Sermon Central
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The Danger Of The Unrelated Point In Preaching
By Sherman Haywood Cox on Mar 3, 2026
A sermon can contain many true statements yet still fail if those truths are disconnected from the text’s main point. Preachers must discipline themselves to maintain clarity and focus.
The Danger of the Unrelated Point in Preaching
One of the most common preaching mistakes is inserting true but unrelated ideas into a sermon. When preachers add asides simply because they are accurate or interesting, they weaken clarity and force listeners to mentally assemble scattered pieces into a message. A faithful sermon must have a single dominant point drawn from the text, and every illustration, argument, and application must serve that point. Truth alone is not enough. Relevance to the text’s main thrust determines whether something belongs in a sermon. If a point does not advance the message of this passage, it should be saved for another sermon.
Truth Is Not the Same as Relevance
It seems that preachers often want to add asides while preaching their sermons. You know when preachers are on a topic, and something immediately comes to mind. Instead of evaluating whether the point is relevant to the topic at hand, the preacher simply determines if the added content is true. If it is true, they present it.
I remember during Sunday school hearing a member make a powerful point. The pastor noted the power in the point. Then, during the sermon, the pastor shoehorned the idea into the sermon where it had no place.
The Confusion Caused by Unfocused Sermons
The problem with such asides is that people lose the main point you are trying to make. Sometimes, in extreme cases, even the preacher can lose the point of the sermon. And then the sermon can go on without any real destination. The preacher simply jumps from one true but not necessarily connected point to another true but not necessarily connected point.
The people may holler, but the end is a confusing amalgamation of unrelated points that is incorrectly called a sermon. Such sermons put a lot of stress on the people as their mind tries to make a whole point out of the diverse, unrelated points.
I had a pastor who did this very often. The people often shouted at his sermons, but they had difficulty telling you what the sermon was about. The answer is to make sure that you have one point and that everything you preach contributes to the understanding, experiencing, and application of that point.
What you want to present may be true, but if it is not relevant to THIS sermon, then let it go and preach that fact in a later sermon when it is relevant.
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