you are a fool.”

The Bible says the Pharisees were amazed because He preached as one having authority. He preaches 100% application. My model is Jesus.

So, my goal is not to inform, but to transform. Unless you understand that, your messages tend to be based on the traditional style of teaching.

Preaching: How do you think through this whole issue of application as you are dealing with the text or the biblical theme? Walk me through that process as you think through how this applies to the lives of people.

Warren: The big thing is building a bridge between then and now. You have interpretation on one side, you have personalization on the other side, and in the middle you have the implication. The key is always finding the implication of the text.

The interpretation — commentators tend to live in that world.

Personalization — communicators tend to live in this world.

It’s a fine line and you can fall off on either side. It is easy to be biblical without being contemporary or relevant. It is easy to be relevant without being biblical. The test is right there in the middle, walking that fine line.

We don’t have to make the Bible relevant — it is — but we have to show its relevance.

What is irrelevant, in my opinion, is our style of communicating it. We tend to still use the style from 50 years back that doesn’t match who we are trying to reach today.

I start with personal application.

Nearly 20 years ago, I wrote a book on Bible study methods, on how to apply the Bible. It sold a couple hundred thousand copies. In fact, Billy Graham picked it up and gave it to every evangelist in Amsterdam. In it I talk about a dozen different ways to apply scripture, so you start with your own life and you make applications there.

A lot of it is just simple stuff like: Is there a sin to confess, a promise to claim, an attitude to change, a command to obey, an example to follow, a prayer to pray, an error to avoid, a truth to believe. Is there something to praise God for?

So, I start looking at it like that.

I also go back to the paradigm of 2 Timothy 3:16. Doctrine, reproof, correction and instruction in righteousness are basically these four things:

* What do I need to believe as a result of this text?
* What do I not need to believe as a result of this text?
* What do I need to do as a result of this text?
* What do I need to not do as a result of this text?

That is doctrine for reproof, for correction, and instruction of righteousness. So, I use that format. Start with personal application, then you go for the implication — what people need in their lives.

I believe every pastor eventually gets to application. I’m just saying he needs to start with it, not end with it.

A lot of guys need to start where they end their sermon. They will do about 80 to 90 percent explanation and interpretation in background study, and then at the end there is a little 10-minute application.

Now, that is OK if you have a highly motivated group of people who just love Bible knowledge. But the Bible says there are a couple of problems with Bible knowledge.

In the first place, it says that knowledge puffs up but love builds up, and the Bible says that increased knowledge without application leads to pride.

Some of the most cantankerous Christians that I know are veritable storehouses of Bible knowledge, but they have not applied it. They can give you facts and quotes, and they can argue doctrine. But they’re angry; they’re very ugly people.

The Bible says that knowledge without application increases judgment. To him who knows to do good and does not, he sins. So, really, to give people knowledge and not get the application is very dangerous.

“If you go and look at the Bible and you start taking the books of the New Testament and find out how much of the Bible is application — it will really change the way that you preach.”

If you go and look at the Bible and you start taking the books of the New Testament and find out how much of the Bible is application — it will really change the way that you preach.

For instance, I once preached through the book of Romans for two-and-a-half years, verse-by-verse. I do both verse-with-verse exposition — which I call topical exposition — and I do verse-by-verse exposition, which is book by book.

That is two kinds of teaching for two different targets and two different purposes, and they are both needed for a healthy church. To say you only need one, I think is ridiculous. One is far more effective for evangelism and one is far more effective for edification.

Romans is the most doctrinal book in the New Testament. Yet, how much of Romans is really application?

Chapter one, doctrine.

Chapter two, doctrine.

Three, doctrine.

Four, doctrine.

Five, doctrine.

Six, application.

Seven, application.

Eight, application.

Nine, doctrine.

Ten, doctrine.

Eleven, doctrine.

Twelve, application.

Thirteen, application.

Fourteen, fifteen, sixteen — application.

