Inductive Preaching

Helping People Listen

Ralph L. Lewis, Gregg Lewis

• Publisher: Crossway
• Year: 1983
• Print ISBN: 9780891072874
• eBook ISBN: 9781433519086
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Ministry

"I spend hours in my study and on my knees preparing sermons, but when I preach them no one listens. What's wrong? Why aren't I getting through? Why do I see blank stares, daydream reveries, nodding heads as soon as I open my mouth to preach? I know my messages are biblically sound. I'm sure I'm preaching what God has laid on my heart. But it's not being received. What's wrong? What can I do?"

Sound familiar? If you're a preacher, you probably know the feeling. But it doesn't have to be that way. You can learn to preach in a way that will be readily, even eagerly, received by your congregation.

It's all here: what inductive preaching is, how it works, why it's effective, who's used it—including Jesus, Peter, Paul, Augustine, St. Francis, Wesley, Edwards, and Moody, to name only a few. Also included are:

* Step-by-step guidelines for constructing an inductive sermon

* Two sample inductive sermons

* A list of 96 inductive preachers from 20 centuries

* A strategy for making traditional sermon structures inductive

* A checklist of inductive characteristics.

The principles in this book can dramatically increase your sermon effectiveness—turn apathy into involvement, make listeners out of the listless. Inductive preaching is preaching that works!

Appendix 1
Inductive Preaching—Two Examples

To better illustrate the idea of inductive sermons, two of the author’s own messages are included here.

“Deliver Us?”

This first inductive sermon example grew out of a long personal study of the Lord’s Prayer. The author preached the sermon in the Wilmore United Methodist Church in Wilmore, Kentucky to a congregation that included many seminary and college students.

The sermon’s inductive whirlpool movement follows a question-answer format. The text of the sermon and accompanying notes highlighting its inductive characteristics will follow this brief outline and diagram of the sermon.

Outline: “Deliver Us?”

Unstated, but implied key question: Is this portion of the Lord’s Prayer really relevant to us today?

I. Anybody need deliverance?

Facts, anecdotes, reminders of real life.

Tentative conclusion: The need is all around us.

II. Anybody being delivered in our day?

Numerous anecdotes of contemporary experience.

Tentative conclusion: Many are being delivered.

III. Anybody been delivered in the past?

Examples from history and Scripture.

Tentative conclusion: God has delivered many people in many different ways.

IV. Anybody want to be delivered now?

Contemporary, personal and scriptural proof of the deductive assertion that we all need to pray “deliver us,” that God will honor this petition, and the listeners need only ask. Conclusion: the prayer is not only relevant but essential.

“Deliver Us?”

The implied question here at the outset: Is this portion of the Lord’s Prayer still relevant? helps establish a common ground of questioning.

Sermon Text: “Deliver Us?”

“Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. Lead us not into temptation. But deliver us…”

Deliver us…

Deliver us?

I. First question builds on common ground.

Anybody need to be delivered today? Here? Have you and I outgrown this prayer? Have you and I outlived this seventh petition of our Lord’s Prayer? Is it outmoded? Obsolete?

References to common (weekly) experiences.

Every Sunday we say, “Deliver us.” Sometimes we seem to say, “Deliver us, but now now.” “Deliver us—but not totally.” “Deliver us, but not too much.” “Deliver us, but not too specifically.” “Deliver us, but later.” “In my own way.”

We pray, “Deliver us from sickness; deliver us from suffering; deliver us from fear; deliver us from poverty.” Oh, yes, Deliver us from poverty! Deliver us from unpopularity. Deliver us from hardships. Deliver us from struggle. Deliver us from discipline.

Questions rather than assertions.

Is there anyone here who can’t look up and see need? Is there anyone here who can’t look around and see human weakness? Is there anyone here who can’t see and sigh and say “Deliver us”?

Allusions to personal emotions and felt needs.

