How important is the conclusion of your sermon? Here is what Pastor Rick Warren has to say, “A sermon without a conclusion is a sermon without a purpose. Changed lives come from great conclusions.” The conclusion is the most important part of the sermon and it seems so fitting that it is often the most difficult portion of the sermon to draft. But the struggle is worth it! Yes, you want your entire sermon to be strong, but if you have to pick one area to solidify with the limited time you have, the conclusion is where that investment should go. Why? Because a strong conclusion will make even the roughest of sermons great.
In this episode of Hello Church! you’ll learn several prompts or filters you can use to inspect your conclusion and move forward with your sermon in confidence, knowing that when your message is preached people will be inspired to follow Jesus in new and transformational ways.
CHAPTER MARKERS
0:23 Introduction to the Sermon Conclusions
1:36 Listener Shoutout, Rate & Review
2:41 Develop Your Introduction In Light of Your Conclusion
7:04 Recap the Points of Your Message, Don’t Repeat
8:11 Anticipate Objections
10:30 Rehearse the Ending
13:40 Be Specific, Be Clear
15:00 Make It Memorable with Illustrations
19:36 Connect Your Conclusion to Current Daily Life
20:28 Let Your Conclusion Be Your Conclusion
22:08 Leave a comment in the comments section
RESOURCES MENTIONED
Preaching Masterclass
– https://mnstry.co/a6d299
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Wade Bearden:
Hi, welcome to Hello Church! This is episode 81. We’re actually in the middle of season two, episode five of season two. We’re talking about the sermon. I’m Wade Bearden.
Justin Trapp:
And I’m Justin Trapp. And today we’re going to be sharing seven tips on how you can end with a great conclusion to your message. Wade, I love what pastor Rick Warren said. He said, “a sermon without a conclusion is a sermon without a purpose.”
Wade Bearden:
Mm-hmm (affirmative)
Justin Trapp:
Course all roads
Wade Bearden:
He likes that word, purpose, doesn’t he?
Justin Trapp:
Back to a purpose driven sermon, purpose driven life. Of course, we love Pastor Rick. .He said changed lives come from great conclusions.
Wade Bearden:
Oh, that’s really interesting, that’s. . .So we are talking about conclusion. I think that one of the hardest aspects of a sermon, or at least that part of a sermon that pastors struggle with the most, is the conclusion. If you listen to just any sort of random message from a pastor in your area, they probably struggle with landing the plane. So we’re going to talk about that. And here’s what’s fascinating. If you’ve been following us this season, you’re probably thinking to yourself, wait, they haven’t talked about the introduction yet. And the reason we haven’t, the reason we’re talking about the conclusion on this episode and the introduction on the next episode is because you actually need to write your conclusion before you write your introduction. I really do believe that. I mean, you can get away with it if you do it the opposite, but I think it’s very beneficial to write your conclusion first.
Justin Trapp:
Now, before we dive in, just wanted to say hello to everyone listening on Spotify, Apple Podcast, as well as watching from on YouTube. We’ve actually had several people comment recently, leave us some reviews on YouTube, Lucas, Joe, Valerie, username Wild Little, wherever you’re at Wild Little.
Wade Bearden:
It really helps the podcast when you rate and review, so if you have a chance, make sure to do that on Apple Podcast. I love Ben’s comment. So we talked about preaching through books of the Bible and Ben on YouTube said this. He said, “great work guys. Thanks. I had almost given up on preaching through books of the Bible, at least on Sunday morning. This inspired me to not give up on it.” That’s pretty cool. I think there’s a way to preach through books of the Bible. We see it happen all the time. That’s helpful and it’s applicable and that’s encouraging and I hope pastors are able to do that. I think it’s good to do topical sermon series, but I also love going through books of the Bible. So thanks Ben for that comment. We really appreciate it.
Justin Trapp:
Yeah. So let’s dive right in. We have seven tips for helping you end with a great conclusion. The first thing is really, and you kind of alluded to this, Wade.
Wade Bearden:
I did. I kind of spoiled it.
Justin Trapp:
A little bit, but you, the point is develop your introduction in light of your conclusion. I wonder what books would look like if authors. . .
Wade Bearden:
Yeah
Justin Trapp:
Let’s just say fictional authors started writing a book without knowing where the story is going to land. Maybe you could get lucky every now and then, but to write consistently you got to start with the end in mind. And I think as communicators of the gospel, we’ve got it to establish and define what is the big idea? What is the conclusion of this? What do you really want to nail down by the end of the message and particularly at the end of the message.
