Nothing is worse than being thirty minutes into a sermon and realizing you have no idea what your pastor is talking about. (Or worse, being the pastor and realizing you have no idea what you are talking about!) You came to church that morning full of optimism and brimming with intellectual curiosity. But somewhere between your pastor’s opening comments and their final “Let’s pray,” your zeal for their sermon died like the Israelites in the wilderness.

Your lack of comprehension may be your fault. But it may be your pastor’s fault. Perhaps your pastor failed to make explicit the question they were trying to answer. More likely, your pastor failed to actually have any questions they were trying to answer. More modestly and less effectively, they may have been simply “talking around” a biblical idea or two. Like love, for instance. Or hope. Or love and hope. Perhaps your pastor had three or four (or perhaps three and a half) things to say about love and/or hope. All of which were in the Bible, but had no organic association that obviously tied them together into a single sermon.

I’ve been a pastor for nearly twenty years, during which time I’ve done a fair amount of preaching. But recently I became a full-time preaching pastor. In many ways the transition has been natural and smooth. But in other ways, the new rhythm of preaching has forced me to reevaluate my preaching strategy. What am I trying to accomplish with each sermon? In short, my preaching can be summarized as “asking and answering good questions.” And by “good questions” I mean the sort of questions your audience should and does (in fact!) care about.

So bear with me while I construct an argument in three parts. First, I will discuss the importance of using the introduction to ask important framing questions. Second, I will list two types of questions that fail to capture the imagination of the target audience, namely Christian questions, and non-Christian questions, and suggest a third type of question, namely human questions, that do reach the target audience. Finally, I’ll close with a few observations about how to use the questions in the conclusion of the sermon.

Start Sermons by Asking Questions

The success of preaching ultimately hinges upon asking and answering questions that your audience cares about. These questions can emerge out of everyday life, such as, “Why doesn’t my youngest child listen to me?” or “What’s the best way to be happy in my marriage?” or “Is there a God and how do I know?” and so forth.

Or the questions can emerge out of the particular passage you are preaching from that morning. Perhaps your text for that morning is about falling away during the end times (Matthew 25); or loving each other (1 John 2:7-11); or about how husbands and wives should relate to each other in the home (Ephesians 5:21-32).

In each instance, the text may invite the listener to reflect on a series of questions relevant to their life. When the questions of the text are straightforward and explicit, your job as a preacher is that much easier.

But quite often, the text of the morning does not provoke any questions in the minds of your congregants. Indeed, it is often the case that the existential questions of the week will weigh heavier on the minds of your congregants than the questions of the text. It’s not that your audience has no questions; they are not bereft of an existential desire to know. It’s more simply that they see no relevant questions emerging from the text you are preaching. The Bible contains thousands of passages that, on the surface, have little seeming relevance for anyone’s life. So now what?

When our congregations fail to be captured by the relevance of the questions raised by the text, our job as a preacher is to identify and compellingly state such questions at the beginning of the sermon in a way that connects the questions of the text to the questions your congregation brought with them into church.

Your audience may not think they care about being ready for the Lord’s return. But they do care about being happy in the future. Help them see that these two sets of questions are organically connected—that really they are the same question.

Don’t rush too quickly past this point. You are here engaged in the most important work of sermon writing. If the framing question isn’t clear and compelling to you, you can be sure it won’t be clear and compelling to your listeners. Linger until you feel the full weight of the question for your own life. Typically, I will not begin writing my sermon until I have identified the question (or questions) I intend to answer with the sermon.

I’ll study the passage, read it in Greek (or Hebrew) if need be, discuss the text with other pastors, and consult the commentaries. But I won’t start actually writing the sermon until I know the question I am trying to answer. And that takes prayer and reflection, and an intimate knowledge of your congregation.

The question raised by the preacher at the beginning of the sermon should arise out of the preacher’s reading of the audience, not merely the text itself. My goal as a preacher is to identify questions brought into the church by the audience, identify answers to those questions within the text being preached, and from there connect the dots between the two. What concerns them? What troubles their families? Their health? Their hope for happiness? What sins do they struggle with? What causes them to despair of God and lose hope for the future? If I can’t find a question in the text that matches with one of these questions, I keep looking. I have no patience for preachers who ram home answers to questions no one is asking.

Most frequently I will introduce the topic of the sermon, and then from there raise a question or two that I intend to answer from the text. I might say something like this during my introductory remarks:

This morning’s text helps us understand how to persevere in faith in the midst of difficulties. Some of you are in that exact spot this week. I know you are, because I’ve been talking to you and praying for you. So let’s see what the Scriptures have to say about how we can find the necessary motivation to keep pressing forward in our faith when opposition gets difficult.

But sometimes finding the questions isn’t so easy.

For instance, I am currently preaching through the Book of Hebrews. I’ve taught through the book at least three times, but this is the first time I’ve preached through the letter. The Book of Hebrews is written to Jewish converts who are facing persecution because of their new faith in Jesus. They are thinking about leaving Jesus and heading back to their Jewish roots. The author of Hebrews takes pen in hand and launches into a book-length argument about why it is better to stick it out with Jesus. The letter is an extended argument about how Jesus is superior to everything they’ve left behind—Moses, the Levitical priesthood, the earthly tabernacle, and more.

