Just as a human body has joints knees, ankles, elbows, wrists, hips, and shoulders—that make movement possible, so the sermon must also have joints that allow movement, and these are called transitions. Whenever you move from one part of the sermon to another, there must be some sort of smooth joint or transition. From the introduction into the body, from the main divisions to the subpoints, from the last main division into the conclusion there should be smooth joints that will keep your sermon moving without becoming disconnected. If you move on to the next phase of your sermon without building a bridge over which your people can move along with you, it will be hard for them to jump over the gap. They may not follow you.
In carpentry the mark of the truly professional craftsman is his ability to finish a joint so smoothly and expertly that the eye can hardly detect it. So someone has said, "It is a hallmark of homiletical excellence to become efficient in the development of smooth transition." A good preacher is noted for his transitions.
In the preceding article in this series (January, 1980), we discussed how to put your sermon on target by developing the proposition—a complete sentence that pulls together the subject and the theme and provides a specific aim for the entire sermon. We saw, also, how all the main divisions of the sermon must flow naturally and logically from the preaching portion of Scripture and support the proposition. Now, how do you move smoothly from the proposition to the body of the sermon? You do so by means of the transitional sentence, a sentence that is constructed as carefully and precisely as the proposition itself.
The transitional sentence is made up of three parts. First of all, it contains the proposition. You already have formulated that; you know what it is.
The second element of the transitional sentence grows out of the proposition. Every proposition or statement of truth immediately creates an implied question. For example, if your proposition is: "We should seek goodness rather than greatness," what is the implicit question? It's "Why?" Isn't that what the whole congregation is unconsciously asking? "Why should we seek goodness rather than greatness?" That should be what you answer in your sermon. Another example: If your proposition is "Our weakest weakness can become our strongest strength,'' what is the question raised? How? How can our weakness become strength?
Now, there are only six possible questions implied by a proposition—Who? What? When? Where? How? Why? Incidentally, most of your preaching should answer "How?" questions. That's the big question that most people want answered. One preacher tells of ordering a hot-water heater for his summer cabin. When he went up to install it, it was in a big carton. He opened the carton, took the heater out carefully, and looked for instructions. He found a card that guaranteed how long the heater would last and that told of its qualities and its capacity and all those things, but there wasn't one word about how to install it. "I would have given all that descriptive information regarding its beauty and guarantee," he wrote, " for just a few words telling how to get it to work." This is what your people primarily want to know:' 'How can I get Christianity to work?"
So the second step in formulating the transitional sentence is to ask your proposition the question it implies. The answer you get may not be the answer that you want to preach. But it must be the answer that the Bible gives. Your preaching text controls everything in expository preaching. You are no longer the potter who molds the scripture topically to go in any direction you want it to go. You are the clay and the scripture is the potter. It molds you; you can go only in the direction that your scripture goes. If it doesn't answer the question "How?" by what means can you try to answer the question "How?" from that scripture? If all the sermon parts grow naturally from the preaching portion of Scripture, the question implied by the proposition will be answered in the text itself.
Let's go back to the illustration we have used in previous articles—John 17:6-19. We defined the subject as "church-world relationships," and the theme that limits the subject as "effective church-world relation ships." Our proposition is: "The church can have an effective relationship with the world." What is the natural question arising from this proposition? How? That is the question the text should answer and that the sermon must seek to answer for its hearers.
When we turn to the text we find the third and final element in formulating the transitional sentence—the key word that ties together all the main divisions of the sermon.
The main divisions arising from John 17:6-19 (we said earlier in this series) are: "out of the world"; "in the world";"not of the world"; "sent... into the world." These are the ideas in the text that answer our question: "How can the church have an effective relationship with the world?" Is there a common element, a key word, that ties all four together? These are all guidelines or principles, are they not, by which an effective relationship can be had? Guidelines, then, becomes our key word. The key word is always a common noun in the plural. The English language has thousands of nouns, but we must find the one that best fits our text and binds together the main sermon divisions arising from the Scripture portion. There could be other good substitutes for guidelines, or principles, but they must accurately fit the items they are tying together. When working a jigsaw puzzle you can't just force a piece into a hole because you want to fill it. It must fit or the puzzle will be out of symmetry. So with the sermon. Each piece must fit, not be forced because you want it to fit.
Now we have all three elements of our transitional sentence: the proposition, the question or interrogative arising from it, and the key word. How do we put together, in a single, smooth transitional sentence, the proposition (the church can have an effective relationship with the world), the interrogative, "How?" and the key word, guidelines? Often it is grammatically impossible, so we find a substitute for the interrogative.
Remember when you were a child and someone would ask you "Why?" and you would reply "Because"? The substitute for "Why?" is "Because." You can't always get the word why in the transitional sentence, but you can use its substitute. The substitute for "How?" is not quite so easy. It is always the word by plus a verb ending in ing.
The substitute for "Where?" is "at which"; the substitute for "When?" is "in which."
Now, let's formulate the transitional sentence using "by following" as a substitute for "How?" Combining the three, we have: "The church can have an effective relation ship with the world by following the guide lines of John 17:6-19." This, then, is the transitional sentence.
Notice how it not only provides a smooth transition from the proposition to the body of the sermon, but it also unifies the main points. Thus forming the transitional sentence requires you to identify a key word that will classify or categorize the sermon's main points in a single theme. This keeps you from getting off target and preaching on apples, oranges, and bananas all in the same sermon. It gives unity. Often it is the lack of a key word tying the main divisions together that causes a random, rambling sermon, a miscellany of religious odds and ends, and allows the preacher to run off on tangents.
The transitional sentence, then, performs two important functions. It is a bridge to carry your hearers with you from the proposition of the sermon into the body that amplifies and supports the proposition. And the transitional sentence is the thing that ties together the sermon and all its parts into a unit and makes it a beautiful organic whole.
