Preaching Through Podcast
Pastors are planning, preparing, and preaching in isolation. It is not that they don’t have trusted friends and family around them – they do. The isolation they are facing is in their own ministry where they play multiple positions, fill multiple roles, and feel they do not have anyone else to share the burden of preaching and teaching with. The Preaching Through podcast is the conversation that takes place when pastors come together to encourage one another to grow, challenging each other’s ability to communicate the Gospel. Each episode gives you a seat table with ministry leaders exploring how to plan and prepare to preach through topics, books, and subjects that are central to following Jesus in 21st Century America.
Preaching Through Podcast
Preaching Through The ABCs of Preaching
What do you believe your sermons have the power to do? What do you believe about the weekly preaching moment? Who or what should have influence over your preaching?
What are your Assumptions, Beliefs, and Convictions about preaching?
Every preacher has them but very few write them down and if you have never written them down, it is worth your time.
In this episode of Preaching Through Podcast we discuss the 10 ABCs of Preaching developed by Luke to stay accountable to the craft of preaching, measure improvement, process praise & criticism, and ultimately become a better steward of the preaching moment.
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You did a sabbatical a few years back and you got to do what virtually no pastor ever gets to do you got to go and listen to other preachers preach at lots of different churches. So what did you think of the preaching?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was a wild experience. It was really nice. I mean, first of all, just being able to take sabbatical is a sweet deal and I was really grateful for it. I was mostly trying to go and be encouraged. I just wanted to be a Christian. I wasn't trying to learn a bunch from everyone else or, you know, do some undercover pastor thing, just really trying to be ministered to.
Speaker 2:I do believe that mature Christians are easily edified, so I think even in a sermon that's not great you can always find something to be encouraged by. That said, as I reflected on it, I went gosh. I hope my preaching is not as underwhelming as this and I really left it with a desire to work on it. I didn't assume that I'm better than anyone else I listened to, but to go, man, I really want this to feel compelling. It felt what it felt like as I listened to a lot of the sermons was they felt like undercooked meals. It was like there was some really great stuff there that just didn't get developed. It felt like it didn't get much time.
Speaker 2:It felt like it didn't get enough attention and so it just felt kind of half baked and I left that experience going man Lord, help me to figure out how to take that good stuff and take it all the way, cook it all the way through, also not overcook it. But yeah, that was a big conviction and I walked away saying like a lot of preaching, not because people are bad, not because people are ungodly, but just because we're busy. We got a lot to do. If we're not careful, most preaching can be underwhelming and I don't want to do that. All right, this should be a good one.
Speaker 1:Let's talk about it. We hope that we can be one voice of encouragement in your journey to become a better preacher, to communicate the gospel more effectively and to be a great steward, with the context and the calling that God has placed upon your life. And my name is Dave Shrine. This is my co-host, luke Simmons. This is season two, episode two. We really excited to be back and to be talking about all of the different things that pastors encounter as they are preaching. Through. Season one we talk all about preaching through nonfiction books, book of the Bible Today, what we are talking through, the ABCs, or your ABCs.
Speaker 2:Luke, right, yeah, abcs stands for assumptions, beliefs and convictions about preaching. So preaching through your ABCs and, to be clear, this is not everyone having to preach through mine, right, but it's to say every preacher, I think, needs to develop and articulate and write down what are my assumptions about preaching, what are my beliefs about preaching, what are my convictions about preaching. For me, I put it in a top 10 list there's a lot of things I think about preaching, but to actually write it down and to make it clear and to preach out of those assumptions, beliefs and convictions, One of your most recent preaching coaching cohorts, which you called the preaching lab.
Speaker 1:You had the people who went through that come up with their ABCs of preaching and that was a super encouraging list. It like I like your list, but they had some things in there that I was like man, that really should get some consideration. That was a really fun exercise and it was really interesting to see that your assumptions, beliefs and convictions are not going to be the same and shouldn't necessarily be the same for other people as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, every preacher is, importantly, I think, trying to find their own voice. And I mean, on one hand, none of us wants to be original. If we're going to be faithful, I don't want to come up with some new truth about Jesus, right? That's how you create a cult Not interested in that. At the same time, finding your voice is to say okay, how's God made me, what are my passions, what are my gifts, what's my voice? And part of how you identify and articulate that is through the ABCs.
