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PREACHING SKILLS
Better Big Ideas
An interview with Haddon Robinson
Haddon Robinson

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PreachingToday.com: What's the purpose of " the big idea " ? In other words, why put blood, sweat, and tears into developing the best one possible?

Haddon Robinson: First of all, I need to be clear as to what I'm talking about when I talk about a big idea. I'm talking about the major idea of the sermon, the proposition of the sermon, the basic principle you're trying to get across. The reason " the big idea " has become popular as a way of talking about it is that when I was trying to establish it in the minds of my students I would say, " What's the big idea? " It was a slang expression, but I was trying to get it to stick in students' minds. I did well, because that's the way people refer to it today.

A sermon has many ideas to it, but all of them should grow out of the major idea of the sermon. That's not new with me. Go back as far as Aristotle and Plato and Cicero, and you'll find that they talk about having a proposition around which the speech is developed. Often this gets lost when it comes to sermons. So when I talk about a big idea, I'm talking about an organizing factor. Take all the parts of a sermon and put them together into a whole, and that whole is the central idea-the big idea-in the sermon. So, one purpose of the big idea is that you organize the sermon around it.

A second purpose is that you want to leave something lasting in the minds of the congregation when a sermon is over. The truth is, people don't remember outlines. They may not even refer to them again. I don't know of anyone who's been moved to God with an outline of the book of Galatians. What people do live for, what they do die for, is an idea, some great truth that has gripped them.

I can't expect that every congregation is going to remember every idea I try to get across, but there's a better chance they'll take something away and remember it a week or two or even a month or two later if I can stamp that central thrust on their minds. The rest of the sermon is often like the scaffolding: it's important, but the major thing is for people to get hold of an idea or have an idea get hold of them that can in some way shape the way they respond to life.

What makes a big idea? How can we craft ones that make people want to hear?

There may be five characteristics of a powerful central idea. One is, the idea has to be narrow enough to be sharp. It has to be narrow enough to get under your skin as a preacher. It's a clear answer to the question, What exactly am I talking about? If you have a vague idea, if it's too broad, too general, too abstract, it doesn't do anything for you. But when you get one that's sharp enough to get into your soul, that's important.

For example, a colleague of mine at Gordon-Conwell, Dr. Peter Kuzmic, was speaking about hope, and he took an idea from Augustine. He said, " Hope has two daughters: anger and courage. Anger at how things are, and courage to try to change them. " That's a great idea. I heard it several weeks ago, and I'm able to remember it. And the more I think about it, the more it has gotten under my skin.

Another idea about hope is, " Hope is hearing the music of the future, and faith is having the courage to dance to it. " That, too, is an idea-the relationship of faith and hope. You could state that in a lot of blah ways. You could say, " Hope helps us to think about the future, and faith is to live in the light of that thought. " But it doesn't have the power of, " Hope is hearing the music of the future, and faith is having the courage to dance to it. " It gets under your skin.

A second characteristic of a powerful idea is that it has an expanding force. It's like the yeast in dough; it has a way of fermenting. Often when you start, you wonder if you have enough to say to fill 30 minutes. But when you get hold of an idea or it gets hold of you, you wonder if you can get it said in 30 minutes. If you ask, What has to be said about this idea? What do I have to say to get it across? What's it really mean?, you discover it has a powerful force. It cries out for development.

A third characteristic of a good idea is, it has to be true. I'm not just talking about true as in it's found in the Bible and we believe the Scriptures are true. I'm talking about true, deep in your own bones. If you get an idea that gets hold of you and you sense it's true, it creates passion in you. The single most important ingredient in effective preaching is passion. It's not enthusiasm, not loudness; it's the sense that this matters. When you sense this is true to life, this is true to God, this is true to my experience, this is true in the fundamental part of life, then that enables you to want to work on a sermon and give it your best and give it some time. When you sense this is true, it makes it worth your while to prepare it and preach it.

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