I understand the stories the pastor told and thought they were interesting, but I couldn't see how the sermon fit together.

-- A 15-year-old's comment during

the writing of this book

Many sermons with good material fall flat simply because the audience doesn't follow the flow of the message. With today's audience listening superficially with a short attention span, there are some basic principles one can use so that the sermon will be (a) heard, (b) understood and (c) remembered.

Our View And Their View One problem is that we preachers think of our sermons in a wholly different way than the audience, in two respects:

(1) During the week we spend a lot of time thinking about our sermons. We study the text, think about it throughout the week, mull over themes, and often go to slee…