Speaker 1:There's lots of good things we're going to get into this season. We're going to talk about weddings and funerals. We're going to talk about camps and conferences. We're going to talk about preaching through praise, criticism and silence. We actually had somebody reach out to you and said, you know, hey, tell me, what did they say?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a guy I'm connected to on Twitter. His name is Mark and he's about to start at a new church and he's been in ministry for a while, but this is going to be his first time, I believe, as a senior pastor at least new role at the church he's going to, and so he said man, I'd love to hear an episode on how would you preach through your first year at a new church, or you know no church planners who think the same thing, so maybe that's something we could talk about.
Speaker 1:That could be fun. I think this episode could lean into that idea of preaching through your first year at a new church or your first year in that role. It might be critical to develop some ABCs, so why don't you go ahead and share what your ABCs are, and then maybe we'll pick out a couple to deep dive?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that sounds great. So I've, like I said, have 10 of them and yeah, dave, whichever ones you think we need to go deeper on, that would be great. In the videos that we recorded for the preaching lab, I go through all of these and explain them in more depth, but here I'll just blitz through them and then I can go deeper on a few if you want. So number one preaching is an essential tool for making disciples, for evangelizing and discipleship. Preaching is an essential tool for making disciples. Number two preaching is the most significant tool for leading a local congregation. We actually talked about that last time, last episode, yeah, as we were looking at a fall launch. Number three preaching is one of the main ways God disciples the preacher. Number four most life change happens in the moment. Number five, but a lot of life change happens over the long haul too.
Speaker 1:Okay, I'm making a note on that one right there, okay.
Speaker 2:number six people remember what the preacher emphasizes and gets excited about. Number seven people want to be challenged, which is both good and bad. Number eight gospel preaching feels more like news than advice. That was probably one of my favorite things, just by the way, in the preaching lab is to have a number of guys who I know are preaching the scriptures and working faithfully to have an experience of going. Wow, I think I actually have some ways to grow in preaching the gospel, so it feels more like news. So diversion.
Speaker 2:Number nine preaching improves with reps and feedback. And number 10, most preaching is underwhelming and that was what came out of that conversation or we had at the beginning related to my time in sabbatical. Yeah, okay. So there they are. Those are my ABCs and, like I said, I think it'd be valuable for any preacher to develop whatever they are. You know, not only do they help you just have confidence in where you're coming from, but they deepen your conviction. They help you navigate criticism Okay, this criticism. You know what that's actually related to some of my core convictions about this. I should take that more to heart. And it helps you train other people.
Speaker 1:All right, I've got a few written down here. We'll come back and we'll talk about these. This is gonna be fun. Okay, your first 200 sermons are gonna be terrible. This is something the late Tim Keller once said, meaning that no matter how hard you study, how many hours you put in or how much you work on your preaching, there's this glass ceiling that can only be broken with more reps. So getting reps becomes your main way of growing as a preacher. But what happens when you surpass 200 sermons? What are you supposed to work on? Where should you try and grow? Or what muscles are you gonna need to build to have a faithful and fruitful preaching ministry over the long haul?
Speaker 1:Well, the preaching lab is a curriculum developed by our co-host, Luke Simmons, that fills this gap and takes preachers beyond what they've learned in seminary or Bible college. This live experience provides preachers with meaningful feedback, insight and instructions so that they can improve their preaching for a faithful and fruitful preaching ministry. During this 12 week preaching cohort, preachers learn of minor adjustments to their sermon habits that have a major impact on the preaching moment, Tweaks that nobody in your congregation have the ability or the confidence to give you. It's a deep inspection of your routines, habits, study and preaching, all so that you can become a better steward of the gift God has given you. Every single week, an audience. This is your opportunity to return the favor back to your congregation and preach a sermon that is faithful and fruitful. Visit faithfulandfruitfulcom slash lab to learn more about the preaching lab live cohort, as well as the preaching lab on demand video curriculum.
Speaker 1:Now back to the podcast. Looking at these 10 ABC's assumptions, beliefs and convictions, knowing that we talked about what was it? Number two preaching is the most significant tool for leading a local congregation. Ordinarily, I'd probably want to go to that one, but we discussed that in episode one. So the first one that I want to deep dive in is preaching is one of the main ways God disciples the preacher. Why is that making the list and why is that true for you?
