Naming the Baby The right sermon title makes all the difference. by Calvin Miller
I have some friends who waited five days after the birth of their third child to name her. She lay in her bassinet at the hospital with a Baby Smith bracelet, waiting for her parents to achieve some great “aha” moment. We friends, sympathizing with the poor baby, badgered them to name the waif. A grand sigh of relief went up on the fifth day when the name was at last announced. The child seemed suddenly a real person with real identity.
In times past, I have fallen in love with next Sunday’s sermon as early as Monday. My enthusiasm for the coming homily was rampant. I sensed the Spirit moving all through my study. My preparation seemed imaginative and Spirit-driven.
But on Friday, by the time the bulletin went to press, Monday’s infernal brainchild still did not have a name. Secretaries and office associates gathered around and badgered me to name the little pulpit waif, but alas, no name seemed worthy. Finally, out of time and in terminal desperation, I would rip off the “Baby Miller” sermon title and call it something mundane just as the laser printer was chomping at its chips. But I was never as proud of my panic-driven title as I wanted to be.
We name babies and sermons to give them identity and significance. Unnamed anythings are harder to love and harder to file (this is truer of sermons than babies). Furthermore, it is almost impossible ever to be proud of anything unnamed. In short, all significance waits on a name, and, as a famous umpire once said, “It ain’t nothin’ till I call it.”
From text to title Ah, but how to title the sermon well?
Some titles are derived from the sermon’s dominant illustration. Examples of this might be Russell Conwell’s “Acres of Diamonds” (a famous self-help sermon), Peter Marshall’s “Keeper of the Springs” (a Mother’s Day sermon), or Tony Campolo’s “My God Is a Party Animal” (a sermon on being compassionate to social outcasts). But overall, titles derived from dominant illustrations lose their punch.
In 1902 at the Hunter (Oklahoma) Baptist Church, a small parish I served in the fifties, Elder D.P. Rowe preached a sermon called “The Devil’s Tracks in the Blackberry Patch.” My grandfather, who recently died at 102, talked about the sermon for the next 90 years. The title stuck with Grandpa for nearly a century, proving how important titles are. But the sermon was apparently named after an illustration, not the text, and hence its biblical connection has not survived.
I first came to the notion of moving from text to title four decades ago in a seminary homiletics class. We were all assigned to prepare a sermon on Romans 2:16, about the coming time when God will judge the secrets of all hearts. I named my sermon “Apparent Acrimony” (sadly, only a B+ title). A classmate named his sermon on the same text “The Inevitable Expose.” How I disliked him for picking the very title I had been looking for. (It would surely have come to me in time.) From that time forward, I never forgot how important it is to link the title to the text.
Five faux pas The key, though, is to link a title to the text without falling into various titling faux pas.
Not grandiose. I have a friend, an industrial-strength exegete, who always puts his Sunday sermon titles in a newspaper advertisement. For his sermon on Hebrews 8:1, the paper gave the title as “The Lord Our Great High Priest Before the Throne.” It fit the text exactly, but seemed to me a tad grandiose to be advertised in the paper.
My sermons—I’m ashamed to say—were much more elementary (I was trying at that time to help my people see that Big Bird was not a humanist). But once or twice, I too have become too grandiose with textual titles. I have a sermon on Genesis 19:26 entitled, “Whatever Happened to Mrs. Lot, Being a Tale of Salt and Shame in a Time of Cultural Crisis.” The sermon never did well. It was mostly the title, I think.
Nor oblique. A second hazard of textually-linked titles is that they may become too oblique. “Keep titles textual but user-friendly” is my rule. A sermon on Noah’s Ark will not do well titled, “Three Hundred Cubits and Daubed All over with Pitch.” Something shorter with a clear textual relationship would be better.
A sermon entitled “Josiah’s Reform” will only make uninformed people ask, Who was Josiah anyway, and what was he like before he reformed? I remember a sermon from my Oklahoma childhood entitled “Cast Out into the Deep.” The title stuck with me all these years, and it sounds highly textual and may have been about fishing, but I’m not sure.
Sermons with foreign names fall into this category. It is better to title a sermon “In the Fullness of Time” than “In Plenitudo Temporis” (Gal. 4:4), “The Forsaking of God” than “Eloi, Eloi Lama Sabachthani” (Matt. 27:46). This is almost universally true—except for highly recognized traditional foreign phrases: “Carpe Diem” might be a good title for Psalm 90:12, for instance. Obviously, “Hi, Mary!” would be less appropriate than “Ave, Maria” (Luke 1:28).
Nor frivolous. Just as textual titles must be user friendly, they must also avoid frivolity. The cleansing of Naaman the leper (2 Kings 5) was once titled “Seven Ducks in a Puddle.” That is as distasteful as “Rebecca Lighted Off Her Camel” (Gen. 24:64), or the sermon on the rapture (1 Thess. 4:13ff.): “You Better Get Right or Get Left.”
A certain revivalist once came to our hometown with vocal accompaniment. Maybe it was his title, or just his punctuation, but the twin vocalists, The Flying Hekharts, were going to sing “How Great Thou Art on a Truck Bed.” We all went just to find out who was on the truck bed.
