Stop trying to be clever. When it comes to evangelistic sermon titles, clear is better than clever.

One way we serve churches is with evangelistic event marketing, where we invite people from your community to attend a series of evangelistic meetings at your church. A lot of times the postcard or brochure will include a list of topics for the first 3 or 5 meetings, and we almost always have to rewrite these titles to make it clear what the preacher is talking about.

Now, I get it. If you’re a pastor, you preach every weekend. And giving your sermon a creative title helps keep things fresh for your congregation. So for 11 and a half months of the year, clever is good.

But evangelistic sermons are different. You only have a few seconds to help someone understand what these meetings are about. So, for example, let’s say you’re doing a series on what the Bible says about current events in the news. If you’re talking about Nebuchadnezzar’s dream in Daniel 2, you might be tempted to be clever with your title, and call it The Metal Man, or The Dream of a King. But do those titles clearly describe the promise of this meeting? Clear is better than clever. The promise of this topic is that you can have confidence in the prophecies of the Bible, because  every prediction of this particular prophecy came true. So a better title would be, How to Know the Future, or even straight up, The Confidence of Bible Prophecy. As a subtitle, you could mention the dream of a king, or something like, “A dream from the past speaks to the present.” Clear over clever.

Or let’s say the topic is the universal conflict between good and evil. Don’t call this sermon “Star Wars.” If someone gets this flyer and they see that, it’s like, what does Jar Jar Binks have to do with Bible prophecy? That might be clever for a weekend sermon—though I would even argue against that—but it doesn’t clearly communicate what this meeting is about, or its promise. A better title would be something like, “Revelation’s Greatest War,” or, “The War behind All Wars.”

One more example. If you’re speaking on the signs of the end that Jesus gave in Matthew 24, don’t call it, “The End: Is it here, near or mere fear?” What?!? I’ve seen a ton of creative titles for this topic. “Are we Earth’s final generation?” or “Hard Times, or Just End Times?” That one doesn’t even make sense to me, and I know what it’s supposed to be about. How about we just call it, “Signs of the End”? Or, “Jesus’ Prophecy of the End.”

So that’s how the titles for your evangelistic sermons need to be different from your weekly worship service. Now, I’d like to suggest that maybe your weekend sermons should themselves be evangelistic, but that’s a topic for another video. When you’re titling your evangelistic sermons, remember, clear over clever.

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Thank you for being faithful to your calling. If you’re in a hard season of ministry, just remember that God has you at this church at this time for a reason. He brought you here, and He’ll sustain you through it all. So be strong and courageous! God’s got this!

I’m cheering for you!