Speaker 2:This has been one of the real delights of preaching over the last 15 years. For me is to remember yeah, I'm a shepherd of a church, but I'm an under shepherd underneath the chief shepherd, and he's the one who walks through the valley of the shadow of death and he's the one who leads me besides the waters and he's the one that leads me into green grass, and he's the one who's rodent staff come for me. Like before I'm a pastor, before I'm a preacher, I'm a Christian and I'm being discipled by and shepherded by, and formed by and loved by the Lord himself, and so one of the things I'm just aware of is that, okay, if that's true that he's discipling me, he's probably going to disciple me through the things that he's calling me to do, which I think is actually true of everybody, right? So, dave, you're in digital marketing, and other people are in other careers. Some are teachers, some are nurses, some are stay-at-home parents, some are retired, but whatever your vocation is, I think probably God is using pieces of that vocation to disciple you, to make you more like Christ, and so it's no surprise then that that's true for preachers as well, and anybody who has ever taught anything knows that really you learn way more when you teach and you have to internalize it at a deeper level. Just the fact that I get to study scripture for hours and hours every week.
Speaker 2:This year I've been recently using a touchscreen monitor sometimes when I preach to try to highlight different connections in the text. I'll underline keywords that are related and use different colors to help match it up, and it's been kind of fun. I don't do it all the time, but when I do it it's kind of fun. And what I've realized with it is that people will say to me man, that's so cool, how you saw that. And what I tell them is well, I'm only trying to bring out what I think you would see if you had the time to see it right and I've been blessed as a preacher. I get the time Like this is right.
Speaker 2:I know some of the folks listening to this. They're bivocational. They don't have as much time Average Christians who are grinding away in their life and their job and their career. They're trying to spend time with the Lord. They don't have the extended time that I have to study and to prepare, and so I'm just so grateful for how the Lord uses his word to shape me, and part of it comes out of a conviction that I need to try to internalize what God is saying to me before I preach it to others. Now, if you're preaching 30, 40, 45 times a year, I don't know that you could ever perfectly apply everything you're gonna preach right. There's always a sense you have as a preacher of like am.
Speaker 2:I a hypocrite? Am I a phony? Like I don't live it, probably to the level I'm trying to call us to live it. Now the key on hypocrisy. Hypocrisy isn't that you fail to do what you say you should do. Hypocrisy is when you act like you don't fail to do it Right. That's the problem. If, as preachers, we start to act like we got it all wired when we know we don't, that's hypocrisy Anyway.
Speaker 2:So there's a verse in Ezra, chapter seven, verse 10,. It says that Ezra set his heart to study the scripture, to practice it and then to teach it. And that has been a model, that's been a paradigm for me. So I think if, as a preacher, you approach this as okay, I've got these sermons to prepare, I've got this scripture to study, I'm gonna study it, I'm gonna try to practice it in my own life. Have God wrestle with me on this and then I'm gonna deliver it. I think if you do that, over time you'll just find man. That is one of the sweetest ways that God disciples you. And so much of the time I'm preaching to other people, but I'm really just preaching to me and I do have times, even on a Sunday, where, as I get up before I go up to prepare or to preach. I'm praying like Lord. I believe this, but help my unbelief. Would you actually use my preaching of this to help me believe it? And he's gracious, and he often does.
Speaker 1:When it comes to preaching, as one of the main ways God disciples the preacher. Are there ways that God has used people in your life to say, hey, you could grow in this area. Or are there ways that God has used this core conviction to help you grow deeper with him and maybe a season where it felt like you were a little bit more distant or away from him?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I remember a time I was preaching toward the end of the year about how to have a great year and one of the things that I brought up was what's your plan then this coming year for really connecting with the Lord personally? And as I was saying that and in the subsequent weeks, I felt the Lord gently tapping on my shoulder saying yeah, luke, what is your plan for that? And I realized that a lot of my own private devotional time had gotten eaten up by other things and I said, yeah, I gotta prioritize that again. And so that's a specific instance.
Speaker 2:At a more general level, I think one of the things that preaching regularly does is it forces me to tidy up things relationally, like I think, especially with my wife and kids, they're gonna sit there and listen to me, and if there's a rift between us and if there's some unfinished, unresolved tension, it's gonna not be good. And so there is a sense in which I think that's one of the graces of preaching is that at least again, if you take integrity seriously, which I'm trying to, it is this regular, at least weekly, invitation to say am I okay in my most important relationships, like, am I in a good place. Are we reconciled? Because I wanna walk with integrity and I don't want you know, I don't want my kids having an internal eye roll when they listen to me preach.
