Recipe For A Modern Sermon
1. Start with a joke or too, to help make everyone feel more comfortable and to put the hearers in the right mood.
2. Get out your corrupt modern bible version like the NIV or NASB. Or an even “better” edition would be “The Message” bible. Even a toddler can understand that and who cares if its a little off-base here and there.
3. Be sure to keep your message to about 15 minutes. Anything longer and all your A.D.D. (Attention Deficit Disorder) congregants will either start getting very fidgety or start whipping out their smart phones and iPods.
4. Use an entertaining video – something cute or funny from YouTube. Hey, the simpler the presentation, the better and after all, a picture is worth a thousand words, isn’t it?
5. Keep the bible verses to a minimum unless you are reading from a super-simple version like “The Living Bible”, which you can quote liberally, and then finish the paraphrased bible quote with something like “Now doesn’t that make a lot of sense?”.
6. Throw in several personal-experience stories, even if they are in no way related to your message. They can work wonders for breaking up the monotony.
7. Refer to God as a down-to-earth guy who is a lot like us, not as a holy wrathful Being whose moral purity is way above us.
8. Never talk about sin or how true believers should strive for holiness and Christ-likeness.
9. Blame the devil for all the evil in the world. Don’t blame the depravity of man.
10. Never mention the name of Jesus, except as a the baby Jesus around Christmas time.
11. Never teach about the literal 6 day creation account in Genesis chapter one, unless you have already cautioned your hearers to not take the Bible literally.
12. Never preach about Romans Chapter nine, unless you skip the difficult parts like verse 13: “Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated.”. We wouldn’t want anyone to think that God does not love everybody.
And there you have it! Twelve easy steps for producing knock-out sermons that will entertain all the goats in your audience.