So you have a book of 16 chapters and 50 percent is application. So even the most doctrinal book of the Bible is half life application.

Then you go to Ephesians. Half of the book is doctrine, half is application.

Colossians, first half of the book is doctrine; the second half is application, 50 percent.

You get to a book like James — 100 percent application.

Proverbs, 100 percent application.

Sermon on the Mount, 100 percent application.

So my cry is: pastors just do more of it. You already know that you have to encourage your people to apply scripture to their life; you just need to do more of it.

If that means cutting back … well, I think sometimes in our preaching we are far more interested in a lot of the details and backgrounds than people are.

A guy who spends three weeks on one verse is missing the point of the verse. Truthfully, it’s like looking at the Mona Lisa with a microscope. Every single word — God didn’t mean for it to be read that way. The preacher is missing the point of it.

Pastors say, “I don’t do topical preaching,” but when they take two weeks for two verses, what are they doing? They’re doing topical preaching. They’re just using those verses as a jumping off point.

Preaching: How much of the sermon should be application versus explanation of the text.

Warren: I personally believe 50 percent. Bruce Wilkinson once did a study of great preachers. He went back and studied Spurgeon and Moody, Calvin and Finney, a variety of Calvinists and Armenians.

Then he studied contemporaries like Charles Stanley and Chuck Swindoll. He discovered that those guys used 50 to 60 and sometimes 70 percent application in their sermons.

What we normally do in the structure of a message is that we do interpretation and then application of a point, then the next interpretation and the next application, the next interpretation and the next application.

I am suggesting that if you want to reach pagans, you just reverse that procedure. You still get both — it’s just the way you do it.

So instead of getting up and going through a long explanation on the Sermon on the Mount passage about worry, I instead stand up and say, “Isn’t it a fact of life that we all deal with worry?

“Well, today we’re going to look at six reasons why Jesus said that we shouldn’t worry.” Then you make your application the points of your message.

People don’t remember much. If you’re motivated, you remember about seven bits of information; if you’re not motivated you remember about two. So if they are only going to remember a small amount, what do I want them to remember?

Well, I want them to remember the application, the lessons. Not a cute outline of the text.

The alliterated outline is not going to change their lives. So I say make your applications your points because the points are all that they are going to remember.

It is more important to be clear than it is to be cute. So I’ll say, “Here are the three things that you have learned.”

Here is the contemporary application and then you go back and cover the background. It is the exact same thing — it is just the order — and it increases retention and interest.

Now understand that I am pastoring a church in California, a church where maybe 77 percent of the people were saved and baptized at Saddleback. Without question, Saddleback is the most evangelistic church in America. We baptize more than 1,000 people every year.

How does that happen? It happens when your focus is preaching for transformation, for changed lives.

Preaching: How do you prepare your sermons?

Warren: When I’m preparing a sermon, I do a little thing called, CRAFT, which is a methodology that I developed.

C stands for collect and categorize;

R is research and reflect;

A is apply and arrange;

F is fashion and flavor, and;

T is to trim and tie it all together.

As I go through these things, first I sit down, and I start praying. I say, “Who is going to be there?” I start to think of one person. When a church gets as large as Saddleback, numbers really are irrelevant. There is no statistical difference between 15,000 on a weekend and 16,000 on a weekend — it’s just a big crowd!

So what motivates me is not the number; what motivates me is changed lives. I start thinking about people that I know who are going to be there. People that I have invited, like my doctor, an atheist Jew who came for Easter.

I start thinking: “Now what is going to help this guy know about Christ?” and I will go through that little formula and think about the points, which were actually quite simple.

I remember one Easter message I preached a couple of years ago in particular. Point one was open your mind to God’s power. I talked about the fact that if your life is going to be changed, it has to start with a change in your mind — which, by the way, is the purpose of preaching. Open your mind to the power of God.

The second point was open your heart to the grace of God.

The third point was open your life to the love of God.