Speaker 1:That was number three. And then we move to. I made a mental note of number four and number five. Number four most life change happens in the moment, but a lot of life change happens over the long haul too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, I think a lot of times preachers will make a big deal about how much of your sermon did people remember and I just don't ever feel that pressure. I don't care, like if they remember something great, like I'm not against it, I would never be like make your sermons unmemorable, but that's not good. But the pressure like you're gonna talk for 30 minutes, 35 minutes maybe, not much longer than that, but like even if you only talked for 20 minutes, are people gonna remember everything you said in those 20 minutes? No, hopefully they might remember one thing. But my point in that first one of most life change happens in the moment is that usually it's like it's an aha, it's the spirit, convicts, it's an illustration lands and you see something in a fresh way. It's that sense that you have of, oh, my goodness, I feel like I was the only one in the room or did somebody tell him about what's going on in my life. You know, like people will say stuff like that Then and that to me is like it's those life changing moments. It's the conviction, it's the impressions, it's the thing that happens in the moment, and I think that a lot of the life change happens in that sense right and so, in that sense, anyone listening right.
Speaker 2:If someone comes to church 40 times a year which that would be great if people came to church that often but say they did and they listened to 40 sermons, I wouldn't expect that every week would be oh, life changing. Oh, life changing Like that sounds like. I don't think that's likely. It might be once a year, it might be three times a year, but that you really have like a whoa, like paradigm shifting, a phrase that stuck, something that made sense.
Speaker 2:What's crazy to me about it is so often when people articulate to me the life changing thing I said I don't remember saying that and sometimes I'm like I know for sure I didn't say that and what that tells me is what is actually changing their life is the work of the spirit applying something to them in some really cool way. So that's the idea there. On the other hand, so much of how I was formed, especially as a young Christian, was by listening to good, consistent preaching from my pastor, mike Shea, at Community Evangelical Free Church in Champaign, illinois 120 people or so and the way he would preach the Bible taught me to study the Bible and the vision he had for the glory of God gave me a vision for the glory of God and his understanding of what it was to be a church on mission.
Speaker 1:Like.
Speaker 2:I realized so much of the stuff I'm now fluent in as a newish Christian was being spoken all around me through the weekend week out preaching.
Speaker 2:And so in that sense, I go okay, a lot of life change happens over the long haul too. It's one of the reasons why, as I use that touchscreen from time to time, sometimes it's to provide a oh, like, wow, boom, look at this. Other times it's just to show people this is how you study the Bible. And so I don't wanna I don't wanna overdo, like man, I gotta come up with this decisive thing that's gonna change, and I don't wanna neglect that, like yeah, it's gonna be the consistent, normal rhythm. But mostly I just go. I don't feel the pressure to try to have everyone have a life changing experience every time. I want it to be good. I wanna preach the word, I wanna get excited about the most important things, and then I'm gonna trust the Lord with the results.
Speaker 1:Well, that's a particular thing for you. Season one we had an episode where we talked about preaching through Easter and Christmas, and it's well documented in that episode that you, for the longest time, did not like preaching through Christmas or a Christmas Eve message more specifically. Talk a little bit about that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was. I remember talking to a mentor and saying, yeah, I know there's all these people coming, but I'm not that excited about preaching on this. And he said well, here's why. He said I think it's because you're a teacher and you do love it when people have an aha moment, and all the pomp and circumstance of those holidays makes aha moments really hard. So quit aiming it. Trying to make everyone have an aha moment. You put too much pressure on yourself. You try to be overly creative. You try. You know it starts blending into being corny, like just be. You give a good, faithful message and trust that God will use it, cause really, the main thing you want on those holidays is for people to come back. You know, if they have a good enough experience with the whole thing, maybe they'll come back and over time they'll have an aha moment.
Speaker 1:What I hear you saying there is you can't hit a home run. Every single message no no and I don't.
Speaker 2:I mean I don't think, yeah, you can't, and you shouldn't be disappointed that you can't. You know, often on a Sunday Molly will say how do you think it went? She said, well, I think we've moved the chain Right.
Speaker 2:I have a sports background, so I go you know we can move the chains with a 45 yard bomb down the sideline, or you can move the chains with a four yard run up the middle. What matters is you keep moving the chains right, and that is the reality, right? If this is a one time conference sermon, maybe it's like I got to knock it out of the park. But yeah, because I don't think that's how it works, I'm okay with it going.
