C. John Miller taught homiletics at Westminster and was listening to a taped sermon that one of his students had preached at a nearby church as an assignment. “He was not exactly reading the manuscript, but he was heavily dependent on it. I could feel that his interest was not in his listeners, but in the ideas in the manuscript. He droned on in a wooden tone when suddenly loud, booming voices began to break into his message. A true-life adventure was taking place! The recording equipment in the church was picking up police radio calls. The radio messages revealed that a robber was trapped by the police in a fast-food drive-in restaurant.

Every word the police said had a clear purpose. They meant to capture this man or know the reason why not. I can remember many of the words of the policemen. One of them was yelling to his partners, “Come on! Come on! Over there!” These men, out there on the street with drawn weapons, knew what they had to do. Their whole enterprise was focused on a single purpose: to capture the man. I think that is our purpose in preaching too:  to capture the man for Christ when we preach! Permit nothing in the message that does not serve this master purpose” (C. John Miller, Preaching by Faith, 124).

To capture a man for Christ we must use every weapon at our disposal including the voice God has given us, facial expressions, and gesturing ability empowered by God's Spirit.