Pulpit sins can be divided into two general categories — sins of attitude and sins of delivery. Mechanics of the pulpiteering arts want to reduce everything to the latter, but the real adjustments in our day have to begin with the former. This is nothing less than the classic Pauline division between credenda and agenda, things to be believed and things to be done.
This not to say that delivery is unimportant — it is actually crucial. “And it came to pass in Iconium, that they went both together into the synagogue of the Jews, and so spake, that a great multitude both of the Jews and also of the Greeks believed” (Acts 14:1). The way they spoke had something to do with the results. But the way they thought and believed had something to do with the way they spoke.
The principal pulpit sin of attitude is unbelief. Not knowing what God has said about preaching, or knowing it and not believing it, results in other attitudinal sins. Those other sins would include things like timidity, the fear of man, and arrogance, which results in others falling into the fear of man. And of course there are some petty sins of attitude as well — vanity, for instance. But no matter who you are, or where in church history you are, the act of preaching should require courage.
Some common sins of delivery include the following: 1. Being bored with the material, and therefore being boring with it. 2. Running out of material ten minutes before the end of the sermon, and circling the airport aimlessly until it is time to land. 3. Preaching the whole counsel of God every fifteen minutes or so. 4. Refusing to enunciate. 5. Garbling your point so that you are, like the last of the Mohicans in the deep woods, very hard to follow. 6. Hopping from one foot to the other like you were a cat on hot bricks. 7. Thinking that conviction of sin comes through yelling and upbraiding. 8. Drawing attention to yourself instead of away from yourself.
There are others, but you get the drift.