Speaker 2:And we move the chains. You know and this was a some of the guys in the preaching lab that I that I led pointed out, as he said, you know, when you're preaching through books of the Bible, there's a lot of passages that don't really lend themselves to home run right Like like. One of the advantages of preaching more topical series is you could self select home run passages all the time.
Speaker 1:You know.
Speaker 2:The downside of that is there's this thing called the whole counsel of God that you might never get to, you know. So I would rather move the chains, hit singles, hit a double, occasionally hit a home run through the whole counsel of God and just keep moving and trust that the Lord will use that to grow people.
Speaker 1:I think that's helpful to hear almost permission not to phone it in that's not even close to what we're saying but permission to allow the text to speak, allow the text to say what it needs to say. And not every text is necessarily going to equal into that moment of aha, but over the long haul God can use it and God will use it. I remember that after I had I spent years in the church and I got let go and it was really really difficult, super, super hard for me to process and I was trying to reconcile what my thoughts were about church leadership and what my thoughts were about the church. Looking back on all of the stuff that I was going through and processing, I realized now that I had to reconstruct my view of the church into what God ultimately says the church is meant to be. Not deconstruct my faith or what I believe about the church. God has already said what's true about the church and I had to reconstruct my belief in that truth. But through that process I had just been. I like I don't want to become bitter, I don't want to become sour, I don't want to become a negative voice. I love Jesus, I love his word, I love the spirit God's inside of me.
Speaker 1:It probably took a good eight to 16 months for me to figure out, and just time with the Lord and attending church, and I don't know if there was a moment where any of the messages said what, ultimately, I felt the spirit say to me. I was feeling this huge pressure, after being a pastor on a church, to have this sports metaphor batting 400 faith right, not even batting 400, batting 1000 faith. And that pressure was so intense that I was like can't, is it okay for me to just bat 100? Like can I just bat 100 right now and just show up and take the reps? And and the way God spoke it to me through the spirit was look, we'll just build this thing back up, one brick at a time, like one moment, one brick, one truth at a time, and we will reconstruct what it is to walk and be with me.
Speaker 1:And that life change happened over, like I said, over a year and I'm still, you know, sure, going back, and I'm in a much better place than I was now, but that life change did not happen in a home run message. I don't even. Maybe the preacher said it, maybe the preacher didn't say it, but I do know that God did it over a long haul and, like praise God, that's awesome and I think that's.
Speaker 2:Well, and this isn't exactly the point of this whole ABCs thing, but I just want to say, because so many of us are navigating, people who are going through church hurt and deconstruction, questions and and part of why I think your faith was has been able to be reconstructed is because you were able to be honest about where it was. Yeah, Instead of pretending it was somewhere else. You were honest about where it is. I know a pastor who says you should never be honest, you're not not beyond. You should never tell people your weaknesses, because no one wants to learn to hit from a from a 100 hitter. Well, okay, but that to me sounds like a recipe for phoniness and a recipe for once it starts to crumble, it's all going to collapse. But your ability to be honest and to let God over time shape your heart. I also you know, just increasingly.
Speaker 2:I heard someone recently say you know everybody's fighting a battle that you know nothing about. Well, if that's true and I'm preaching to however many people on a Sunday, I couldn't possibly have the wisdom to apply everything exactly to the battle that they're fighting that I don't know anything about. But that's the miracle of preaching is sometimes like probably every week, someone has an aha, but not everyone. And a lot of weeks, like a lot of people are just kind of plugging away and you know, and I go. I just want to keep them engaged, I want to keep them. You know, there's a couple of boys that sit in front of my wife on Sunday and they're like probably in sixth grade or seventh grade and there was one day where one of them was like literally laying down, just laid down, you know, we've got, you know kind of padded chairs that you could lay down, you know you could if you wanted to.
Speaker 2:And so he, he just was not even trying.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:And so the next week I went to him at the kind of meet and greet time and I said hey man, I have one goal today and it's for you to stay interested during this whole sermon. That's my only goal. Well, of course that helped him feel more interested, you know, like knowing that he was caught sleeping. You know, but I go if people are paying attention, if people are listening. I just trust the Lord will work through it.
