Video Transcript: Sermon Introductions (Henry Reyenga)

Video Transcript: Sermon Introduction (Henry Reyenga)

So how did it go? You wrote your first sermon, two page sermon, you submitted it, you research text, you picked a preaching style. You wrote this submitted it, and maybe you brought it to your mentor to look at. In the first four weeks, in a sense, what we're looking at is just basically the general teaching about sermon construction. Now, in week five, we take the next step, where we are going to go element by element, piece by piece, what all sermons have in common and look more closely at each of those elements. This week, we're going to talk about effective introductions. When you're putting a message together, messages have certain characteristics, as you've learned about in the last four weeks, and one of those characteristics, one of those characteristics are introductions. So when you put an introduction together, it's it's not just coming up in front of everybody and start talking and hoping that the introduction, connects no introduction, takes thought, creativity, and work. When I put together a sermon, in a lot of ways, the introduction, that's one of the one of the things that takes a lot of time. And it takes effort. And sometimes what I do is, I will think about it, maybe read a little bit about the topic. And I will get a whiteboard out. And I'll actually write on a whiteboard. And what a whiteboard is, is you get a marker and you put different words down. 

And I will think about how best to start this message. Sometimes it just takes work. And maybe you've got to surf a little bit on the internet around the topic area. Maybe you need to read a little more, talk to some other people about how would you introduce this topic. The second thing is introductions really need to percolate. And what I've learned over the many years of preaching is the best introductions. I do my thought creativity work early in the week. If I say I'm going to preach this Sunday, and I and I think about that early in the week, and I might write down Hey, I think I'm going to go that angle. Well as the week goes on, I keep thinking about it and praying about it and sleeping on. It's just seems like the introduction percolates. And by the time it's ready for the sermon, that introduction has many of the elements that very closely relate to the text and the topic of the day. One more suggestion I can say is, is put right down in the introduction learning log. And what that is, is just a piece of paper or if you have a smartphone, if you're fortunate to have a smartphone, if a creative idea comes your way, just write it down or on paper somehow log these ideas to sometimes you're walking along in life in a really good idea comes in maybe has nothing to do with the topic of this week or what you're working on. But it's just very creative. And you can see that would be a great way to start a message. 

This is what I want you to pay attention to in week five. First of all, you're gonna look at some blogs by Eric McKiddie. These are basics of a good introduction. Eric McKiddie is very intelligent. He's the senior pastor at college church in Wheaton, Illinois, USA. Excellent man. And he has received he just studies the art of preaching. So look carefully at those blogs. Then we have a regular guest, Andrew Bryant, who will help you with a few tips on speaking and presentation and we always enjoy hearing from him. We have two sermons on authors this week. One of them is Steve Elzinga. And you're gonna look at a message that basically is a home discipleship style message that relates very much to the Getting Started class here at Christian leaders Institute. As most of you can remember, Steve Elzinga is one of the CO presenters in the Getting Started class. So you're going to get an opportunity to see him in action, how you'll take a lot of those ideas of the seven connections and put them into a sermon style culture.

One more sermon author and presenter you're going to see this week is Francis Chan. And he we're going to give too little or one little excerpt in one larger sermon of Francis Chan. And what he brings to the table is a lot of creativity and authenticity. And in that second message, you're going to focus specifically on how he introduces his sermons which are very effective, what happens in the first 90 seconds of his sermon, which is a good inspiration for putting introductions together. You know, this week is a great week to really dig deeper now in your messages. And what I encourage about introductions is not to think that that, that two minutes, three minutes introduction is just something that you tack on in the real meat is the sermon. The introduction takes time and thoughtful prayer, creativity, you put your whole self to the introduction, because here's what I've learned. I've noticed when my introductions are weak, I noticed that the people they like there's a drowsiness that often comes into the room. But when you come to the congregation, and you have a great introduction that you thought through and you're, it's like you put everything on the table right at the beginning, and that is very effective in preaching. So in this week, you're going to look at effective introductions.