Nor offensive. I also try not to offend propriety. “Get Saved for Christ’s Sake” I find offensive. “Hitch Your Wagon to Jesus and Gee-Haw,” likewise. The same goes for “Where You Go Hereafter Depends on What You Go after Here.”
Nor blatant. Finally, I want to avoid the blatant. A famous Baptist pastor in the fifties became famous by preaching two sermons all across Dixie. The sermons were called in sequence, “The Filthy, Dirty, Rotten, Modern Dance” and “Bobbed-Haired, Bossy Women and Preacher’s Wives.”
Forceful text, forceful title The strength of the biblical text makes stronger the title derived from it. A seminary president friend delivered a wonderful sermon on the future of theological education. He chose as his text the passage in which Joshua is leading Israel across Jordan into the Promised Land. Once he had the text, the title, “Standing on the Banks of Tomorrow,” was easy.
Calvin Miller is professor of communications and ministry studies, and writer-in-residence at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Ft. Worth, Texas.
The Purpose-Driven Title If the sermon is designed to transform lives, the title must relate to life. by Rick Warren
Writing a great sermon title is an art we must continually work on. I don’t know anyone who has mastered it. We all have our hits and misses.
But if the purpose of preaching is to transform, not merely inform, or if you’re speaking to unbelievers, then you have to be concerned with your titles. Like the cover of a book, or the first line of an advertisement, your sermon’s title must capture the attention of those you want to influence.
In planning appealing sermon titles, I ask myself four questions:
1. Will this title capture the attention of people? Because we are called to communicate truth, we may assume unbelievers are eager to hear the truth. They aren’t. In fact, surveys show the majority of Americans reject the idea of absolute truth. Today, people value tolerance more than truth.
This “truth-decay” is the root of all that’s wrong in our society. It is why unbelievers will not race to church if we proclaim, “We have the truth!” Their reaction will be, “Yeah, so does everybody else!”
While most unbelievers aren’t looking for truth, they are looking for relief. This gives us the opportunity to interest them in truth. I’ve found that when I teach the truth that relieves their pain, answers their question, or solves their problem, unbelievers say, “Thanks! What else is true in that Book?” Showing how a biblical principle meets a need creates a hunger for more truth.
Titles that deal with the real questions and hurts of people can attract an audience, giving us an opportunity to teach the truth. Sermon series titled “How To Handle Life’s Hurts,” “When You Need a Miracle” (on the miracles of Jesus), “Learning to Hear God’s Voice,” and “Questions I’ve Wanted to Ask God” have all attracted seekers.
2. Is the title clear? I ask myself, Will this title stand on its own—without additional explanation? If I read this title on a cassette tape five years from today, would I instantly know what the sermon was about?
Unfortunately many compelling evangelistic messages are hampered by titles that are confusing, colorless, or corny. Here are some sermon titles from a recent L.A. Times: “On the Road to Jericho,” “No Longer Walking on the Other Side of the Road,” “The Gathering Storm,” “Peter Goes Fishing,” “The Ministry of Cracked Pots,” “Becoming a Titus,” “Give Me Agape,” “River of Blood,” and “No Such Thing as a Rubber Clock.”
Would any of these titles appeal to an unchurched person scanning the paper? And do they clearly communicate what the sermons are about? It’s more important to be clear than cute.
3. Is the title good news? In his first sermon, Jesus announced the tone of his preaching: “The Spirit of the Lord … has anointed me to preach Good News … ” (Luke 4:18). Even when I have difficult or painful news to share, I want my title to focus on the good-news aspects of my subject.
For instance, years ago I preached a message on the ways we miss God’s blessing due to our sinfulness. I titled the sermon, “Why No Revival?” Later I revised the title to “What Brings Revival?” It was the same message, only restated in positive terms. I believe God blessed the latter message in a far greater way.
Here are sermon-series titles I’ve used to communicate good news: “Encouraging Words from God’s Word,” “What God Can Do through Ordinary You,” and “Enjoying the Rest of Your Life,” an exposition of Philippians.
4. Does the title relate to everyday life? Some people criticize life-application preaching as shallow, simplistic, and inferior. To them the only real preaching is didactic, doctrinal preaching. Their attitude implies that Paul was more profound than Jesus, that Romans is deeper material than the Sermon on the Mount or the Parables.
The “deepest” teaching is what makes a difference in people’s day-to-day lives. As D.L. Moody once said, “The Bible was not given to increase our knowledge but to change our lives.”
I have been criticized for using sermon titles that sound like Reader’s Digest articles. But I do it intentionally. Reader’s Digest is the most widely read magazine in the world because its articles appeal to common human needs, hurts, and interests. People want to know how to change their lives.
Using sermon titles that appeal to felt needs isn’t being shallow; it’s being strategic. At Saddleback, beneath our “how-to” sermon titles is hard-core gospel truth. A casual observer will not know that the series “Answering Life’s Difficult Questions” was a study of Ecclesiastes, “Stressbusters” was an exposition of Psalm 23, “Building Great Relationships” was a ten-week exposition of 1 Corinthians 13, and “Happiness Is a Choice” was a series on the Beatitudes.
We have the most important message in the world. It changes lives. But for people to be attracted to it, the titles of our sermons must capture their attention.
Rick Warren is pastor of Saddleback Community Church in Mission Viejo, California.
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