The place to begin in creating a sermon form is with the focus and the function statements —^what the sermon aims to say and what the sermon aims to do.
It will have movement because the focus and the function statements actually name the sermon destination. Where is the sermon going? It is going toward the place where the focus has been said and file function has been accomplished. The sermon is not finished until it has arrived at this destination, and the sermon form is a map tracing the pathway the hearers will travel, moving from where they are when they start the sermon journey to where they will hopefully be at the end of the sermon.It will have unity since everything in the sermon will be shaped toward getting the focus said and the function done. There should be no “side trips” in the sermon. A good form will include only those steps needed to get to the focus and function destination. Everything else should be weeded out.
It will have suspense because there is the sense of incompletion until the focus has been said and the function accomplished. Bothemotionally and intellectually, the sermon achieves “the sense of an ending” when it arrives at its destination. Until then, the hearers are hopefully intrigued and pressed forward by an intuiton of unfinished business.Let’s see how this works. Returning to an example from chapter 4, recall the focus and function statements for a sermon on Romans 8:28-39:Focus:Function:Because we have seen in Jesus Christ that God is for us, we can be confident that God loves and cares for us even when our experience seems to deny it.To reassure and give hope to troubled hearers in the midst of their distress.These focus and function statements grew, of course, out of the exegesis and, specifically, out of what the preacher saw as the claim of the Romans text. But now we view them as the destination of this sermon. If all goes well, when the sermon is completed the focus will have been said and the function will have been done. The preacher will have enabled the hearers to move from wherever they are at the start of the sermon to a new place, a place where (as the function states) they have reassurance and hope in the midst of their distress, because they have heard (as the focus states): “God is for us; we can be confident that God loves and cares for us even when our experience seems to deny it.”