I’ve seen a little bit of comment floating around about the giving and receiving of sermon feedback. Before I say any more, I want to be very clear: sermon feedback is extremely important. As someone who stands up most weeks in my church to preach, and who has travelled to a fair few others to do the same, your feedback is incredibly important. Even the not so positive feedback. There is little I value more in relation to my sermons that helpful feedback. After all, I preach because I want to build up the church and if it isn’t building you up in your faith (NB: this is not the same as it making you feel good or you liking the message) it isn’t accomplishing its aims. And how do we ever know it unless people tell us?

There are a set of somewhat cliched forms of Christian feedback that are not especially helpful. I tend to take them in the spirit they are intended. You can minimally tell if the person intends to convey it was positive or negative for them and whether they are hoping to encourage you by the comment or not. But phrases like, ‘that was helpful’ or ‘the sermon was challenging’ whilst generally positive, don’t actually tell you very much about how it helped or challenged and, therefore, what it actually did for the person saying it. Sometimes I am told my sermon was “good”, but good in what way is left tantalisingly blank. I appreciate the desire to encourage, but as feedback goes it isn’t especially useful.

There are also kinds of people who are rarely very useful either. Two polar opposite kinds of people are equally unhelpful in their feedback. First, there is the serial critic. Every sermon is a cause for complaint or nit-picking over certain details. The problem with this kind of person isn’t that they are never right. Sometimes they might well be right. The problem is, you can never trust their judgement because every sermon is negative. By contrast – and I must admit I prefer this person – is the serial encourager. Every sermon is ‘the best one yet’ or ‘just brilliant’. Again, the problem with this kind of person isn’t that they are never right either. Sometimes they might be. But like the perennial critic, you can’t trust them because every word you utter is deemed fantastic. The very best feedback comes from those who know not every sermon you preach is total rubbish, but they have the honesty to admit some of them might be. They also recognise some of your sermons might actually be quite good, but it isn’t true of all of them. These are the people who give feedback that is balanced, fair and well worth hearing.

I think there are two particularly valid and reasonable critiques of any sermon. These comments are both objectively true inasmuch as though they may relate to subjective experience they nevertheless are factual matters. They are also speaking into the primary goals of preaching. In my view, anybody raising either of these critiques can rightly ask the preacher to do better. It is all the more useful to the preacher when they are specific about when and where these issues occurred.

The first critique I think entirely legitimate is this one: ‘I still do not understand the passage’. If anybody comes to you with this criticism, your sermon has not landed with them. It is also an objective statement. Whilst others may well have understood, if this person doesn’t understand it is a problem. We may, of course, want to do some digging about why they don’t understand the main ideas of the passage. Have I used inaccessible language? Was I so boring the sermon was unlistenable? Have I missed the main point of the passage myself? Reasons abound and knowing them is more useful still. But if someone criticises our preaching on the grounds they are no wiser as to what the passage means than they were before we preached it, our sermon has fundamentally failed.

The second critique I think legitimate is the related, but somewhat different: ‘I don’t know what to do with this passage’. Someone might have tracked with you on the meaning, they might have grasped the main point, but unless they know what they are supposed to think, do or feel in response to it all we’ve accomplished is a basic exercise in comprehension. Knowing what a passage means is not the same as knowing what this passage means for me. If we fail to apply the passage altogether, we only apply it in esoteric ways that aren’t relevant to most people or we’re so general as to not be practically helpful, we are not moving towards the heart-change at which preaching aims.

I think those two criticisms are valid. There are various reasons we might end up hearing them. But if someone doesn’t know what the passage means or what they’re meant to do with it, we have not preached for them a very good or helpful sermon. Being boring is a good exemplar here too. Being boring, in and of itself, doesn’t make a sermon bad. If I am capable of listening, and though boring, what I hear is both the main point of the passage and it is clearly applied to me I don’t think we can call that a bad sermon. It might not be as good or as helpful as a more interesting one that made those key things easier to hear, but it isn’t fundamentally bad. Another boring sermon, by contrast, might be so boring that we just zone out and it fails to hold our attention and then we miss the main ideas and application. That sermon is a bad one because it stops us hearing the main ideas and applications and being boring was the cause of it. Perhaps this is due to just how boring the thing is, whereby there is a tolerance that might tip the balance! But you get the point.

So, what makes for helpful feedback that is more encouraging? First and foremost, comments that show you have grasped the main point are going to be well received. Similarly, comments that name some of the key application and speak about how it was particularly helpful for your own situation will be encouraging. Not least, it shows a) you were listening; b) you understood what you heard; and, c) you are looking for the heart-change that we want in response to preaching.

If a sermon was helpful, be clear specifically what was helpful about it. You might be helped because you were challenged in your thinking about something; you saw that you needed to change and were helped by seeing what this passage demanded of you. You might be helped because you were encouraged by a main point of the passage due to a specific situation in your life and the Lord spoke to you through it. You might have been helped because you understood this passage differently but now see how it fits more helpfully with the rest of scripture and grasped some key implication from it. Rather than simply saying “helpful”, be specific.

Preachers preach the Word so that God’s people will be built up in their faith and changed. We are most encouraged by those who, because of what they heard, came to understand God’s Word more and changed in response to it or were actively encouraged to press on because of it. The most encouraging feedback is that which demonstrates this most clearly. Sin that was repented of, attitudes that were changed, godliness that was more actively pursued; this the fruit we long for from preaching. Seeing that growth in our people because of what the heard from the Word that is really the most encouraging feedback of all.