There are 93 sermons on DVD from the first Festival of Young Preachers. As of Saturday noon, I have watched 53 of them. My goal is to finish by Monday afternoon.
I have a one page assessment form which I complete on each one. On this page I note attire, voice, posture and general presence. I record whether the young preachers read their text and offer prayer at the beginning or end of the sermon. So far, 2 young preachers have concluded their sermon by singing a song; several others quote a song at the end.
Here are some other questions: is this a topical, exegetical or narrative sermon? Does it make an appeal to the reason, the emotions, or the will (or some combination of these)? What are the source of illustrations: culture, history, literature, the bible or personal experience? And is the sermon primarily pastoral in nature, or theological or ethical or evangelistic?
And of course, I track what I call the Nine Marks of a Good Sermon. There is an essay on this elsewhere on this web site.
Here are some initial (half-way) thoughts.
There is a wide range of sermon styles (from formal, pulpit-using, manuscript-reading to informal, stage-walking, conversational-style), an interesting array of preferred attire (from jeans and tee-shirts to clerical robes and stoles), and some very diverse demeanors (from stern and serious to warm and casual).
Some sermons are very good, some very bad, but most spanned the middle of this bell curve. The good ones combined arresting presence, thoughtful content, and talented presentation; the poor ones were largely due to lack of preparation (sometimes by preachers new to preaching who are unsure how to prepare a sermon).
Most read manuscripts, and most of these manuscripts were written for this event; I may be wrong but I think I can tell which were older sermons recycled for this festival. Only 2 or 3 (so far) spoken without much dependence upon notes.
I plan to write several articles with more formal, extensive, and detailed analysis of these 93 sermons. I will link those publications to this web site.