This post is part of the series on Preaching for youth. In prepping your message for youth, it’s essential to spend some time tailoring it to where your students are at, spiritually speaking. If you don’t, you may end up with a beautiful, well-written message that completely misses its purpose because your audience doesn’t recognize it’s spiritual ‘level’ in what you’re saying.

Spiritual journey

A beautiful way of looking at these spiritual ‘levels’ is to see it as a spiritual journey (1). As we all know, becoming a Christian isn’t a matter of one decision, it’s a longer road filled with several smaller steps and decisions, and sometimes also roadblocks and wrong turns. The spiritual journey of youth then, is the route they take from being spiritually dead (unbeliever) to spiritually fully alive (believer and disciple).

Everyone we meet, including our youth, is at a certain point in his or her spiritual journey. Some may be at the start, barely acknowledging the possibility that there is a God. Some may be at the point where it all starts to make sense and they’re almost ready to commit. And some may be at the point where they’ve decided to follow Christ, but struggle with putting that into practice.

Continue reading Tailoring your message to youth’s spiritual journey

This post is part of the series on Preaching for youth. As stated in an earlier post, ending a sermon well can be quite a challenge. Even if you have managed to keep the youth’s attention all through your sermon, you’ll need to work hard to keep it right till the last words. But the beautiful thing is that with the right ending, you can not only hold their attention, but bring home your key message in a powerful way. Here are six ways to do that:

Continue reading Six powerful ways to end your sermon

This post is part of the series on Preaching for Youth. In my experience, ending a sermon well is almost as hard as finding the right introduction. I’ve seen many a preacher stumble through fifteen minutes of trying to end their sermon, with me cringing in the audience.

As George Sweazy (former preaching professor at Princeton Theological Seminary) once wrote: “The conclusion of the sermon is burdened with two handicaps. The minister prepares it when he is the most tired and the congregation hears it when they are the most tired.”(1)

Considering young people and their somewhat shorter attention span, keeping their attention right till the very end is a challenge. But it can be done. Here’s my advice on how to end your sermon well.

Continue reading How to end your sermon well

This post is part of the Preaching for youth series. The first five to ten minutes of a sermon are crucial. At least, that’s what everyone says. But do you know why? Do you have a clear vision of what you need to accomplish in the introduction of your sermon, in those first few minutes? And do you write your introduction accordingly? Here’s the scoop.

In the first few minutes of your sermon, also known as your introduction (or intro) you need to accomplish three things:

1. get the audience to like you
2. get the audience to care about what you’re saying
3. get the audience to listen

This is especially important when you’re addressing a new audience. They don’t know who you are, they don’t know if they like you, they don’t know if they care about what you’re saying. And you have about five minutes before they make up their mind either way. That means starting great is not just a bonus, it’s essential if you want your sermon to have impact.  So how do you accomplish this?

Continue reading Preaching for youth: the purpose of an introduction