Over the past several years, I’ve noticed political speeches include increasingly more “sound-bite” type statements. Speechwriters know the media will only play short clips of the speech, so they feed them ready-made lines to appear on the evening news. These sound-bites are driven by the campaign’s foundational “talking points” which is why you feel like you hear the same speeches over and over again.
The problem is that most political speeches have become a constant stream of sound-bites without any effort to provide substantive content. On the rare occasion a politician takes time to explain the “why” behind his campaign goals, they get killed by pundits for being “boring”. As a result, most political speeches are pretty shallow these days.
I prefer a speech that mixes important content with memorable sound-bites.
Often, when I preach, I try to have several sound-bite type statements sprinkled throughout my sermon. Not because of the media, but because a short, memorable statement is a good way to wrap up a point and help the hearers take it with them. These statements are usually the last piece of my sermon to develop as they are in many ways the transitions and summations of the key points of the sermon. The danger I have to avoid, however, is the temptation to develop a sermon full of short, witty statements that inspire people and get them excited, but don’t really teach them anything new or direct them toward life change.
As an example of sound-bites in a sermon, here are some of my transitory statements from a sermon on 2 Timothy 2:14-22:
- How disappointing is it to God when the feuds and drama within His church are mirror images of the workplace fights that happen among those who don’t even know him?
- Handle the Bible in such a way that there is no question as to the RIGHT way to live.
- Whatever your talents, resources, position, or possessions; use them in ways God would approve.
- If we are not willing to rightly handle the gifts God has given us, we cannot be useful to him.
- We need to discipline ourselves so that our first response to temptation is to flee.
- Because of faith, God has already declared me righteous, so when I pursue righteousness, I am simply living up to the person God has already declared me to be.
- Faithfulness is demonstrated by consistency over time.
- Faithfulness is choosing to consistently rely on Christ every day. This kind of faithful life is the catalyst for righteousness.
- When I’m consistently relying on Jesus to provide my righteousness, I have no need to take care of myself. Therefore, I can focus my attention on others… on loving them.
- The greatest obstacle we face in pursuing loving relationships is too great a sense of self-love. I cannot completely love you the way Christ loved me if I am worried about fulfilling my own needs and desires.
An added benefit of creating these sound-bites is that they are ready made for social media. I can tweet these, put them on Facebook or create Instagram and Pinterest graphics with them. I might use them to spice up my YouVersion live event or in an all-church email the week after I preach. If my church members follow me on social media, these quick statements are a great reminder throughout the week of how God has spoken to our community.
These statements are not the “meat” of the sermon, they are the seasoning. They won’t provide the protein, but they make the meal memorable. If one of these sound-bites sticks with someone and enables them to receive God’s truth so that It changes their life, then my time spent developing them was well spent.
SERMON|GEEK 