Now that is extremely simple. But I expand upon that by using metaphors and scripture. I use an average of 16 verses per message.

We write the verses out; we put them on an outline. I do that for several reasons.

First, non-believers don’t bring their Bibles to church.

Second, even if they did, they wouldn’t know how to find it.

Third, it saves time. I once timed a guy, and he took about 8 or 9 minutes just saying, “Now turn to this and turn to this.” I don’t have that time. I want all of the time for preaching. I preach an average of 50 to 55 minutes.

I use about 14 to 16 different verses. I will use different translations, which is another reason I will use an outline. Sometimes the New American Standard says it better. Sometimes The New Living Translation says it better. Sometimes the NIV says it better. So I use that.

It also allows me to help my congregation retain what they are hearing because you can have the people read it aloud together.

We probably read more scripture aloud than the average church does because I have it on an outline. I can say, “Now, let’s all read this together.”

I’ll say, “Circle that word, underline that, and star that.” Then they can take it home with them and put it up on the refrigerator, pass it on to friends or teach a Bible study on it.

I’m a firm believer in actually writing out the message, outlined with scriptures written out. If you are in it for life change, it just makes it a whole lot easier for people to use.

I actually started that particular message on Easter by saying “You know, if you are not a particularly religious person, if you don’t feel particularly close to God, if you feel pretty disconnected, if you rarely attend church, congratulations! This is your holiday!”

Rather than making people feel bad, I will say, “I am glad you are here. If you are going to go to church at all, I am glad you came here. And guess what — you don’t know what you’re in for!”

And then I said, “What is Easter all about? It is an invitation to a changed life. Would you like a changed life? What does it take?”

Right at the start you roll it out — we are here for establishing a relationship with Jesus Christ.

Preaching: Are there some particular insights you’ve gained over the years that help you preach for life change?

Warren: There are ten ideas that really form how I figure life can change.

The first principle is that all behavior is based on belief. If you ask, “Why do I do what I do?” it’s because you believe something behind it. If someone gets a divorce, it is because they have a belief behind that which is causing them to get a divorce — “I think I’ll be happier divorced than I will not,” or whatever. If you have sex outside of marriage, it’s because you have a belief behind it.

The second principle: behind every sin is a lie of unbelieving. This has profound implications for preaching. When you sin, at that moment, you think you are doing what is best for you. You think you are doing the right thing but you have been deceived. When your kids do something dumb, at that moment, they think what they are doing is smart, but it’s dumb. The Bible tells us that Satan deceives us.

The third principle is: change always starts in the mind. This principle is taught all the way through the New Testament. Romans 12:2 says, “Be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” The Bible teaches clearly that the way we think affects the way we feel, and the way we feel affects the way we act.

Since change starts in the mind, and sin starts with a lie, and behavior starts with belief, then principle number four is: to help people change you have to change their beliefs first.

You don’t work on their behavior; you work on their beliefs because it always starts in their mind. That is why Jesus says you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.

Number five is: trying to change people’s behavior without changing their beliefs is a waste of time. The illustration I use is that of a boat on auto-pilot. Say I have a boat on a lake that’s on autopilot, and it’s headed north. If I want it to head south — I want to make a 180 degree turn — I want to do a “repentance” on that boat, then I have two options.

First, I could physically grab the steering wheel of the boat and physically force it to turn around and it would turn around.

But the whole time it is turned around, I am under tension because I am forcing it to go against its auto-pilot. Pretty soon I get tired, and I let go of the wheel — I go back to smoking, I go off of the diet, I stop doing whatever. I go back to my habitual ways of stress relief.

So, the better way is to change the auto pilot. The way you change auto pilot is by changing the way they think. Now, that brings us to repentance.

The sixth principle is that the biblical word for changing your mind is repentance, metanoia. Now when most people think of the word of repentance, they think of sandwich signs, turn or burn, or they think repentance means stopping all my bad actions.

