Listen to the first two minutes of most sermons and you will hear a preacher warming up. A thank-you to the worship team. A line about the weather or the game. A story that is pleasant, a little long, and only loosely connected to the text. Then, somewhere around minute four, the sermon actually begins.
Those minutes feel harmless. They are not. The first two minutes are when the congregation is deciding whether this sermon is for them. If what they hear is throat-clearing, many will decide it is not, and they will spend the next half hour being polite.
The problem: the introduction gets treated as a runway for the preacher instead of a doorway for the listener.
An introduction has one job. It is not there to be clever or to buy time until you feel settled. It is there to surface the question the passage answers, the ache it speaks to, so that by the time you read the text, people are leaning in because they want to know what God says about the thing you just named.
That means the introduction cannot be written first. You do not know what to introduce until you know what the passage is doing. Many preachers write the opening on Monday because a blank page is intimidating, then build the rest of the sermon in a different direction and never go back. The opening is left introducing a sermon that no longer exists.
Pro-tip: Write your introduction last, after you can say the big idea in one sentence.
A few questions to put to your opening before Sunday:
Does it raise the question the text answers? Not a question. The question. If your passage is about anxiety over provision, an opening about the importance of Bible reading is a detour, however true it is.
Would a guest know why this matters to him? Picture the person in the back row who almost did not come. In the first two minutes, does he hear something about his own life that he recognizes?
Does it point toward the passage or away from it? An illustration that needs its own explanation is pulling attention to itself. The best introductions make the text feel urgent, then get out of the way.
Could you cut the first paragraph? Often the real introduction is the second paragraph. Try starting there and see what you lose. Usually it is only your own warm-up.
None of this means coldness. Warmth is fine. Greeting your people is fine. But keep the greeting short and separate, then begin the sermon on purpose, as if the first sentence matters. Because to someone in the room, it is the sentence that decides whether he keeps listening.
Earn the next thirty minutes in the first two.