This document outlines 8 principles of great preaching: 1) Know your audience, 2) Share stories that advance your vision, 3) Use scripture and Bible stories as the main focus, 4) Exude passion when speaking, 5) Understand and use humor naturally, 6) Regularly interact with non-churchgoers, 7) Vary tone, rate, and inflection to avoid monotony, and 8) Continually work on the craft of storytelling. The document provides examples and explanations for each principle to help preachers improve their skills.

1. 8 Principles to Great Preaching

2. 1. “Great preachers know and understand who
their audience is.”
• “You craft your talk differently when you know
who is going to listen to it.”
• “Good speakers ask what’s my topic? Great
speakers ask who’s my audience?”
• If you know who you’re speaking to, you can
prepare with them in mind. What life stages are
they in? Where are they at in their walk with
God? What is going on in their worlds right now?
All these will help us in preparing and delivering.
• Also, see: Know Your Audience: 22 Life Situations
to Keep in Mind When Preaching

3. • 2. “Great preachers celebrate and share stories that
advance the vision.”
• “Churches are notorious for not celebrating the win.”
• “You share the win by sharing stories.”
• “If you are the preacher of the church, you are the chief
vision caster.”
• I don’t know who said it first, but the saying goes, “What
gets celebrated gets repeated.” A great way to cast the
vision is to tell stories of the vision becoming reality. People
connect to stories. They can see themselves in them and
can quickly make the connection that what someone else
did, they could do, too.
• So ask your leaders, what wins have you seen lately in our
people? You know how they’ll answer if they’ve seen some
wins? With stories of the wins. The biggest thing that holds
us back from not sharing stories of the congregation living
out the vision of the church is not asking.
• Also, see: A Framework for Turning Vision Into Strategy

4. • 3. “Great preachers realize the power of
preaching comes from using Scriptures and
stories from the Bible.”
• “Great preachers make the Bible come alive.”
• It all comes down to preaching God’s word. If we
preach, let us preach the words of God and not
the words of our own. Everything we prepare –
from the introduction, application, action, etc. –
must come after we have examined and
understood the Scriptures.
• We must make the Scriptures the main event in
our messages.
• Also, see: 3 Simple Steps to Preach the Gospel No
Matter the Passage

5. 4. “Great preachers exude passion when they speak.”
• “Passion is important because it shows what’s
important in your life.”
• “A fire in the pulpit soon spreads to the pews.” – C.H.
Spurgeon
• “A career is what you’re paid for. A calling is what
you’re made for.”
• If we’re not passionate about preaching God’s word,
then we have lost sight of the work of God. Every time
we preach, we must remind ourselves of the fact that
“faith comes by hearing” and it is we who God has
placed in the role to preach to the congregation, to
those students, to those kids.
• Also, see: Want to Be Engaging in Your Preaching? 1
Simple Tweak Will Do

6. 5. “Great preachers understand what makes
something funny and they use humor naturally.”
• Three things that make something funny [only need one or two at a
time]:
• Exaggeration
• Surprise
• Truth
• “We use humor so that people’s defenses come down.”
• We’re all somewhere on the sliding scale of funny. Some of us tell
jokes, others of us let the humor just happen in the moment. No
matter how funny we already are, a great thing we can do to
understand humor more is to watch great comedians. But don’t just
watch them for entertainment, ask yourself why you laughed at a
joke. What made it funny?
• Also, see: Finding Your Swing and Finding Your Voice – by Kenny
White

7. 6. “Great preachers regularly interact
with the unchurched.”
• “You will become a better communicator when you
start inviting people to church.”
• When we are making it a point to connect with those
outside the church walls, we’ll look at everything
differently. We will begin looking at that sermon
illustration, that announcement, that lobby like a
visitor.
• People are willing to have spiritual conversations. They
are willing to come to church. We just need to connect
with them.
• Also, see: 6 Parts to Successful Visitor Assimilation

8. 7. “Great preachers vary their rate and inflection so that
their tone and cadence don’t become predictable.”
• “It’s not the number of words, it’s how you vary it.”
• Action step from Dave: Watch yourself on video and find
out how well you do on voice inflection and variance.
• Quick. Normal. Slow. High. Low. Normal. Mix it up. There’s
nothing worse than a monotone preacher. Be a student of
the craft of preaching and communication. If you are… then
you’ll know that strategic variance is one of the big keys to
great sermon delivery.
• We devote an entire section of Preaching Sticky Sermons to
the craft of delivering your sermon intentionally and
powerfully.
• Also, see: Variation in Sermon Delivery

9. 8. “Great preachers work on the craft of telling stories.”
• break down what makes for a great story and
how to tell one well.
• Now, why am I doing this?
• Twofold:
• (1) I want to write fiction in addition to my
other books
• (2) I want to improve as a storyteller for all my
communicating – preaching included.
• “Great preachers work on the craft of telling
stories.”
• Scriptures: Ephesians 6:10