How Oral Roberts Preached: Every Sermon a Runway to a Decision
Oral Roberts took a healing ministry from Enid, Oklahoma, to a canvas “tent cathedral” and then to national television. We studied seven of his sermons and crusade messages, from a 1950 revival in Philadelphia to a 1977 magazine message. Every one was a runway to a moment of decision: a Bible scene, the listener placed inside it, a simple act of faith, and a call to come forward.
Who Oral Roberts was
Roberts was born January 24, 1918, in Pontotoc County, Oklahoma, and came out of the Pentecostal Holiness church. He was healed of tuberculosis at 17 and preached for the rest of his life out of that testimony. He began a healing ministry in Enid in 1947, and between 1947 and 1968 he held more than 300 crusades as his tent grew to seat 12,500.
NBC began carrying his tent crusades in 1954, and by 1977 his program was the top-rated religious show on American television. He said he personally laid hands on more than two million people. He chartered Oral Roberts University in 1963 and welcomed its first students in 1965.
The shape of a Roberts sermon
Roberts usually put a Bible scene or a person under pressure at the center. In The Fourth Man, he set Babylon’s might against three young men who refused to bow, knowing the penalty.
Then he moved the scene into the listener’s life. The fiery furnace became “your furnace.” The need in the text became “your point of need.” Some sermons laid out numbered lessons or keys, and some used a repeated question the crowd could answer: “Who is the healer?” “God!”
The center of the method was the point of contact. In How to Use the Faith You Already Have, Moses’ rod is the picture: faith needs a moment and a place to be released. He named the act, explained it and asked people to do it, whether that meant a hand on the afflicted spot or a hand on the TV set.
Every crusade service was designed to end in an invitation to come forward for salvation and healing. And he refused to step into the pulpit until he had prayed and sensed the anointing.
What made his preaching different
Inside the scene
He put the listener inside the Bible scene: “your furnace,” “your point of need.” The story stopped being history and became the hearer’s situation.
A point of contact
He gave one simple act of faith to do now. The point of contact gave faith a moment and a place to be released.
Relentless hope
His message was relentlessly hopeful: “God is a good God,” “Expect a miracle,” “Something good is going to happen to you.”
What others said
“Oral shook the landscape with the inescapable reality and practicality of Jesus’ whole ministry.”
— Jack Hayford
“There was something when Oral leaned into that TV and said, ‘Something good is going to happen to you today.’”
— Mark Rutland, president of Oral Roberts University, 2009 (Associated Press)
What to take into your own pulpit
Put them in the story
Don’t leave the text in the past. Show people where the scene meets their own week.
Give faith something to do
Roberts handed people one simple act to perform. A concrete response helps a listener move from hearing to trusting.
Build toward a decision
Know from the start where the sermon will ask people to respond, and let every part lead there.
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.
Free PDF · Preach Like the Greats
Learn to preach like Oral Roberts.
This post is the overview. The guide has the research and the method.
- The 7 sermons we studied, start to finish
- Ten steps to preach the way he did
- His sermon outline, movement by movement
- A fill-in template for your own text, 9 pages
Common questions
What was Oral Roberts’s preaching style?
Dramatic, hopeful and aimed at a decision. He put the listener inside a Bible scene, gave a “point of contact” as a simple act of faith, and called people forward for salvation and prayer.
How did Oral Roberts structure a sermon?
A Bible scene or a person under pressure, moved into the listener’s life, sometimes with numbered keys or a call-and-response question, then a named point of contact and an invitation to come forward.
What did Oral Roberts mean by a “point of contact”?
A simple act that gives faith a moment and a place to be released, like Moses’ rod in Exodus 14. He asked people to lay a hand on the afflicted spot, receive his hand, or touch the TV set as they prayed.