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PREACHING SKILLSThe Tension Between Clarity and SuspenseHow to choose between inductive and deductive logicDonald Sunukjian
Distinguishing between inductive and deductive preaching can be difficult. Inductive preaching essentially asks a question and arrives at the answer toward the latter part of the sermon. Deductive is the opposite of that. In deductive preaching you give the declarative statement up front and then support it. So the styles differ by whether the listener hears the point you're going to make up front, or they hear the question and then arrive at the answer through a progression.
We make serious choices between induction and deduction in four places of a sermon.
1. The overall sermon pattern
The first choice is whether the overall sermon pattern is going to be deductive or inductive. Will the listener get my central truth up front or will they learn it later in the message?
The advantage of a deductive structure is that the big idea is up front. It's clear. It's early so the listener grabs onto it. The disadvantage is you give away all the cookies at the start. The listener can say, "Got it. I'm out of here. I can catch the football game in the first quarter instead of waiting till the fourth quarter." So the advantage is clarity. The disadvantage is it gives away the suspense or climax.
The inductive structure advantage is just the flip side. The advantage is the listener's interest is sustained because you have not yet arrived at that central theme. They're going through a journey with you. They're learning with you. The climax is yet to come. The tension is still there. The disadvantage is that unless you're really clear, by the time you get to it, they won't have followed you.
So with deduction we have to ask "How do I use it in a way so there's still some reason for the listener to keep listening?" When I use induction, we ask, "How do I really know that I'm being clear orally?"
Now, let's come back to deduction. When would I use deduction? When would I give away all the cookies at the start and still know that I could keep the listener with me? The answer is when my deductive statement automatically raises questions in the mind of the listener. Somehow it's provocative.
Let me give you an example. "Today we're going to talk about the fifth commandment, Honor your father and your mother. Some of you say, 'Oh, good. I hope the kids are listening.' That commandment wasn't given to kids. It was given to adults standing at the base of Mount Sinai. We think of it in terms of kids because of what Paul says in Ephesians 6 'Children obey your parents,' but originally God was talking to a nation of adults. Honor takes the form of obedience when we're children. But what did God have in mind at the other end of life when adults were looking at parents who were entering the last decades of life?"
Now, here comes my deductive statement. "Today we're going to see that to honor our parents in their latter years is to support them financially. When God said 'Honor your father and your mother, more than anything else he meant be ready to assist them economically in their retirement years. See that they lack for nothing in the way of housing, medicine, clothing, or anything necessary for a comfortable life."
Now there's my deductive statement, and nobody's saying, "Got it. I'm out of here." They're saying "Wait a minute. Where did you get that from? I've been reading the Bible for years. Honor … you preachers find money everywhere. How much money are you talking about? I can barely support my own family. I've got kids going to college. How old do my parents have to be? What about my siblings? Should they help out?" They've got all kinds of questions they hope I'm going to address in the message.
So the first way to use deduction is when your central truth in the introduction raises questions in the minds of the listeners. The listener has a reason to keep listening. Other than that we probably will want to go inductive since most biblical materials are written inductively.
So once you have developed your main idea, it would be helpful to stop and ask, "What are the questions that I'm going to raise by this? Does it really raise questions or not?" The answer to that will determine whether you're going to go deductive or inductive.
Often the passage of Scripture has a natural flow to it. I'm surprised at how many times a narrative passage places the central truth at the end. But I still may start with it. For instance, I might be preaching on the life of Jacob and say, "Today we're going to see from the Scriptures that even though you have messed up God's plan for your life God still has a way of making it possible." And I know the listener is saying, "Oh Lord, I hope that's true. Convince me of it."
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