Speaker 1:It is a miracle how the spirit works that way. It's unexplainable, it's. You can't reconcile it other than to just say it's God doing what God does. It's those mornings back when I was doing music and we just blew it Like it just wasn't good. There wasn't good rhythm, there was it just it just felt off. And then someone comes up to you and just tells you what God did during that moment and you're like that's awesome. And then the moments when you feel like I mean, sometimes people will say something, but like when you feel like man, this was a home run, this was like, this was awesome. Do y'all see? Like we gelled, we stayed with the click track and it's just silence. And you're kind of like, well, you know, I can recognize it was good, but let the spirit do what spirit wants to do. So yeah, oh, that's true. Okay, so that was most life change happens in the moment, but a lot of life change happens over the long haul too.
Speaker 1:I want to really key in here on these last two. Number nine is preaching, improves with reps and feedback. And I remember asking you several years ago I was actually interviewing you for a project that I was working on. In my mind. I had always thought that pastors don't get feedback because they're afraid. I mean it, not pastors, but in this context, pastors, anybody. You're afraid to ask for feedback because you're afraid of what the truth is, and you said that might be some people, but really a lot of times it's just cause you don't know who to ask. It's like I don't know who I should go to. So this one intrigues me for that reason, and then we'll get to number 10, but preaching improves with reps and feedback.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean someone might listen to what we just talked about. Hey, don't have to hit on home run and go, oh good, which is good. And they might hear that and go, well, cool, I'll just wing it then and I'll just hit a single.
Speaker 1:Just preach the gospel.
Speaker 2:And it's like I mean, maybe if you're playing little league, like maybe you could wing it and not practice very much and still get singles. But NFL teams work very, very hard to move the chains. There's lots of possessions where they don't move the chains and I think you can't just assume, well, I'll just wing it and hit a single every week, like, yeah, I don't know that you actually will. So this is saying, okay, I want to improve, I want to grow. Well, there's two ways to do it. One is you need a lot of reps.
Speaker 2:Tim Keller famously said your first 200 sermons, no matter what, are going to stink. So I remember talking to my aunt and I told her that she lives in another state. She said, well, tell me after you've hit 200. So that's when I'll come visit the church. And his point with that was to say, instead of spending 25 hours sermon prepping, what if you spent 10 hours and you spent the other 15 with people? Because the extra 15 hours of prep you're not going to be any better because you're first 200 sermons stink. So on one hand, you just need reps.
Speaker 2:Right, we did this summer. It was really fun. We did a training day where we have three services on Sunday and we had a developing young leader. One of them took each of the Sunday sermons. So one guy preached at nine, one guy preached at 1045, one guy preached at four and we gave him feedback and we gave him and that was a good experience. They're not going to get a great deal better without a lot more practice, right. So I told him all right, you can invite to do a nursing home to do a Bible study. You say yes, you get invited to do a high school football chapel, you say yes, you get invited to come speak at it. Like, just say yes to anything when you're a young, developing preacher, because you just need reps. At the same time, you really develop not just with reps but with feedback, with evaluated reps.
Speaker 2:Right, everyone grew up hearing practice makes perfect. That's not really true. Practice just makes permanent. It's evaluated reps, it's reps with coaching, reps with hey, why don't you try this? Hey, do you notice? You do that. And, like you said, very few preachers get that. At most we get hey, pastor, that was a great sermon. Or an email where someone's complaining about something. But like, what do we really? We don't hear much.
Speaker 2:And we don't want to burden people in the church, like, once you start listening like a critic, it's hard to turn that off. I don't want to make, I don't want to do a bunch of that, right so? But how do you get feedback? How do you get reps? To make it worse, none of us likes to hear ourselves or watch ourselves, so the self feedback we could give we're often resistant to cause it's like I don't like this, like. So we got to get over that. But really, I mean that's a lot of.
Speaker 2:What has been so fun about the preaching lab is to be able to give feedback. You know, the last week of the preaching lab I don't know if we'll do this again in the future, but I told the guys I said, hey, I want you to evaluate one of my sermons, like I can take the medicine too, and they brought up some stuff that I went I hadn't noticed that. And so having experienced people who care about you and love you and know what they're talking about and can actually give you detailed feedback to help you improve, cause if you improve just a percent or 2% man over time, that makes a huge difference. So, yeah, I think we need reps and we need evaluated reps.
Speaker 1:Most preaching is underwhelming. As your 10th ABC, let's get into that.
Speaker 2:What I have in mind here is it's just very easy to skim the surface. I mean most of the preachers I listen to. I listen to them cause they're great preachers. So, I don't hear gobs of bad preaching cause I, why would I waste my time? And I also think why would anyone else waste their time with a bad?
