Deliver Your Next Sermon With Power! 7 Tactics to Use

Powerful sermon delivery takes biblical content and transports it to the heart and mind, guided by the Holy Spirit. No matter if you’ve been in this for decades or you are just starting out, this is an area we should be constantly growing in. Want to deliver your next sermon with power?

If your answer is yes, then the following 7 tactics will be things you can always be working on and always be mindful of.

Deliver Your Next Sermon With Power! 7 Tactics to Use

1. Gestures

Gestures speak. Crossed arms communicates frustration or close-mindedness. Both hands in our pockets communicate nervousness and timidity.

When you are preaching, gesture naturally, but do so intentionally. If you’re speaking of God’s greatness, open your arms wide. If you’re about to make a big point that is a hard truth, pause (more on that in a minute) and bring your hands together with your fingers at the tip of your lips. This communicates the weight of what you’re about to say. Then move your hands away from your mouth just before you speak.

Gestures can be subtle, but they communicate a lot.

Deliver your next sermon with power by using gestures to your advantage.

2. Eyes

Eyes speak. Good eye contact communicates care and connection. When you are preaching, look at people in the eye, don’t stare above their heads and at the back wall. If your facility is wide, move your eyes throughout your message so you can make eye contact with people in every section.

Don’t let your eyes constantly bounce from one person to the next, but genuinely look at people for a couple seconds before moving to the next.

Eye contact is a game-changer.

Read more: Use Your Eyes: Why These 2 Subtle Changes Will Help You Connect When Preaching

3. Voice Inflection

I don’t know if there is a bigger mistake that is made by preachers, teachers, public speakers, or businessmen and women than a lack of voice inflection. Amen?

I’m sure you agree, but here’s a project for you to try: this weekend, when you’re conversing with people one-on-one, pay attention to how they use their voice and how their usage of inflection communicates their point.

Want to know the hardest person to read in your life? The person who never inflects their voice. Why? Because words are only part of communicating. In order to know how someone feels, we pay attention to the inflection of their voice.

If you want visitors to trust you, use voice inflection so they know what you’re really communicating.

So when you preach your next sermon, be intentional about varying your voice inflection. Mix. It. Up. Please!

4. Pause

Mark Twain said, “No word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause.” I agree. The pause is the best-friend to main points, big truths, and creating tension. If you want to create emphasis on a certain point, don’t just go right into it. Instead, set it up – this is a truth we can’t miss – then pause for a couple seconds. Let your people’s brains race around trying to be ready to hear what the truth is. Then, drop that truth bomb!

Preach by pausing. What follows the pause becomes exponentially more meaningful.

5. Cadence

We all have a natural range of cadence when we speak to people. But when we are preaching to the congregation, our range should broaden dramatically. Our normal rate and rhythm of speaking (cadence) should typically increase when we are speaking to a large group.

But it’s not exactly that simple.

When we are making key points or communicating key truths, our cadence needs vary.

If you want to inspire, increase the speed of your speaking cadence. Crank the dial.

If you want to communicate weight and truth, lower the speed of your speaking cadence. Go quite low.

If you’re telling a story, vary the cadence to communicate the emotion of the characters in the story. Excitement? Crank it up. Dread? Turn in it low.

Be mindful of your cadence and make sure it’s communicating what you want it to.

6. Whisper

If you heard someone whispering something, what do you naturally do? You get quiet, limit your movements, and focus on what is being said.

Too often, preachers get louder when they are wanting to make a key point or drive home their big idea. I’m convinced that a well-placed whisper is the secret weapon of powerful sermon delivery.

It shouldn’t be used often, but when it is used, it packs a big punch. 

7. Passion in Personality

Be you. Don’t try to be the preacher with a million YouTube views or thousands of followers on Twitter. Be who God made you. The world doesn’t need another passionate Matt Chandler or Bill Heybels or insert your favorite preacher here.

Not even close.

What this world needs is for you to find your voice and for you to be you when you preach. Be passionate. Be on fire. But remember: passion flows through the lens of personality. In other words, the passionate you is different than the passionate me.

Powerful sermon delivery is infused with passion that flows through the preacher’s personality. Please never forget that.

What Would You Add?

Join the conversation and let us know. You can do so on social media: Join our Facebook Group, tweet us, or post on our Facebook Page.

Grow as a Preacher and Leader [Free Resources]

Want to grow as a preacher and leader? We’ll help you do it. Just subscribe to the blog. And to get you started and as a way of saying thank you, we’ll include 6 free resources: Building a Leadership Pipeline Packet, Pre-Formatted Sermon Notes Template, Sermon Evaluation Worksheet, 56 Weeks of Preaching Topics, Sermon Series Planning Evernote Template, and the Weekly Productivity Evernote Template. All this for free when you subscribe.