I guess I don't browse the Religion section of my local papers enough. The Church section of my Google News feed surprised me a bit this morning when it brought up this—one paper's preview of local worship services, including sermon topics, for the coming Sunday.
Okay, so the fact that churches publish their service times in the local papers each weekend shouldn't really surprise me. But it's intriguing to peruse an article like this. Not to read the service times, mind you, but the sermon titles.
A few of the grabbier titles:
"You Call That a Church?!"
"Dear Recovering Pharisee"
"Monster's Inc. - How Fear Feeds our Biggest Foes" (on 1 Samuel 17, of course)
I've never given much thought to the impact of sermon titles because I've only thought of them appearing in the bulletin. Looking at some of the other titles—"The Task Ahead", for instance, which is much easier to skim over—makes me think that a lot of pastors might only be titling their sermons with the bulletin in mind as well.
Now, if your church publishes its services in the Saturday paper, I'm not suggesting that you start just cramming celebrity names into your sermon titles to get attention (e.g., "What Zac Efron and King David Have in Common"). But if you want someone who's skimming the page to take interest, it might not hurt to try to be a little more engaging. Ask a question. Evoke a concrete image. Be a little bit mysterious, but not misleading.
Does your church publish its services? How would you discern if a title is both engaging and appropriate?
share this
Tags used in this post:
TrackBack
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://blog.christianitytoday.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi/2554
Comments
I have this (re: sermon titles) challenge weekly since our congregation is the older worshiping congregation in a mall in the U.S. of any denomination: Church on the Mall in Plymouth Meeting Mall, Plymouth Meeting, PA. Like many congregations, we leave out the previous week's bulletins on a table, as well as extra copies of our monthly newsletters - &, we have plenty of 'public' checking out those sources. Thus, I attempt to keep that in mind in my choice of titles.
Re: newspapers (which as we read about weekly are on the way out of business), most of us do interact w/ the public through our websites. So, the same principles advocated by T. Avery apply to the web as well.
Posted by: Phil Olson | April 23, 2009 1:56 PM