That is not what repentance is. There is not a lexicon in the world that will tell you that repentance means stop your bad action.

Repentance, metanoia, simply means changing your mind. And we are in the mind-changing business. Preaching is about mind changing. Society’s word for repentance, by the way, is “paradigm shift.”

Repentance is the ultimate paradigm shift, where I go from darkness to light, from guilt to forgiveness, from no hope to hope, from no purpose to purpose, from living for myself to living for Christ. It’s the ultimate paradigm shift.

And repentance is changing your mind at the deepest level of beliefs and values.

Number seven is: you don’t change people’s minds, God’s Word does. So we bring people into contact with God’s Word. I can’t force people to change their mind. I like 1 Cor. 2:13; in the New Living version it says, “We speak words given to us by the Spirit using the Spirit’s word to explain spiritual truth.” There is both a Word and a Spirit element in preaching, and often we leave out the Spirit element.

We talk about spiritual warfare. I don’t think spiritual warfare is like demons. I think the Bible says spiritual warfare is tearing down mental strongholds.

By the way, that’s why you’re exhausted after preaching. If you are trying to pull down strongholds, you’re in a mental and spiritual battle that is going to leave you exhausted. After I do five services every weekend I’m a puddle — there’s nothing left!

Principle number eight is: changing the way I act is the result or fruit of repentance. Technically, repentance is not a behavioral change; it results in behavioral change. Repentance is what happens in your mind. So it doesn’t mean forsaking your sin. That is why John the Baptist says produce fruit in keeping with repentance.

Why would you need to produce fruit? Because the fruit is the action. The fruit is the behavior. Paul says in Act 26:20: “I preach that they should repent and turn to God and prove their repentance by their deeds.” Okay, so deeds are not repentance. But is that going to change your mind?

Principle number nine is that the deepest kind of preaching is preaching for repentance. And that means life application preaching, instead of being shallow, is the deepest kind of preaching. Shallow preaching, to me, is doctrinal application or interpretation with no application — biblical background with no application.

For 24 years now, the secret of Saddleback is every week I get up and try to take the Word and apply it so that it changes the way people think about life, about God, about the devil, about the future, about the past, about themselves and about their mission in life.

If you go through the New Testament, you will find that repentance is the central theme in the New Testament. When I teach a seminar, I will read all of these verses:

Matthew 3:2, John the Baptist, “repent for the kingdom of heaven is near.”

Jesus began to preach repentance in Matthew 4:17.

The disciples went out and preached that people should repent.

Peter said, “repent and be baptized every one of you.”

Paul said, “now he commands all men to repent everywhere.”

John in Revelation said, “repent.”

You just need to go through the New Testament.

Principle number ten is this: in order to produce lasting emotional life change, you have to enlighten the mind, you have to engage the emotions, and you have to challenge the will. Those three things have to be present in life application preaching. There is a knowing element, there is a feeling element, and there is a doing element.

This takes a lot of just being sensitive to the people because sometimes they have to be comforted and sometimes they’ve got to be challenged. I can often get that wrong, you know.

This is one of the big weaknesses in our preaching. People are unwilling to humbly stand before others and challenge their will. A lot of guys are great at interpretation. They’re pretty good at application, but they’re not really willing to stand there and call for repentance.

Now I preach on repentance on every single Sunday without using the word because today the word is misused and misunderstood. So I talk about changing your mind, and I talk about a paradigm shift.

But really, every message comes down to two words: will you? Will you change from this to this in the way that you are thinking?
“Our culture is falling apart. If you’re not preaching repentance in your message, you’re not preaching.”

Our culture is falling apart. If you’re not preaching repentance in your message, you’re not preaching. No matter what we cover, it has to come back to “change your mind” — because your mind controls your life.

Preaching: What you are describing is preaching strategically. A strategic approach requires planning. How do you plan that strategy in terms of what you are going to do in preaching?

