Finding the one memorable idea in a sermon

What "memorable" actually means

It does not mean clever. Clever is what a sermon idea looks like to the preacher on Thursday. Memorable is what it looks like to a tired congregant on Tuesday, and to them it means one thing: repeatable. A sentence short enough and plain enough that they can say it to their spouse in the car, and true enough that saying it does something.

The test that follows from this is unforgiving and useful. Could someone who heard the sermon say its idea in one sentence, in their own words, without the passage open? If not, the sermon may have been good, but it did not have a memorable idea. It had several ideas, and the congregation kept none of them.

Where the idea hides

The idea is almost always in the passage already. It is hiding in one of four places, and looking in all four is faster than waiting for inspiration.

The repeated word

Read the passage aloud and listen for the word that comes back. In Luke 15 the father runs, and then he says "was lost and is found" twice. In Philippians 1 Paul says "joy" or "rejoice" so often it becomes almost embarrassing for a man in prison. Repetition is the author telling you what the passage is about. Start there.

The turn

Most passages have a hinge: a "but," a "therefore," a "now," a change of speaker, a change of place. The sermon's idea usually lives on one side of the hinge and is defined by the other. Find the turn and ask what changed. "Nevertheless, not my will but yours" is a turn, and the whole Gethsemane sermon is on the far side of it.

The verse you would skip

Every passage has a line the preacher's eye slides past because it is awkward, or hard, or does not fit the sermon that is already forming. The older brother's speech. The husbandry detail. The genealogy. Go back and read that line slowly, because the awkward line is often where the passage stops being a story you already know and starts being one that asks something.

The part that makes you uncomfortable

If a line in the passage makes you want to explain it away, the sermon may be in the discomfort rather than in the explanation. "Sell all that you have." "Let the dead bury their own dead." "I do not permit." The idea is not always the uncomfortable thing itself. It is often what the discomfort reveals about what we want the text to say instead. Preach the tension honestly and the idea tends to arrive.

Four tests for the sentence

Once you have a candidate, put it through these in order. Most sentences fail the first or the third, and the failure tells you how to fix them.

1. Say it to a friend. Out loud, to someone who is not a pastor, or to the empty room if no one is available. If you hear yourself adding "what I mean is," the sentence is not the sentence yet. The thing after "what I mean is" usually is.
2. Say it without the passage open. If the sentence only makes sense with the text in front of you, it is a note about the passage, not an idea from it. Close the Bible and say it again.
3. Say it in ten words. Not because short is holy, but because ten words is about what a congregant can carry to the car. If it takes twenty, find the ten that matter and move the rest into the body of the sermon.
4. Ask whether it asks anything. A memorable idea has an edge: it wants something from the listener, or it wants to give them something. "God is love" is true and asks nothing in that form. "The Father runs to both of his sons, and the question is whether we will come inside" asks something. If your sentence is only a fact, add the ask.

When it will not come by Thursday

Sometimes it will not, and the worst thing to do is manufacture a slogan on Friday to fill the gap. Congregations can tell a real idea from a phrase that was built to be repeated, and the built one does more harm than no phrase at all, because it teaches them that the memorable line is a trick.

Two honest alternatives. The first is to preach the tension: tell the congregation plainly what the passage says, where it presses, and what you are still wrestling with, and let the one sentence be the question rather than the answer. "I do not know why the disciples were more afraid after the calm, and I think we are meant to sit with that" is a memorable idea. It is also true. The second is to preach the plainest reading of the passage with conviction and without a slogan, and to trust that a clear sermon on a clear text does its work whether or not anyone quotes it in the car. Both are better than a manufactured line. You have permission not to be clever.

Where a tool honestly fits

We make sermon prep software, so this should be said plainly: the tool does not find the idea. PastorPrep drafts a sermon in your voice from the outline and the one sentence you give it, and the draft is only ever as strong as that sentence. A weak sentence makes a fluent draft of a weak sermon, which is worse than a rough draft of a strong one. What the tool does do is make the sentence's weakness visible early: when the draft comes back and every paragraph seems to be reaching for a point, that is the sentence failing test 4, and you have found out on Tuesday instead of Saturday. The finding is still yours, and the four places above are still where to look. When you do write the sentence, PastorPrep asks for it before anything else, runs the four tests above on it, and keeps it word for word in every outline and section. It offers a sharper version only if you ask for one, and labels that version as its own.