In this vein, he starts his letter by asserting that Jesus is superior to angels. But here’s the homiletical challenge. No one in my congregation is thinking about apostatizing to Judaism, nor is anyone confused about Jesus’ superiority to the angels. So even though I understood the text—what it meant and the how it fit into the larger flow of the author’s argument—but I didn’t know how to preach it to my congregation.

If all I had done was articulate the author’s primary point, my congregation would have left church wondering about the relevance to their life. I needed to first figure out the significance to the original readers of Jesus’ superiority to the angels, and then from there figure out what that significance meant for my congregation. What question did “Jesus is better than angels” answer for the original readers? And by extension, what question did “Jesus is better than angels” answer for my congregation? I’ll let you check out the sermon to see how I handled it.

Whose Question Should You Answer?

Questions serve as guide posts that mark the way through the text, and that also help motivate the listener to engage with the sermon on the way to discovering the answer. “How can I have a satisfying marriage?” or “How can I be truly happy at work?” or “How can my family have lasting purpose?” All of this, of course, assumes that the listener actually cares to know the answer to the question you have asked at the beginning. Which raises an important question: Whose question should the preacher set out to answer?

There are two basic (and intuitive) proposals here. The first is that the preacher should try to answer distinctly “Christian” questions. This is the preacher who frames up sermons in ways that are most relevant to the believer (and least intelligible to the uninitiated). This is the pastor who talks about things such as submission in marriage, the timing of the rapture, whether women should be elders, if speaking in “tongues” still applies to today, what New Testament “prophecy” was (and is), the unconditional nature of election, and so forth.

These are all interesting topics, but they are all distinctly Christian topics. Or again, only a Christian would bring these types of questions into church on a Sunday morning. The rest of humanity has no idea what a rapture is, let alone its timing.

The other proposal is to construct sermons that answer distinctly “non-Christian” questions. This moves in the opposite direction. Tired of devoting all of your energy to the “already churched”? Then how about framing your sermons around questions that non-Christians are asking?

Questions on topics like, the existence of God, the reliability of the Bible, the historical veracity of the Book of Acts, how to thrive at home and work, and so forth. These are likewise interesting topics, and they are all distinctly non-Christian questions. Or again, only a non-Christian would bring these types of questions into church with them on a Sunday morning.

So where to focus your preaching? You could try splitting the difference equally between the two. Or maybe a 70% vs. 30% split in favor of Christian topics. In either case wherever you focus your attention will become the focus of your congregation over time.

If you preach regularly in a way that prioritizes distinctly Christian questions, eventually your congregation will be made up mostly of Christians. If you preach regularly in a way that prioritizes distinctly non-Christian questions, eventually your congregation will be made up mostly of non/new Christians.

But what if there is a third way? What if instead of preaching back and forth between these two audiences, you dropped a level lower and instead preached primarily to human beings?

I have been compelled and impacted by folks such as Tim Keller, Tom Wright, and especially C. S. Lewis. What’s remarkable about all three is that they are as equally well-known for helping folks come to Christ, as they for helping folks mature in Christ. How have they managed to have an impact in two seemingly opposite directions? The answer is that they have dedicated themselves to addressing distinctly human questions that lie beneath the Christian vs. Non-Christian divide.

Questions about how to be happy, how to have purpose, how to find a moral center, how to find security and safety, the universal nature of truth, and how to live with hope for the future. These are questions shared by all human beings—Christian, Buddhist, Muslim, or agnostic.

Christians aren’t the only people who desire to be happy, live a life of purpose, and look to the future with hope. Indeed, every thoughtful human being is oriented this way. If these are the sorts of questions you regularly try to answer with your sermons, you will find yourself on good footing—moving easily between the Christians and non-Christians in your audience. The questions you are trying to answer will be the questions that resonate with everyone in the room.

Get beneath the surface of the Christians vs. non-Christian questions. Search for the common touch point that unites all of us in our humanity. Our hopes, our dreams, our loves, our ambitions, our visions for the future.

The wonderful thing about the Christian faith is that our faith gives us the best means of answering these universal questions. Don’t settle for answering distinctly and uniquely Christian questions. (Or distinctly and uniquely non-Christian questions). Sure, you’ll need to answer those along the way. But as much as possible, stay away from building entire sermons around questions that only a sub-set of the human population cares about. Doing so will inadvertently rob your congregation of part of their humanity. You will train them, over time, to think of themselves not as human beings, but as a subset of the human population with distinct concerns.

Concluding with the Questions

Generally, when I am preaching I will get about two thirds of the way through the sermon before I “reveal” the answer to the question I raised in the introduction. There’s no more teaching at this point—no more explanation of the text. From here on out we’ve grasped the main point of the text and are now bringing it to bear on our lives.

I pointedly invite the audience to consider the question or questions I raised at the beginning. I say things like: “In what ways are you struggling to hang on to your faith?” and “How have you been tempted to compromise your integrity this week?” I admonish the congregation to believe and live into the truth of what God’s Word has revealed. I point out obstacles that might be standing in the way of living by faith. I exhort my folks to confess their shortcomings to each other or to a pastor. I call them to give sacrificially, serve selflessly, and obey faithfully.

The question that was posed as the beginning of the sermon has been explicitly brought back to the front and center. It has been answered by the text, and the congregation is invited to reflect upon it and consider how they might move forward into a new reality of deeper faith. And if they can end with an answer to that question, they’ve ended in a great spot!

Gerald Hiestand is the senior pastor at Calvary Memorial Church in Oak Park, Illinois, and the cofounder and director of the Center for Pastor Theologians.