Warren: I have a preaching team that I meet with. When you start a church, you literally do everything. When I started Saddleback I set it up, I took it down, and I stored all the stuff in my garage. From the beginning of the church, it has been my goal to work myself out of a job. I now have a preaching team that shares the pastoral teaching and preaching.

I plan my sermons with that team. I am a collector of ideas, collecting future sermon series and ideas. There are some series that I’ve been collecting on for 20 years that I still haven’t preached on.

For instance, I did a series through Psalm 23 a few years ago. I had collected material for over twenty years. I knew that one day I was going to preach on Psalm 23. So when I get a quiet time insight, when I hear a good sermon and I hear a quote, I throw it in that file.

When I get ready to plan a series, I’m not starting from scratch. I have what I call my bucket file. My bucket file is not real organized. It is just stuff tossed in there. Once you get enough to start making a series — you go, “I want to do this series on the family or I want to do this series on 1 Peter or I want to do this series on the second coming” — you start the file. Right now I have maybe 50 series in the hopper.

Then as it gets toward the end of the year, I will pick about a dozen of those that I think, “This is where God wants the church to go in the next year,” and we prayerfully go away on a retreat. We pray and say, “What direction does God want the church to go? What needs to be done?”

One of the ways you know what needs to be preached is to name the five biggest sins in your church. If divorce is a big sin in your church, guess what you’re not preaching on. If materialism is a big sin in your church, guess what you’re not preaching on.

So looking at just the sins of the people in your church and in your area, you can come up with a lot of pretty good wisdom. I will get a dozen or so messages on that.

I happen to believe that the audience determines God’s will for what you are supposed to preach on. In other words, do I believe in the sovereignty of God? Absolutely. Do I believe in the foreknowledge of God? Absolutely. That means God already knows who is coming next Sunday before I do; God is already planning on bringing those people next Sunday for me to share with.

Why would God the Sovereign give me a message totally irrelevant to the person He’s planning on bringing? He wouldn’t.

So I start saying, “God, who is coming?” If I’m dealing with teenagers, that is one kind of message. If I’m dealing with seekers, then that is another kind of message. If I am dealing with mature believers, that is another kind of message. If I am dealing with people who need to be mobilized for ministry … We look at that, we pray and then we will do a tentative outline of the series for the year.

We try to balance it in several ways. I try to balance the purposes. I will always do a series, somehow, dealing with worship, a series on evangelism, a series on discipleship, a series on ministry and a series on fellowship.

I will cover those five things every year because those are the purposes of the church.

Now I can do that with a book series, I can do it with a biographical series; I can do it with a topical-thematic approach. It doesn’t matter the style, but I will balance the purposes.

I will balance the difference between comfort and challenge — afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted. I like to balance Old Testament and New Testament. I like to balance a little biographical, a little didactic, and a little doctrinal.

Now what I love to do is to teach theology to non-believers without ever telling them it is theology and without ever using theological terms. For instance, I once did an eight-week series on sanctification and never used the term. I did a four-week series on the incarnation and never used the term. I did an eight-week series on the attributes of God — the omniscience, omnipresence, omnipotence — and never used the terms. I just called it “Getting to Know God.”

I love to teach theology to non-believers without them knowing what it is; I find that a challenge. So it’s a good balance.

We lay it out, and then we never stick to it. If I know that I’m going to cover these ten to twelve themes or books in the year — that is where we are going in the year — I finish a series and then say, “Which one, Lord, do you want to do next?”

We will pick it out, we will do it next, and then we will go, “Which one, Lord, do you want us to do next?” So there is kind of planning and kind of spontaneity at the same time.

It allows for God to move us in the middle of the year. I know some guys, it doesn’t matter if it’s Christmas, they say, “We’re going to stay on that book!” To me that’s silly.

Preaching: How long is a typical series?

Warren: I think the ideal series is four to six weeks. I have often stretched it to ten weeks. Obviously, the Ten Commandments are 10 weeks. I did a 10-week series on the Doctrine of Grace.