Oh, not that you added up all your burdens. Not that you saw all your needs. Not that you summarized all your sighs and struggles. Not that you gathered up all your groans when you said, “Deliver us.”

Aligns speaker with audience! cooperative effort.

But let’s think together about this seventh petition in our Lord’s Prayer. “Deliver us.”

We know the other petitions, don’t we? Give us. We’re not apt to forget that—Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! Give us. Forgive us. Lead us. But “Deliver us”?

Anything you need to be delivered from? Anything you want to be delivered from? Any new levels you want to be delivered to?

More than 400 times the Bible uses this word “deliver.” Liberation theology—rising out of the Third World, the have-nots—in recent years has put its major focus on the Exodus, a deliverance. They say everybody needs to be delivered from today’s political and economic bondage.

References to life experience.

Anybody in our land need to be delivered? Ask in the breaking and broken homes. Ask in broken and breaking hearts. Ask breaking and broken bodies at the hospital. Anybody need to be delivered?

Appeal to experience of listeners: ask, ask, ask.

Ask the broken and breaking lives in jails. Ask in the bars where the broken and breaking dreams lie all about the floor. Ask on the job. Ask in the marketplace. Ask in schools. Ask America’s twelve to fifteen million alcoholics.

Anybody need to be delivered? Ask the frantic, frustrated families of these millions cursed by alcohol. Ask on the highways. The people in the North load up their burdens and go south in their trailers. The people in the South load their trailers with their cares and burdens to travel north. Three weeks later they all go back home, carrying their burdens with them.

Any need to be delivered? Ask the quarter of a million who attempted suicide last year. Ask these 250,000 people who tried to be delivered at their own hand. Any need for deliverance, anybody need to be delivered?

Ask one who has been so overwhelmed by personal problems and the cares of life and family pressures that he cannot speak audible words. He can only look into the face of God and say, “Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God.” Ask him, “Is there any need for deliverance?”

Tentative conclusion: answering question I on the basis of evidence laid out.

Look around and see the love of money, which the Bible says is the root of all evil. Look around and see the secular slant on life. Look around and see the holiday binge, the pleasure-mad society. People are imprisoned in all these. Then ask, Is there any need for deliverance today? Any need at all? Look around and you’ll see the need is universal.

II. Question II asked and reiterated.

The second great question: Is anybody being delivered today? Is it only Gideon? And Daniel? And Joseph? Is it only those in Bible times who know about deliverance?

Why is the word used more than 400 times in the Bible? Is deliverance a key concept in Christian history? Is deliverance a key concept today? Anybody being delivered today?

Contemporary examples.

Some of you have seen along the interstate north of Georgetown what I’ve seen for the last three or four years. Every time I’ve driven by, I see in fading paint on a large storage trailer: Deliverance Revival. Isn’t every revival a deliverance revival?

A few weeks ago I got some mail inviting me to a Deliverance Seminar. For eighty dollars I could be taught how to deliver people from demons. It didn’t say seventy-five dollars went to the Lord and five dollars went to the preacher. It didn’t say what the eighty bucks went for.

But there’s been a kind of exorcist craze—a focus of attention on demons and possession by demons.

The Church too often has left this accent on deliverance to the crackpots. Some have told me they’ve gone to exorcism parties where they’ve tried to cast out the demon of sleep, and the demon of left-handedness, and the demon of comfort, and the demon of laziness. Some claim, “The devil made me do it.”

Some people see a demon under every bush—sometimes when there isn’t even a bush! They remind me of the man with the anti-elephant whistle. He got a bright red whistle and he said, “This is my anti-elephant whistle. Guaranteed to prevent trampling by elephants.” His friend said, “How much did you pay for it?” “Five dollars,” he said. “It’s a great anti-elephant whistle.” And he gave a toot to demonstrate. “Why, there’s not an elephant within 500 miles of here,” his friend said. “Sure,” said the man with the whistle. “See how well it works?”

Some people see deliverance only in terms of the exotic, the spectacular. But is anybody being delivered today?

