7 Tips to Help You Preach Persuasively

This article is part of the 7 Tips series. A Worthy Challenge Do you want to teach your people the Bible in a way they truly learn it, teach it in a way that makes sense and engages your people, ultimately compelling them to follow Jesus? Then you need to preach persuasively, just like Paul. (2 Cor. 5:11) At the same time, we are not simply pursuing public speaking tricks to make the audience think highly of us or deceive ourselves into thinking we can persuade people into the kingdom in our own strength. Again, to take such a stance is to be in lockstep with Paul. (1 Cor. 2:1–5) All we are really trying to do is to honor a beautiful text by working at speaking in a comparably beautiful way. That is, at the heart of it, what persuasion is. Persuasion is important, and persuasion is challenging. But it is a challenge worth pursuing. Here are seven tips (amongst an ocean of them) to help you preach persuasively. 1. Aim for clarity over cleverness. As I hinted at above, there are three things anyone can do when speaking out loud in public: teach, please, and move. All are important in preaching. We must teach people what God’s word says and what it means. This requires good exegesis—a...