But really, if you go more than four or six weeks on a series, people start wondering, “Does he know anything else?” There is a fatigue factor. One lady said, “My pastor has been in Daniel seventy weeks longer than Daniel!”

So I think the best series would be a month series – four sermons – not necessarily twelve a year. We almost never do that because you get into it and you want to go another two weeks because there is still more material. It’s a fluid process.

Preaching: The last time I was in a Saddleback worship service you did a “tag team” sermon with one of your preaching team members. That’s an example of what you call “features” in preaching. Tell me more about that idea.

Warren: We now live in a society where the attention span is dramatically reduced. Yet I don’t think you can really change a life in a 25-minute message. I think it takes a more significant amount of time.

If you’re moving a person — trying to change the way they think — you have to lead them through a process that takes more than 10 or 15 or 25 minutes. But in order to hold their attention, what we do is add in what we call features. We have five or six different kinds of features.

The most common feature is the personal testimony. A lot of churches use drama; we honestly don’t use that much drama because most of it isn’t that good — it looks more like a camp skit.

Why would I use a dramatic fictional story when I have the real-life story of the changed life sitting there in the chair? We have had hundreds and hundreds of people give their testimonies — we actually fit them into the message.

So if I’m preaching on “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” I’m looking at a series of testimonies right now. One of them is a woman who came out of prostitution and was saved here at Saddleback Church. She talks about how she learned that, “I was not God, my life was a mess and I had to give it all up.”

I’ll fit that five to seven-minute testimony right into the point. Rather than tell an illustration I’ll say, “Now I want you to hear this.” That’s one feature — that breaks it up.

Another feature is what we call “tag team preaching.” We developed that simply because we’re doing six services, and it’s pretty tiring to carry that long of a message six times. Six times 55 minutes is a long time!

But what we found is that a different voice will often help keep the attention. I will write the message but then I will assign a point to one of my teaching pastors. That often really adds a dimension of freshness that helps keep the people listening longer.

We have used film clips, we have used some dramas, and we have used some object lessons. One of my favorite features is called “point and play,” where we separate the points by music. We always do this at Easter and Christmas Eve.

I learned this when I was a consultant on the DreamWorks movie, “The Prince of Egypt,” to help keep it biblically correct. One day I was in the hall at DreamWorks, and I noticed something on the wall called an “Emotional Beat Chart.” They actually monitor the emotional highs and lows of a movie.

I counted up and there were nine peaks and nine valleys in this 90-minute movie — about every ten minutes, there’s tension/release, tension/release. Well, you can do that in a message: you can do it with humor, you can do it with an illustration, or you can do it with a feature, but it allows us to keep people’s attention longer in order to give them more material.

Preaching: You mentioned earlier the distinction between topical exposition and verse-by-verse. How do you see the difference between those models?

Warren: Preaching labels are futile. We often hear modifiers used for preaching. We say there is topical, textual, life situational and expository. Frankly, I think that’s a big waste of time. I have kind of given up on trying to label other guys’ sermons, much less my own.

Why? Everybody has their own definition. They are meaningless. I have more than 500 books on preaching in my library. Everyone has their own definition for those concepts. I started a hobby a few years ago of collecting definitions of the term “expository preaching.”

Right now I have more than 30 definitions of the term, many of them contradictory. In fact, at one well-known seminary, I got three definitions of expository that were contradictory by three preaching professors in the same seminary!

William Pinson in Twenty Centuries of Great Preaching said, “It is impossible to define the terms textual, topical and expository. There is no modifier to explain all that God does through preaching or the way that He uses it.”

The only question that matters is: does the sermon involve itself with the truth of God’s Word?

When it does you have genuine preaching and all of the modifiers of the term become superfluous. If you use God’s Word to bring light and change peoples lives, then preaching has occurred regardless of the message used.

Given that, here is my definition of expository preaching, and I think that it’s about as valid as anybody else’s of the 30 or so that I have collected:

“When the message is centered around explaining and applying the text of the Bible for life change.”

