How Jack Hayford Preached: Explain It Until It Feels Reasonable

Jack Hayford took a tiny Foursquare congregation in Van Nuys, California, and pastored it for 30 years as it became The Church On The Way. We studied eight of his sermons from 1974 to 1977. Under all of them sits the same habit: explain why something is biblical before asking anyone to do it, ask what the text has to do with me, and end with something people do in the room.

Who Jack Hayford was

When Hayford arrived in 1969, the First Foursquare Church of Van Nuys had about 25 regular attenders. By the end of the 1980s it drew about 10,000 a week. He wrote “Majesty” among roughly 600 hymns and choruses, and he became a trusted voice for Pentecostal and non-Pentecostal pastors alike.

He founded The King’s College and Seminary in 1997 (now The King’s University), served as president of the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel from 2004 to 2009, and wrote more than 50 books. In 2010 Preaching magazine named him one of the 25 most influential preachers of the previous 25 years.

The shape of a Hayford sermon

Hayford usually preached from one main passage with cross-references alongside it. Often he read an Old Testament story as a picture of Christ or the believer. In “Arising to Possess the Land,” Joshua 1 points to Jesus as the true Joshua.

He explained before he exhorted. He took practices that made people nervous, like raising hands, praying for the sick and forceful intercession, and walked the room through why each one was biblical until it felt reasonable.

His sermons carry a personal edge. He read Scripture on his knees asking, “What does this have to do with me?” He told his own story, set up clear contrasts like dead religion and living bread, and pointed to Christ’s work rather than the hearer’s effort.

Then he called people to rise from passivity and act, and the sermon often ended in ministry right there: communion, prayer, laying on hands or a spoken blessing.

What made his preaching different

What others said

“I think pastors sense in him what they are longing to be.”

— Lloyd Ogilvie

“His motivation is to get theology into people, to get it lived out.”

— Jim Tolle, pastor of The Church On The Way, 2005 (Christianity Today)

What to take into your own pulpit

Those are the ideas. The guide turns them into ten steps you can follow this week, plus the sermons we studied and a fill-in outline in his shape.

Common questions