Another approach to improving the quality of the preaching and particularly the delivery is now more widely available than formerly. This is the home video camera. While it requires considerable courage and a strong desire for self-improvement, watching oneself delivering a sermon on video tape can be both a humbling and an enlightening experience.

A somewhat less threatening road to self-improvement is followed by those ministers who, on three or four occasions a year, ask for five or six volunteers to constitute a sermon evaluation committee. A typical format brings these lay volunteers together first for two evenings during which they formulate and discuss the appropriate criteria for the evaluation of a sermon. Pastors have varying degrees of involvement in that process. After two such sessions these folks come to the Sunday morning worship experience and, obviously, listen carefully to the sermon. A couple of evenings later they meet with the preacher to share their reflections and insights. In at least a few cases the group worships with another congregation first before the formal evaluation of their own minister’s sermon.

44 Ways to Increase Church Attendance by Lyle E Schaller

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