That definition says nothing about the amount of text used, and it says nothing about the location of the verses, because I think those are man-made issues. I read frequently we need to get back to the New Testament pattern of verse-by-verse preaching.

Well, there is one problem. There is not a single example in the New Testament of it. For example, take one verse where the Gospel writer said, “Jesus starting with Moses ….” The fact is Jesus always taught in parables.

What do Finney, Wesley, Calvin, Spurgeon, Moody, Billy Graham, Jesus, Peter, and Paul have in common? None of them were verse-by-verse, through-the-book teachers. Not one of them.

Now the issue becomes: how much of the text is a text? That is really the issue.

How much text is a text? It depends on who you are talking to. If you talk to G. Campbell Morgan, he often uses an entire book of the Bible.

If you talk to Alexander MacLaren he would usually preach on a paragraph.

If you talk to Calvin, Calvin’s general rule was to use two to four verses almost always — two to four verses.

Spurgeon usually chose an isolated phrase — not even an entire verse, an isolated phrase.

Of course, Martyn Lloyd-Jones would often preach on just one word. He has a famous sermon, “But God.”

I don’t think that God cares at all whether you preach ten verses in a row or ten verses from His Word from different places, as long as you adequately expose and exposit those verses once you are there. I don’t think God cares whether they are in a row or not, as long as you adequately feel that the text wants you there — that you don’t use it as a jumping off point.

Now the “topical” sermon that just takes a verse and doesn’t even deal with it and just goes off — of course, that is not preaching.

I believe there are two kinds of exposition. There is verse-with-verse exposition, which is taking verses from different parts of scripture. That is valid; in fact there are some themes you have to do that.

If you are going to preach on abortion, then you need to take verses from several passages of scripture. If you are going to preach on the second coming, you need to take verses from several passages of scripture.

I believe in verse-by-verse book exposition, too. I do a combination of both.

Preaching: What is the biggest mistake that you have made in preaching?

Warren: Well, I have made more mistakes … we have done more things that didn’t work at Saddleback than did. We are just not afraid to fail.

I think the biggest mistake that I made in the first couple of years of my preaching here at Saddleback is that I didn’t realize the importance of drawing the net.

Forsyth says that what the world needs today is the authoritative Word of God preached through a humble personality. I think that a combination of confidence and humility goes together. I have learned that the secret of spiritual power is integrity and humility.

It is not vision.
“A lot of people talk about vision being a big thing to grow a church. Vision is a dime a dozen. A lot of people are visionaries who are not growing churches. What God blesses is first integrity, walking with integrity, walking blameless. That we are exactly what we appear to be.”

A lot of people talk about vision being a big thing to grow a church. Vision is a dime a dozen. A lot of people are visionaries who are not growing churches. What God blesses is first integrity, walking with integrity, walking blameless. That we are exactly what we appear to be.

The other is humility. Now humility is not denying your strengths; it is being honest about your weaknesses. We’re all a bundle of strengths and weaknesses. We all have strengths. We all have weaknesses.

Paul could be very obvious about his strengths. He would say, “Follow me as I follow Christ.” Because he was also very honest about his weaknesses: “I am chief among sinners.”

I used to look at Paul and go, “Man I could never say that.” Follow Rick Warren as Rick Warren follows Christ? It seems so arrogant. But then I realized that people learn best by models. At least I am making the effort.

I am not perfect, but you know what? I’d rather have people follow me than follow a rock star! I am at least making the effort, and they know what my weaknesses are because I am honest, and I am authentic with the people.

I believe in confessional preaching. I believe that you should confess both your strengths and your weaknesses. You don’t dwell on yourself, but in many ways the minister is the message. The word must become flesh. The best kind of preaching is incarnational preaching.

The most effective message is when I am able to get up and say, “This is what God is doing in Rick Warren’s life this week. This is what I am learning. This is what I need to believe, what I need not to believe, what I need to do, what to not do.”