Wade Bearden:
Yeah. And I guess the difference between even writing a novel or a film and preaching is that when you’re preaching you have, you have the text in front of you. Like this is, this is what you’re preaching, you’re preaching from this specific passage of the Bible. And something that I like to do, Justin, is as I’m working through the big idea of the message, this is something that I learned in seminary is I like to offer a specific objective and I write that down and it always begins the same way. I say, as a result of listening to this message, I want the people in my church to. . . and then, whatever the text is, whatever my sermon is, I kind of fill that out. So I want them to pray every day in the morning. I want them to stop resisting God’s grace.
Wade Bearden:
I want them to reflect on God’s love and allow that to really kind of work their way. It work its way into their life every day. So you need to be able to do that. You need to be able to craft the introduction already knowing where you’re going. And when you’re thinking through the conclusion, instead of just saying, well, I guess I just got to end this message. We say, okay, how do I point them to that specific objective? How do I point them to this is what I want you to do. And you can do it different, right? You can say, I want people who are not believers to do this. I want people in my church to do this. I want Christians who are not a part of our church who are visiting for the first time to do this, but you need to know where you’re going. And that’s why it’s so important to craft that conclusion first.
Justin Trapp:
One of the things I love about Sermonary, it is our sermon writing app and we are in the middle of releasing 2.0, which has amazing features and it’s a lot faster than the first one. And so if you haven’t tried Sermonary, it’s a wonderful platform for, constructing and building and saving your sermons. Check it out, Sermonary.com. But one of the things that we do, Wade, in Sermonary is when you go to create a message, one of the first things that we prompt you,
Wade Bearden:
It’s like a little pop out window.
Justin Trapp:
Yeah. A little slide out. It’s like, hey, what’s the big idea? We’re essentially saying, what is your conclusion? Where are you headed with this message? And we feel like that’s a great thing for pastors to identify as you’re starting a message is to really start with the end in mind and with your conclusion. Now I know you can hit your big idea in the middle of the message, but ultimately the conclusion, the need to walk away with that big idea, you need to really reinforce that in your conclusion. And so with Sermonary, we’ve sort of tried to put that in practice, right. Help pastors put that in practice.
Wade Bearden:
And it says there, right at the top.
Justin Trapp:
Yeah.
Wade Bearden:
Right in front of you. And so whether you use Sermonary or not, you need to keep that big idea in front of you. And then for me, when I think through that specific objective, I keep that in front of me, too. I’ll even add that to the big idea, maybe drop another line in the text so that as I’m working through this, I’m like, okay, I know where I’m going. I have a target in mind. So that’s why, if you have an idea for your introduction, write it down, keep it ready. But don’t actually formulate that idea until you’ve done your conclusion. And it’s hard because I think most people write their sermon in a linear way.
Justin Trapp:
Yeah.
Wade Bearden:
And that’s why conclusions are often so weak because we just get tired.
Justin Trapp:
Yeah.
Wade Bearden:
Like we just been working and working and working and you get to the end and you’re like, I’ll just wrap it up. And we don’t ever, we don’t figure out that conclusion or we don’t talk through that conclusion. So make sure you do that. Here’s another tip for a strong conclusion. When you’re working through your conclusion, you want to recap the points of your message. So if you had like sub point to the big idea, make sure you recap that, but here’s what, here’s what I always tell pastors
Justin Trapp:
Be precise though. Right? Breathe.
Wade Bearden:
Yes. Recap your points without repeating your message. Here’s what happens. You get to the end of your message and you realize there are all these really great things that I forgot to say, or I didn’t say so, I want to do it. You may. . . You need to make sure that you land that plane, but recap your points. And it can be a short paragraph. It could say throughout this message, we’ve been learning about this Bible story, this passage, and we learned that God wants us to blah, blah, blah. That’s what he wants us to do. That’s how we should react to the gospel. Just, it can be as simple as that. Be concise. Recap your points without repeating your message.
Justin Trapp:
And we’ll leave it at that.
Wade Bearden:
We’ll leave it at that.