In a June chapel service for which I was responsible, I asked four young people to share. These youth—both male and female—shared how they’d been delivered, gloriously delivered—from drink and dope and sex and suicide. Delivered from that meaningless and vicious cycle and circle. And there are many other deliverances.

Scores could witness here today. We hear (and we ought to) about sports figures who have found spiritual deliverance—Tommy John, Steve Bartkowski, Terry Cummings. We hear about Chuck Colson, and we ought to. We hear (and we ought to) about singers and actors and other celebrities who have found deliverance.

More contemporary examples.

But some you have not heard about. S.W. was driving home from college along Interstate 75. As he started around a big semi with a trailer, he suddenly thought, “What would I do if my car caught on fire?” He was going along about fifty-five miles an hour in his little sports car, just overtaking this monster of death. His rear bumper just passed the front bumper of this huge leviathan of the road when suddenly his whole cockpit was filled with orange flame.

What did he do? He wheeled to the right, just grazing the front bumper of the tractor trailer, pulled onto the grass, turned off the ignition, opened the door and rolled out onto the ground. Delivered—in the same way he’d been thinking ten seconds before.

A.G. was scuba diving in the Gulf of Mexico. He was having a great time spearing red snappers down by an old shipwreck. Suddenly a gray shadow flicked by him and brushed him. He looked up, saw the sharp tail and knew it was a shark. He looked, but no place to hide.

Then another gray shadow flicked and brushed him. He started his flippers going and headed for the surface. When they hauled him out frantically on the deck, he’d been brushed by five sharks. He almost died of the bends on the deck. But he’d been delivered—five times on the way up.

C.M. was delivered. It was a leisurely Sunday afternoon in Georgia. Walking through the woods a group of boys found an abandoned house, a gallon of gasoline and an abandoned well. They fiddled around and poured the gallon of gas down the well. They ignited a piece of newspaper and dropped it fluttering into the hole. They waited. Nothing happened. They waited some more. Nothing happened.

C.M. leaned over to see what was going to happen just as it reached the “whoof” stage. And the Silica sand of that Georgia well came exploding up, driven through his eyeballs. He was blinded. For a month he couldn’t see the light of day. This summer he finished seminary and you’d never know he had ever been blind at all. Because he’s been delivered. He’s been delivered by the God of all grace.

J.C. was in an auto accident. He’d just finished high school. It was a great lark. After the accident they brought him into the hospital. The examining physician said, “He’s DOA,” dead on arrival. They put him out on a gurney before they took his body down to the morgue.

A Jewish physician on his day off came to the hospital—by accident, you say? No. He came to the hospital and walking by said, “Who’s that on the gurney out here?” They said, “It’s J.C.—high school graduate of last week.”

He went over and stooped down. “Bring the crew,” he shouted. “Red alert—there’s life here,” he said as he swung into action. “Impossible,” they said. “He’ll never be more than a vegetable if he could survive.”

They sent out a prayer call to all the Jewish synagogues, to all the Catholic churches, to all the United Methodist churches in that New Jersey town and people began to pray. The cynics said, “He’ll never be more than a vegetable.”

A few years ago he came to seminary and just to prove he wasn’t a vegetable, he applied to medical school. He was cutting it in medical school when h...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• One: Need
• Two: A Promising Solution
• Three: Old Parts and New Hope
• Four: The Story of Induction
• Five: God’s Way?
• Six: Master Model
• Seven: Web and Flow
• Eight: More Web and Flow
• Nine: Unbeatable Combination
• Ten: In the Study
• Eleven: Behind the Pulpit
• Twelve: End to Our Means
• Conclusion
• Appendix One: Inductive Preaching—Two Examples
• Appendix Two: Checklist of Inductive Characteristics
• Appendix Three: 96 Inductive Preachers from 20 Centuries
• Appendix Four: A Strategy for Making Traditional Sermon Structures Inductive
• Index
• Back Cover