My Smartphone and computer require periodic upgrades, as do many of the program applications they run. Here is an upgrade checklist for effectively preparing and delivering messages. Look for two or three areas to work on improving over the next year.

• Try to increase sermon preparation time by 10 to 20 percent. If possible, give away a weekly responsibility to someone else in order to spend more time studying and praying. Few things matter more than communicating God’s Word effectively.
• Focus on finding the single thread of truth that connects all the verses in the Scripture passage. Let this determine the singular purpose of the message. Try to express that one central truth in the message title. It’s hard work, but simplify, simplify, simplify. This is not being simplistic. A truly focused message can actually be quite profound.
• After studying the passage, pray in the Spirit over both the text and the hearers. Ask the Holy Spirit to reveal to you specific applications. How does the truth of the text directly relate to the lives of the people who will be listening? In other words, message preparation requires that we exegete both the text and our audience.
• Right from the beginning stages of designing the message, remember that life-change preaching ultimately answers two questions: “What?” (explanation) and “So what?” (application). Try to aim at the minds of your listeners with the “What?” question, their wills with the “So what?” question, and their emotions as the message draws them in and leads them toward a response.

My overall goal in communicating a message is for both my “head” and my “heart” to come out of my mouth.

• Without making things complicated, develop the central truth of the passage in the form of a simple outline that follows the flow of the text. Stick to the one central truth, but divide the directional flow of the text into a few key steps that unfold and explain that central truth. Try to develop the message flow like a story line, one point leading naturally to the next.
• As much as possible, put verbs into your key points and relate them to real issues in people’s lives as you walk through the text. In the words of well-known pastor Rick Warren, if application is the point of preaching, then “make your applications your points.” Try to avoid 95 percent exegetical content with 5 percent application thrown in at the end. Bring people’s life situations into every main point of the flow of the message.
• Keep the applications practical, doable (not too vague or too many), and always related to the central truth. They should be both “life specific,” in that they deal with the real issues people are facing, and “strategically actionable,” in that they describe what people should actually do with the truth, and how. Specific applications take a lot of thought. They need to be much more specific and how-to oriented than simply some version of, “be more committed.”
• Avoid meandering or including too many ideas. Go from beginning to conclusion in as straight a line as possible. Edit out digressions or tangents that don’t relate to the central truth. After the first draft of the outline, be ruthless and prune, prune, prune! After years of preaching, I learned to take my nearly finalized outline and cut 25 percent of it out, forcing me to keep the message focused and true to its central purpose.
• Support every key point with the text itself. Try to avoid reading the Scripture at the beginning and never referring to it again. If some points don’t relate directly to the text, prune some more. Make sure that both the content of Scripture and the circumstances of people’s lives stay central throughout the message.
• Avoid making main points without illustrating them. Finding the right story, life illustration, visual aid, or applicable how-to can be time consuming . . . but invaluable. Pray for creativity. Constantly be looking for sermon illustrations in everyday situations, books, media, and personal life experiences.
• Word the key points to apply to people’s lives and be interesting and memorable without being trite or inauthentic. Phrase the key focus of the message in a way that you can repeat throughout the message, and that people can remember.
• Bring people’s questions and life situations into the message right from the beginning. Creatively let people know up front why they should listen to you for the next thirty minutes. Then let the message build in interest through the use of why questions. For example, the what of the text is that God says to love people, but why would He want us to?
• As with any story line that engages people’s attention and hearts, let the message unfold as a kind of story with tension, urgency, emotional connection, and finally resolution. Pace the tone and timing of the message with intensity, humor, pauses, and natural transitions between points.
• As a discipline, consider cutting the normal sermon delivery time by five to ten minutes, focusing on anointed impact rather than needless length. Allow more time for altar response. Aim for actionable applications and hearer responses that lead to an encounter with the Holy Spirit.
• While being applicable and practical, never forget to balance human responsibility with God’s enabling grace. Keep elevating God’s greatness and power. Don’t compromise on sin but end with gospel-centered hope. Always take people to the cross of Christ, no matter what the topic or text.
• Be authentic in communicating the message. Avoid coming across as artificial or unnatural. Speak with passion and conviction, expressed with appropriate variations in tone of voice. Avoid being too monotone, or only yelling. Seek to connect with people at the level of their minds, emotions, and wills—not only in the content but in the style of delivery.
• Listen to great communicators—not to imitate them but to learn from them. I try to do this on a fairly regular basis. As I listen, I ask myself, “Why is my mind wandering right now?” or “What are they doing that is keeping me engaged with this message?” or “How are they illustrating that particular point?”

My overall goal in communicating a message is for both my “head” and my “heart” to come out of my mouth. Because I am delivering God’s Word, I want to share something for people to think about (head) and something to move them (heart) towards obedience to God. There were certainly times when people told me that my preaching ministry wasn’t feeding them, but the closer I got to communicating both “head” and “heart,” the less I would hear those kinds of comments.

Excerpted with permission from James T. Bradford, Lead So Others Can Follow: 12 Practices and Principles for Ministry (Springfield, MO: Salubris Resources, 2015).