Page 138 - Homiletics I Student Textbook

George Bernard Shaw best described what a lousy teacher is. He said, “He who can, does; he who
cannot, teaches”. His quote has been shortened to, “Those who can’t do, teach”. In other words, if you
are not able to achieve a goal in life, you can just become a teacher or preacher and teach others how to
do what you cannot do. He was sharing that he feels that those in the teaching profession are inept.

This lesson is about what you need to do to become a lousy preacher. Just apply these simple principles,
and your congregation will not learn and you will accomplish very little as a preacher. Your
congregation may be happy to sit and soak, but very little will be accomplished to advance God’s
Kingdom on earth. If you want to become a lousy pastor, do these things and you probably will succeed.

1. Lack of Preparation.

A poor preacher does not prepare. Normally the pastor
does not start out this way. Usually he works hard getting
ready to teach a particular topic or book in the Bible. But in
a bind, he may pull out a sermon already been done, and
he simply reviews the previous work and floats by with
minimal effort. Soon, he knows the subject so well; he
might spend 5 minutes in total preparation time. After
several sessions, the information becomes stale and the
preacher’s presentation becomes routine. And those that
suffer because of this laziness are the congregation.

Every week you can count on a lousy pastor present the
message in the same way. He will stand up for 45 -55
minutes and just talk. He might even get louder on a point, but his presentation never changes.

A poor pastor may look at the passage in sermon preparation and say to himself, “Oh I already know this
stuff. I don’t need to prepare that much.” Again, the congregation suffers. The lousy pastor does not
take any time to try to be creative in his presentationand utilize visual methods to reinforce biblical
principles.

It all boils down to the fact that a lousy preacher is a lazy preacher because he will not take the time to
properly prepare to preach. He relies on what he has done in the past, rather than motivates himself to
make his presentation better now. Things change every year and there is more to learn. A lousy
preacher does not care to discover new and important information.

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