Justin Trapp:
Another thing that you can do, another tip is to anticipate objections and Wade, we filmed something a few years ago with Dr. Jeff Magruder and it’s a preaching masterclass. And I think we actually have that available for free. So if you go to the show notes, there should be a link where you can get the preaching master class for free. Encourage you to do so. It’s got a lot of great content and it would Dr. Jeff
Wade Bearden:
Oh, it’s like this. Yeah, it really is. It’s a number of different videos on different aspects of the message. And it is super cool. It’s got handouts and it’s like a seminar, a mini seminar for free. The quality is just, it’s really good. He’s. . . he taught me how to preach. And so I’m kind of biased, but yes. So he has a masterclass and he also did a video for us one time where he talked about anticipating objections. And he’s written about this in other articles. But one of the things that he says is anticipating objections is effective both in the application and the conclusion especially if the call to action is developed in the conclusion. So if you have your conclusion and it’s all about, here’s the call to action, you need to anticipate those objections.
Wade Bearden:
He goes on to say, in this type of conclusion, you identify what objections your audience could have about what you’ve been preaching. What might they find hard to believe? What are some of the competing priorities they possess that could make it difficult for them to act on what the sermon is directing them to do? So, if you’re preaching about generosity and you’ve been talking about generosity and you’ve been working through the text and you get to the end of the message and your call to action, your specific objection is I want the people in my church to begin giving to charities, begin giving to the church.
Wade Bearden:
You have to anticipate those objections and say, now I know what some of you’re thinking, this is a big one. This is a big one. You might say, how can I trust the church with my money? Or you might say, hey, how do I pay my bills? So just talk through those issues and anticipate those objections and respond to them in a biblical way. That’s super important. That’s something that you need to work through in your conclusion.
Justin Trapp:
Another thing, another tip for you is to rehearse the end. Now, Wade, you said something earlier and I thought it was so great to remember that you said that our energy wanes in sermon preparation.
Wade Bearden:
Oh yeah.
Justin Trapp:
If you’re writing in a linear format, if you’re starting at the beginning, by the time you get to the end, you’re just going to be a little bit more tired, little bit less energetic. You’re. . . You won’t feel as fresh. I think the same is true in preaching, right? You get to the end and maybe you’ve been preaching passionately, but if you’re preaching multiple services, you’re going to lose some of that oxygen, so to speak of your energy. And so one of the things that you can do is if you can’t rehearse the entire sermon, which I think that you should, you can rehearse the conclusion and that could help you be a little bit more crisp, a little bit more precise. I love Josh Shipp. He’s a well known public speaker to public schools. So he goes to middle schools, high schools, and he’s really funny. He’s very entertaining. He’s got a great story. He says that you should rehearse your talk over a hundred times. Now, he’s really. . . he has one talk, right. Or he has a few talks probably.
Wade Bearden:
Yeah. And he’s doing it over and over again.
Justin Trapp:
And, and everywhere he goes that talk, people are paying him good money, right. So his talk has to be a home run. And I think that’s, it’s probably impractical for pastors to try to rehearse your sermon over a hundred times. I’m not saying it.
Wade Bearden:
I’ll just say it. Yes, it is.
Justin Trapp:
But his point is made, right? Yeah. That anything that is worth doing that you want to be good at, you need to practice it. I read a stat the other day that said that NBA players in the off season, and even really in season when they’re practicing, they’re doing practices twice a day and they’re shooting over 4,000 shots per week.
Wade Bearden:
Hmm.
Justin Trapp:
Practice shots. So Steph Curry, shooting 4,000 shots per week. I read too that Kobe used to shoot a thousand free throws a day.
Wade Bearden:
Wow.
Justin Trapp:
Whether he was practicing or had a game that night, 1,000 free throws. And so if you want to get sharp at something, you just need to practice. And maybe you can’t practice your full length sermon multiple times, but you should practice your conclusion for sure.
Wade Bearden:
Yeah. And that goes against a lot of what we, of what we think about preaching. The idea of just practicing the conclusion is kind of mind-boggling. Here’s the truth, okay, whether we like it or not, is a bad conclusion can make a good sermon weak,
Justin Trapp:
Yeah.
Wade Bearden:
And a good conclusion can actually make a weak sermon feel strong.
Justin Trapp:
Yeah.
Wade Bearden:
And so make sure that your conclusion is not neglected. I’m for, I’m in favor of practicing your entire message. But just because it’s at the end, don’t get to the point where you’re concluding and say, okay, I’m just going to recap it. I already got this. Really think through what your message is. And I think we wrote this down here on the notes, don’t run out of fuel while you’re circling the airstrip and nose dive. You got to land the plane.
Justin Trapp:
Yeah. Be like Sully, even in a Rocky servant, you can land on the Hudson,
Wade Bearden:
Even if you got to land upside down.