Speaker 1:preacher.
Speaker 2:So it's like why we gotta get better. You know, my experience on that sabbatical was largely hearing stuff that you know well. Yeah, I just read it, that's what it says, Like, but there wasn't a lot of insight, there wasn't a lot of application, there wasn't much illustration to help it go deeper.
Speaker 1:I actually have a framework when it comes to writing and I think there's a crossover here of what you were looking for. You said insight. There's four that I go after Insight, inspiration, information and instruction. And if you hit two of those and make sure that it's not information and instruction, that's really a recipe for compelling narrative or compelling content. But just those are the four things that I look for and those are the four things that I want to hear, because that really is what I'm looking for and really is what ultimately makes motivating.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean if your sermon more or less sounds like what chat GPT would have come up with, like you gotta do a little more work. And so that, to me, is the thing is not enough time studying, not enough time crafting, not enough time thinking through illustrations, not enough time proving it. I think that's a key thing is, a lot of times it's easy as a preacher to assert but not to prove it and to think okay, what would someone who disagrees with this Ask? How do I address that objection? How do I go just one notch deeper?
Speaker 2:I don't think going deep means I have to quote a bunch of Greek words. I don't think it means I need to, you know, fill up my Stuff with quotations and references from the church fathers. But I think it's, it's thinking at a deeper level, going one more notch, because otherwise it's just informational or it's just emotional. But the most compelling sermons are insightful, they're inspiring and they engage you the whole way, because and usually they engage the whole way because of the way the illustrations Keep you hooked in, and so it's just a little bit more attention and time Spent in the crafting and I think that takes it from being underwhelming to being consistently strong you use your mind all day, every day in ministry and Preaching and studying, and so one of the things you have said you enjoy doing at the end of the day is to do something with your hands.
Speaker 1:And so you've gotten into the cooking world and have a black stone. I recently got a black stone and Smash burgers.
Speaker 1:It's very good, I'm enjoying it. Any black stone fans out there Gritle fans us, send us some love. You use a cooking metaphor. You say you know it's gathering ingredients, it's, you've got great ingredients with the Bible, like it's just rich. It's. It's. You know. You describe it as electric Jesus's life, like it's really really good content. And so you're gathering the ingredients and you're kind of starting to decide you know what are what am I gonna prepare? You decide what you're gonna prepare and then go to cook it. When it's under cooked you can tell it's under cooked and it's it's not the ingredients, but it's the way that they were put together. And so I mean, does that, does it? Ultimately it comes with that feedback and that critique and that evaluation, people telling you, hey, this was a little bit under cooked, even if it hurts or stings.
Speaker 2:Well, and it really, I mean, it is hard and especially because you have other stuff come up in your life and you have, and I do think that Any creative work there's an there's an element of emotional energy. You need Not just physical energy, and so this gets really hard in those thick, deep, hard weeks where it's hard as a family or there's a crisis in the church or you're dealing with big decisions. You know what? I recently was looking at a passage in 1st John and it's like, okay, this is really clearly about love one another. And I'm looking at it going. This is gonna be a boring sermon love one another, like everyone already knows that. Everyone already thinks they're good at it.
Speaker 2:And I didn't have eyes. It was like I don't, I don't know what to do with it, and I stared at it and I stared at it and I stared at it and that cursor was taunting me, is it Like you know? And I just had to go. You know what? I'm gonna walk away from this and I'm gonna come back to it tomorrow, and so you know, sometimes you got to grind through it and just put a little more work. Other times you got to come back and you know what, and I literally went home and took a nap and so, okay, I'm gonna deal with this tomorrow, but it's it's not accepting that. I'm just gonna say the bland general thing that everybody already knows. I could do that and be faithful to the text.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm but I don't think that would serve the people very well and I don't think that would facilitate.
Speaker 2:That wouldn't move the ball forward that would check the box that technically I preached a biblical sermon but it wouldn't actually advance people's ability to like. I need to think what is getting in the way of them being able to love? Why does everyone think they're good at loving but actually struggle with it, taking the extra time to figure out? Okay, is there an illustration that really connects with this passage? So that extra work is work and it doesn't always flow easily, and I think because we just get overwhelmed when we get busy, sometimes we let that go and and the result over time is it feels like undercooked.
