Preacher: Have Something to Say

C. H. Spurgeon's counsel on being interesting enough to be heard:

Your subject must weigh so much upon your own mind that you dedicate all your faculties at their best to the deliverance of your soul concerning it; and then when your hearers see that the topic has engrossed you, it will by degrees engross them.

And,

Romaine used to say it was well to understand the art of preaching, but infinitely better to know the heart of preaching; and in that saying there is no little weight. The heart of preaching, throwing of the soul into it, the earnestness which pleads as for life itself, is half the battle as to gaining attention. . . . Have something to say, and say it earnestly, and the congregation will be at your feet.  

—“Attention,” in Lectures to My Students, Book I, 146.