Most Sundays, there's a guest in one of the back rows. It's somebody's neighbor, somebody's brother, someone invited along or quietly curious on his own. When the sermon ends, will he know what the gospel is and why it's good?
Mike Bullmore taught me to ask that question. I sat in his classroom at a pastor's college and the framework he taught us has helped me into every pulpit since. Is the gospel functionally central to this sermon or merely formally present? Formally present means the cross gets a sentence or two, like a bumper sticker on a car. Functionally central means the sermon's whole argument stands on it. His new book, The Heart of Preaching, makes the compelling case for that distinction and I'm glad a wider room of preachers gets to sit under it now.
My big takeaway: Mentioning the gospel is not the same as making Christ and Him crucified unmistakable.
Here's the test to run on Sunday's manuscript before you preach it: Delete every explicitly gospel line, the cross, the resurrection, the finished work, all of it and read what's left. If the sermon still holds together, still makes its case, and still lands its application, then the gospel may have been formally present, but it was functionally absent. The structure never needed it to survive. And that guest in the back rows will likely leave with an assignment to go and do rather than the glorious announcement of what's been done for him.
Good advice tells the room what to do. Good news tells the room what has been done. Both belong in a faithful sermon, but only one of them is the gospel, and the room can always feel which one is carrying the weight. When the imperatives rest visibly on the indicative, when the "do this" stands on the "it is finished", a non-Christian doesn't just hear Christianity's rules. He hears its glory and understands why it would be called good news.
Preach so the guest in the back row leaves with the glorious news of salvation in Christ!