5 Preaching Mistakes Many Pastors Make

Ever preached your heart out, only to be met with blank stares, yawns, and that one guy checking his fantasy football score? You might be making one of these five mistakes.

Preaching is hard. You’re not alone. I’ve been doing it for over fifteen years and still feel like I have a long way to go. There may be no calling that is greater or more difficult, especially when you carry the five-hundred-pound expectation of preaching a mind-blowing, original sermon every seven days.

Because it’s so hard, it’s no wonder many pastors make small mistakes in the pulpit that lead to a big disconnect in the pews. These common preaching mistakes are often the difference between a memorable message and one you’re happy to forget.

So here are five of the most common that I have noticed, and have often been guilty of myself.

1. Facts Without Fact Checking

Years ago, a pastor friend of mine emailed his sermon to me, asking for feedback.

I read it and replied, “The sermon is great! I wouldn’t change a thing… except that it’s not true.”

The content of his message was good, but his big illustration was based on a fake internet photo. I did a ten-second Google search and learned it was a fraud.

If he had preached this message, how much trust could he have lost? Someone could have come to church for the first time, realized the story was bogus, and never came back! 

If they can’t trust one thing, they won’t trust anything you say.

As Abraham Lincoln once said, “Not everything on the internet is true.” And if you didn’t get that joke, you have a problem, because the internet didn’t exist until long after Lincoln.

You need to bring a healthy level of skepticism to everything you see and read. In a world of fake news, disinformation, and AI-generated deep fakes, we now have to worry about wildly convincing photos and videos.

Near the end of his life, someone sent me a new sermon video from John MacArthur. It looked like him, and sounded just like him. The only problem was that I had heard he was in the hospital. He couldn’t have delivered that sermon. So I double-checked, and I was right. It was all AI. 

This is the reality of the world we live in. Anyone with a computer can clone a voice, alter a photo, or make a video of someone doing something they would never do.

Question everything you hear and see. Fact-check yourself before anyone else does.

When you are preaching, people with their phones in their hands aren’t just reading their Bible app or checking the score of the game. They’re fact-checking you in real time.

You can’t afford to be sloppy, or you’ll instantly lose credibility. Trust takes years to earn, and seconds to lose.

Don’t make the mistake of not checking your facts. And if anything is in doubt, throw it out. I’d rather lose my illustration than my credibility.

2. Points Without a Point

I sat in on a sermon once where the pastor preached too many points. The outline handed to us at the door had so many fill-in-the-blanks that I got lost.

I’m a detail-oriented guy who loves filling in the blanks and following along on an outline. But I had no idea where this man was going because his points were all over the map.

Sure, they were all good points. But I lost the point in all his points.

When your sub-points have sub-points, you are probably getting a little carried away.

Keep your message focused. What is the single big idea that people need to understand from the passage of scripture?

Think of preaching like driving a bus. You need to know where you are taking people and the best route to get there. The big idea is the destination, and everything else should lead your audience there.

When you throw in a bunch of unrelated points, it’s like one of those detours to see “The Thing” or the world’s biggest ball of rubber bands. Awesome to behold, I’m sure, but you were supposed to go see the Grand Canyon? 

Stick to one central point, or you’ll lose people on the road.

If you have other points that you can’t get to, it’s OK. Save them. Those are other sermons for another day.

3. Turns Without Signals

You just told a great story. It was funny, thought-provoking, and inspiring. But as soon as the story ended, you suddenly switched direction and started talking about something else.

Slow down. How did we get from that funny thing your kid said, to some old guy in the Old Testament?

It’s like an athlete juking a defender. It’s great in sports, but terrible in preaching when the defender is your audience and you broke their ankles with a sudden change of direction.

You need to use clear transition statements whenever you change direction or move from one section to the next. 

Think of transition statements like using your turn signal in your car. The signal is not just for you; its purpose is to warn all the other cars on the road that you are about to turn.

Transition statements don’t have to be long and laborious. Often it’s as simple as saying, “That funny thing my kid said reminds me of a story in the Old Testament where a wise man named Samuel said something similar.”

Boom. Transition made. We can all see the signal where you are going now. You plan to connect the story to a similar idea in the Bible. Wonderful.

Don’t overlook how important a simple transition statement is in keeping everyone in the audience on track with you.

And if you find this too hard because you can’t bridge the gap between parts of your message, turn back to mistake number two. Maybe you have a bunch of unrelated points that don’t belong.

4. Ideas Without Pictures

You preach a lot of big ideas, abstract concepts, and sound doctrine. That’s great. But even the best doctrinal teaching without real-world application will lose most church-goers today.

The whole time you’re weaving a theological masterpiece, they’re asking, “So what? How does that affect me?”

Selfish? Yes, but that’s reality.

The problem is that you are preaching abstract ideas without giving them concrete examples that they can tie the ideas to.

Please, keep on preaching abstract ideas, but don’t stop there. Answer the questions you know they are asking.

Say, “So what? How does this impact you and me?” Then lay out some detailed, concrete, everyday examples of how it applies to ordinary people.

Use your words like an artist to paint a picture in people’s minds.

Jesus was the best at this. He would talk about abstract ideas like faith by using concrete pictures of mustard seeds and mountains (Mt 17:20). He explained the kingdom of heaven with the image of a treasure hidden in a field (Mt 13:44). 

Follow Jesus’ example. Use concrete words to explain the more abstract ideas of the Christian faith. Help us see how these heavenly concepts collide with life on earth.

Your people will not only appreciate the practical teaching, but they’ll also begin to appreciate theology more as they see how it works in their world.

5. Jargon Without Translation

When you live in a Christian bubble, like many pastors do, it’s easy to assume that everyone knows all the Christian words, phrases, and secret handshakes. OK, we may not have secret handshakes, but many circles do have traditions when greeting one another.

For example, when someone says “God is good,” they may expect you to reply, “All the time.” Or around Easter, it’s not uncommon to be greeted with “He is risen,” and be expected to respond, “He is risen indeed.” 

We don’t mean it this way, but it’s kind of like a verbal handshake that indicates if you’re in the club. 

Pastors will often use these things in their preaching along with other words that are foreign to anyone who isn’t well-versed in Christian culture. 

You need to understand that if you are saying a lot of words like “Sanctification,” “Transubstantiation,” “Regeneration,” “Incarnation,” or any other five-dollar words you learned in seminary, people will be confused.

If there’s an “ation” in the word, you probably need to define it or pick a different word.

Don’t make people feel like they need a dictionary or a seminary degree to understand you.

Even words that you may think are common knowledge like “Gospel,” “Sin,” “Glory,” and “Salvation” need explanation. Your understanding of the word “sin” may be completely different than what others think.

I am not saying we should jettison these words. Far from it. They are often biblical, rich words that are part of our Christian heritage for a reason. But please, define them when you use them.

I’m not against big words. I went to seminary and learned them all too. Go ahead and use technical terms if you want. All I’m asking is for you to explain big words in simple terms so that you don’t lose people in translation.

You can’t assume everyone in the audience is on the same level as you. They aren’t. If you use too much Christian jargon without translating, you’ll lose newcomers because you might as well be speaking a different language.

So those are five common mistakes I see. But there are plenty of others. So I’d love to hear in the comments, what other preaching mistakes do you see? Let us know so we can watch out. 

And if you want more help, Pro Preacher has tons more resources, tools, books, and courses to help you preach Christ with clarity and confidence.

(This is an update of an article originally published 10.18.18)