Justin Trapp:
Man. Praise him. Another thing is be specific, be clear. I don’t know, that sort of goes without saying, right. But I think you can get to the end and just sort of talking in generalities. That’s a, is that a right word?
Wade Bearden:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Justin Trapp:
Generalities.
Wade Bearden:
Now I thought it was. And now you’re, now I’m second guessing. Yeah.
Justin Trapp:
Well, let me put it this way. In marketing, when you go to a website, really any website, business website, maybe it’s an e-commerce site, whatever the case may be, a lot of times, if you can go to sales page or an information page, it’s not just information, there’s usually a call. They want you to do something specific. And so these buttons everywhere you go to Sermonary.com, there’s a button that says get started for free, right? Why? Because we don’t just want to give you information. We want to be helpful. We want to be informative. But at the end of the day, we want the user to take action. And I think in your conclusion, you want them to walk away with something, something applicational point or a question or an action item for them to do. Maybe you’re in a series on spiritual disciplines. This week I want you to specifically pray three times a day for seven days in a row and see what God might do, what your prayer life looks like at the end of that. Whatever the case may be, but be specific, be focused.
Wade Bearden:
Yeah. No, I think that’s great. Another tip that we have is make it memorable with illustrations. You can, a lot of times we think of, okay, good illustration at the beginning.
Justin Trapp:
Yeah.
Wade Bearden:
That when you think about an illustration, you’re like, I really need one at the beginning. It might be good to do it at the end. I don’t think you always have to have a strong conclusion or a strong illustration at the end of a message, but it helps so much. It’s. . . It really is good to go out with obviously like a bang. So think through something, it could be a visual illustration. It could be a story. Don’t be overly manipulative. right? So we’ve all been a part of those sermons where we get to the end and somebody just throws on this tear jerker of a story to sort of manipulate us.
Justin Trapp:
The story about Paco, the guy from Brazil that wrote a letter to his or his dad wrote a letter to Paco. Dear Paco, and I’m going to be at this time and I’m sorry for, I forgive you for everything you and then, and they get to the date and like 1000s Paco showed up.
Wade Bearden:
Yeah. No, no, no, I’ve heard that. I’ve heard that. Yeah. It was like this announcement in the newspaper or something.
Justin Trapp:
Yeah. I’ve heard a few sermons in with that old story.
Wade Bearden:
So be careful. But I think an illustration, it could be good. And here’s something that I like to do as well. A lot of times I will, like, if I choose an illustration here, I can even connect it to an illustration that I did at the beginning. So if I tell a story in the introduction, I can either conclude that story in the conclusion or bring imagery back to it. So if you’re talking about mountains at the beginning, maybe mention mountains in the conclusion too, to kind of round it out.
Justin Trapp:
I know it reminded me of the Paco story. You had said don’t be manipulative.
Wade Bearden:
Yeah.
Justin Trapp:
And the evangelist that I heard share this story, I actually heard him share it twice.
Wade Bearden:
Yeah.
Justin Trapp:
And two different churches about a year apart.
Wade Bearden:
Oh no.
Justin Trapp:
And the second church he got, he was like really serious. And he just said, you know, I never shared this story before.
Wade Bearden:
No.
Justin Trapp:
And then he went to share the Paco story and I was like, wait a minute. This joker just manipulated us. So that’s what made me think of it. Here’s-
Wade Bearden:
We’ll call you out.
Justin Trapp:
Yeah. Here’s a positive thing that a pastor that I served under, he did a series on the fruit of the spirit and every week he talked about one fruit per week. So you get to joy. And what he did was at the very, he would, he would equate one of the fruits of the spirit with an actual fruit. So joy was oranges. And so he would go into the details on oranges and what’s significant about oranges. And then you talk about joy and you know, what the scriptures say about joy and how we should have joy as believers. And then at the very end of the message, the ushers without being prompted would just start walking down the aisles. And they have baskets of oranges and everybody in the place got an orange right before they walked out. And I just thought it was a fun series. So every week they would get some fruit at the very end of the message. And of course he was a great communicator. And so his conclusions were really strong. And then everyone walks out with, with an actual.
Wade Bearden:
Yeah.
Justin Trapp:
Physical reminder of the message that night.
Wade Bearden:
Yeah. I had this when I first started preaching somebody, he gave, I don’t know if it was my father-in-law or my pastor, they gave me this talk from Andy Stanley about communicating on a CD. So it was like a CD. It had like this, it actually had a mail address label sticker on it.
Justin Trapp:
That’s cool.