There is a ring of authenticity about that.

Preaching: When you get up to preach, what do you carry with you?

Warren: I carry, of course, my Bible, my notes, and my outline.

Preaching: How extensive are your notes?

Warren: A 55-minute message is four and a half-pages one side. I use trigger words. I use transition words. It is very important that I always write out my closing prayer — word for word — because I find that when I get to the end of the message, I am starting to get fatigued.

And when you do a message six times — you say the same thing with passion for six times — your mind just starts shutting down on the fifth or sixth sermon, so you need pretty extensive notes.

Now, I could memorize the message and not use notes. To me that seems like an enormous waste of time, because in the same amount of time used to memorize it, I could be in personal ministry, in leadership, in other things. I don’t think that people care that much. God uses all styles.

We’ve got a guy on our staff who is a manuscript preacher, but he delivers it with vitality so he is not just reading it. I do walk around a lot, so I can look at something and it will keep me going for two to three minutes, but I do use notes.

Preaching: In your preparation process, do you develop any kind of manuscript yourself?

Warren: No, I don’t do a manuscript partly because I don’t want it to sound like a manuscript. It’s an oral presentation. Having been both a writer and a preacher, those are two different skills — two totally different skills.

The guy who thinks he can take his sermon and just put it into a book — forget it. It is not going to be that good of a book. Because the things that make good oral communication — like repetition, redundancy, coming back to the point — just sound goofy in a book. So I don’t want to sound like a book.

What I will do is to sit at the computer and talk it out as I type. I am very concerned about how it will sound. This is a big key. Many pastors have good content, but they don’t know how to turn a phrase. They don’t know the power of timing.

You know, all over America, baseball pitchers stand the same distance from home plate, throw the same ball, to the same plate. The difference between pros and amateurs is delivery. No doubt about it.

The difference between a good sermon and an outstanding sermon is delivery. I know this because I preach the same material six services every week and get different results depending on the delivery.

The first message of the weekend is never the best. You are not as comfortable with the material. You are going to become more and more comfortable. As you say it repeatedly, you’re going to become passionate about it and so you learn timing, you learn delays, you learn delivery.

Preaching: If you had just one or two words to encourage or recommend something to other pastors, what would they be?

Warren: One of them is never stop learning. All leaders are learners. The moment you stop learning, you stop leading. Growing churches require growing pastors. The moment you stop growing, your church stops growing. I don’t worry about the growth of the church. I never have.

In fact, it probably will surprise most people that in 24 years we have only set two growth goals — and they were both the first year of the church! What I focus on is keeping myself growing and motivated, and if I am on fire, other people will catch it. So you keep growing.

And I would encourage people to listen to pastors. Find a style that is similar to what you think you are and learn from it. It is OK to have models. I remember in my early days listening to pastors, particularly in my revival days. I preached more than 120 revivals before I was 20. I was in the typical full-time evangelist, youth evangelist mode. I would listen to guys. You’ll develop your own style eventually. You can’t help but be you.

I also really am a firm believer in “let’s share our material.” I know some guys say you have to be original or nothing. Plagiarism is borrowing from one person, research is borrowing from five, and borrowing from ten or more is sheer creativity! Creativity is the art of concealing your source! It is forgetting where you got it.

I would say we are all on the same team. Nobody can be brilliant every week, so we need to share. If you get a good idea, send it to me! I’m not proud — I’ll use it. I learned a long time ago I didn’t have to think everything up for it to change a life. In fact, a person who thinks he has to think it all up himself really has a pride problem.

The Bible says that God gives grace to the humble but resists the proud. Why? Because the proud are unteachable. “I didn’t invent it here, then I can’t use it.” That’s silly.

So I want to use outlines, illustrations, quotes, ideas from different people. We are all on the same team when we get to heaven. When we get to heaven, we’ll rejoice for the souls that have been saved.
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