How to Preach Real, Relevant, Relational and Revolutionary Sermons

Choosing the Text

OK.  This is harder than you think.  First what is the text.  Where did it come from?  Did you pick it yourself or was it prescribed by the Lectionary?
It is a dangerous thing to pick a text yourself.  What are your criteria for selecting a text?  You have something you want to say?  You have a lesson you want to teach?  You have a point you want to make?  You want to address a particular situation?  These are all wrong reasons to pick a text.  You don’t get to chose what you are going to say the text gets to choose what you are going to say.
Have faith in the text.  Have faith in the Bible.  There is Good News there.  You have to believe it with everything that you have.  Or believe as much as you can with as much as you have.
Use the Lectionary.  Follow a program of prescribed readings.  That way you are free.  You are free to be confronted by the text.  This saves you from the first temptation to manipulate.  Choosing a text on your own always comes with the temptation to choose your subject.  Again you don’t get to choose what you are going to say, the text gets to choose.
That way when some one asks you, “What are you preaching on this Sunday?”  The answer is not, “Redemption,” or “The Christian Meaning of Love” or “Forgiving Your Enemy,” or “The State of Our Heath Care System,” it is Luke 17:1-10 or John 5:23-37.