Wade Bearden:
Was like printed out. And it was a great talk. I actually still think about some of the things he talked about in that lecture.
Justin Trapp:
[inaudible 00:18:30] Andy.
Wade Bearden:
Yeah. Andy said at the end, he was preaching about the last… He was preaching on the last chapter in Jonah. How Jonah is, he’s more concerned about not getting shade, a plant in his physical comfort than he is about the city of Ninevah. And Andy Stanley gave everyone when they left this just like really cheap, small plant. And he said, here’s what I want you to do. Take it home. And don’t water it. Like don’t put it in the sunlight, just watch it die. Just let it sit there and die over the course of the next couple weeks.
Justin Trapp:
Just take this plant home and watch it die. What a call to action right there. I love that.
Wade Bearden:
Right? And he said, every time you see it and you watch it die, I want you to think to yourself, do I care more about my physical comfort than I care about the loss? And I was like, oh, that’s really cool. So you can do something really memorable at the end of your message. And if people walk out with that story and that plant, they’re going to remember what you talked about. It to be fantastic.
Wade Bearden:
The next thing, and we’ve kind of been circling this for a while, but the next tip is connect it to current daily life. So whenever you finish a message, it might be that you need to address different groups in the audience. You might need to address the students and you say, hey, you return to school week. Your summer break is over this week. Here’s how you can apply this message or, hey, you’re new here and maybe you’re not a Christian. Here’s what I want you to think about this week. Or, hey, you’re not a Christian and I want to invite you to become a Christian today. I want you to follow Jesus today, connect your sermon to the everyday lives of the people around you. How does it relate today? And if you do that in the, or in the conclusion, people will remember what you’re talking about and help them to really just kind of digest what you’re talking about.
Justin Trapp:
I agree. And lastly, on this list, I think,
Wade Bearden:
I think this, I think this is actually number eight. This is like the bonus.
Justin Trapp:
Is this eight?
Wade Bearden:
I think this is number eight. We said seven.
Justin Trapp:
Okay, well, Hey.
Wade Bearden:
Yeah.
Justin Trapp:
Free bonus on the podcast.
Wade Bearden:
Free bonus on the podcast.
Justin Trapp:
And this is like preaching to preachers, right? Preaching to the choir. And there’s not much to elaborate on this point, but we’re just going to go ahead and say it, right?
Wade Bearden:
Yeah.
Justin Trapp:
Let your conclusion be your conclusion.
Wade Bearden:
Yeah, Pastor.
Justin Trapp:
Practice your delivery. Be specific, be clear, connect it to daily life, rehearse the end, make it memorable with illustrations, but let your conclusion be your conclusion. And if none of this fail, none of this works, right? None of this, these tips work, then just remember the ABC of preaching. You just always be closing.
Wade Bearden:
Always be closing, right? We’ve all been a part of those services. We’ve preached those services where we get to our conclusion and the person playing the keys, or the pad comes up at the right time. We said, hey, this is when you come up. I’m concluding. But we just think of all these new things. And they’re up there playing for 10, 20 minutes as you’re concluding. Let your conclusion be your conclusion.
Justin Trapp:
Why do you think we do that? Maybe I should. Maybe this is for another episode, right?
Wade Bearden:
Like I said, I think we start talking about our message and we’re like, I didn’t mention that. And I thought that would be good and oh, this is another point. Oh, here’s what I can add onto it.
Justin Trapp:
Maybe we’re not getting the response from the crowd like we thought?
Wade Bearden:
That’s possible.
Justin Trapp:
It’s like, oh, you know what? I just need to drive this home. So they get it folks.
Wade Bearden:
Yeah. Yep. So that’s eight tips. We said seven, seven plus a bonus.
Justin Trapp:
Yeah.
Wade Bearden:
As you think through your conclusion, let us know what you think about the conclusion of your messages. Do you think it’s one of the aspects of your sermon that you struggle with the most? Is it the hardest thing for you to write? Do you have a plan to write it or you just kind of wing it every week? We’d love to hear that. Make sure to tweet us or leave a comment in the comment section of YouTube. And also, once again, make sure to rate and review this show, especially on Apple Podcast. That’s just huge for us.
Justin Trapp:
Next episode, we’re going to be talking about, you guessed it, introductions.
Wade Bearden:
Yes.
Justin Trapp:
How to have a compelling, a catchy, an engaging introduction that keeps people hooked from the get go. Now that you’ve landed the plane with the conclusion, we will show you how to take off.
Wade Bearden:
We’ll see you next time on Hello Church!