9 Ways to Improve Your Preaching or Teaching
By: Bode Akinola
- Assume you need to improve.
If you genuinely believe you have no room for improvement, ask others until you find someone who’s honest enough to help you (in fact, that person might tell you that you sometimes come across as arrogant).9 Ways to Improve Your Preaching or Teaching
2. Consider the last time you intentionally improved your approach.
If your last intentional improvement occurred years ago, or if you can’t remember when it was, you may have become stagnant as a communicator.
3. Read the Bible and pray every day. 9 Ways to Improve Your Preaching or Teaching
This suggestion is basic, but it matters. Preachers and teachers who read the Scriptures only to prepare a lesson have reduced the Bible to a textbook for others. Those who communicate without praying regularly are operating in their own power.
4. Forsake sin in your life.9 Ways to Improve Your Preaching or Teaching
Again, it’s foundational yet imperative. Sin drains our passion for God and robs us of our power for communicating the gospel. Open the Scriptures with a clean heart, though, and it’s pure joy.
5. Spend more time with your congregation.
Your job is to teach the Word, but it’s more than that: it’s to teach people the Word. In fact, it’s a particular people: your class or your congregation. Know them so well that you can help them apply the Word to their lives.
6. Enlist a prayer team.9 Ways to Improve Your Preaching or Teaching
Don’t assume others are praying regularly for you as you preach or teach. Enlist prayer warriors who will intercede specifically for your holiness, your preparation, and your teaching. Know you will be proclaiming the Word under the power of God.
7. Study preaching and teaching.
Search for online preaching or teaching classes (e.g., my president at Southeastern Seminary, Danny Akin, offers a free course on “Interpreting and Teaching the Bible: Even veteran preachers and teachers can usually learn from reviewing these materials.
8. Listen to other preachers.
If you think you preach or teach too long, listen to someone who is more concise. Learn the value of stories and illustrations by considering what you remember from a sermon. Take note of good introductions and conclusions. Absorb from others without trying to become somebody else. 9 Ways to Improve Your Preaching or Teaching
9. Invite others to help you prepare.
Enlist others to walk with you as you put together your sermon or lesson. Invite them to critique your exegesis and your proposed outline. Preach the sermon to them first. If time won’t allow you to take this approach each week, try it at least once a month.