Speaker 1:I've been taking messages and I have been Transcribing messages that I find online and I've been spitting them into chat GPT into AI models Actually, I'm using one called Claude Claude 2.0, but into an AI model and I'm saying give me a compelling introduction and conclusion, tell me what the main points are and Then identify the key verses and the topics so you're taking a sermon that's already been preached sermon that's already been preached.
Speaker 2:This is not to write a sermon correct.
Speaker 1:This is more to create tools For after the sermon right to and and I actually I would actually challenge and encourage any pastor Number one closed caption your messages, get your message messages transcribed. You can go to revcom, get them transcribed and upload closed captions. I think every single message should have closed captions because a lot of times people will not Listen, but they will watch and they will read and I think that's just an easy way to make your messages more accept, not acceptable accessible accessible.
Speaker 1:Thank you very much. So I think that's a great when I think getting them transcribed and putting the let, taking clips of your messages and just putting the words Over them is a great thing. But one of the areas where I really think Sermons fall short is in the descriptions, and you and I have talked about this. In the descriptions that we use for the podcast or for the YouTube description or for even the website, it's usually just pastor Luke preaches a section on first John and it's like, well, that tells me Virtually nothing. And if the, if the title is inaccessible, if the title says something like what it takes to be more, it's kind of like that tells me almost nothing, right? So if your title talks about what life looks like on the other side of their eyes, and that gives some information, but crafting a good description? So what I've been doing is I've taken these sermons that have already been preached. I said, okay, write a description for me. And they do a very, very good job. The models of AI do a good job of Summarizing the content into almost what I would say is tweetable format. Right, it gives you an idea, summarizes the main points.
Speaker 1:Well, what's interesting is some of the some of the messages. I know the preachers and I know the passages and in some cases I know the sermons because I've listened to them, the ones where I know that the preacher is putting in to make sure that it's cooked. It's almost like chat GPT doesn't know necessarily how to wrap a really tight bow on it. It's it's a more exhaustive introduction and conclusion and there's a greater length to the key points, whereas there's a lot of them. I don't know, the messages could be great, but the majority of them are just three key points that are fairly general An introduction that's general and a conclusion that's general. Now, that's better than nothing, but it's just interesting to see that even a I struggles to make it general and generic when the content itself has really been cooked and really been enslaved over and really been, you know, dealt with. I just think it was in. I've done probably about 200 of them now and it's fairly consistent that it happens that way.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think another application would be sometimes preaching is underwhelming and people aren't able to go as deep on it because they're just preaching too much. Right, you can't how, how, how many times a year can you make a compelling sermon? Like not 50, maybe not 45, maybe not 40.
Speaker 1:So figuring that out is a is a key thing to the guys over at ministry past friends of ours They've done surveys and it's like I think it was like over half we talked about it in one of our season one episodes but I think it was like over half of the people are preaching like 48 to 52 sermons a year and it's, it's just. It's just too much. Like you, you can't be good that many times a year. Like it's it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and the hard part too is it. It makes it where. Not only is your preaching suffer but your leadership. Yeah, the church suffers because of all the time you don't have for other stuff there. So you know, finding that sweet spot where you have enough time to work on the church and enough time to really give good, intentional, well cooked meals to the, to the preaching, that's a big deal.
Speaker 1:I really appreciated the first time I ever heard you go deep on these ABCs. To me, the idea of having like no, this is what I believe. These are the values that I want to hold to as a way of growing, a way of processing and a way of challenging, I think it's a great mechanism for ultimately becoming a better preacher and being a better steward of the time that you're given, because that's a great gift. 30 to 40 minutes of undivided attention from adults that's an incredible gift that every corporation in America, in the world, wishes they could have. So to be better with that time seems like a no brainer, and ABCs can help you get that way.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's why I would just encourage anyone listening to think through what are yours. You know we have ours, but yeah, what would you add or what would you say instead? You know, having the conviction about it really matters. You're going to, you're going to preach out of what your actual convictions are. Sometimes it's worth writing them down.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for listening to this episode again. Preaching through podcast season two this is episode two is a lot of fun to go through and just identify several of these core convictions. If you have any feedback, if you have any questions, any follow up, you can reach out to either of us at info at faithful and fruitfulcom. We would love to hear from you in the same way that we heard from you know one of our friends on Twitter saying hey, do preaching through your first year at a new church or first year of preaching. That would be a fantastic thing to hear from you. What could we help you with? If there's any follow up to this episode or if you've got some ABCs and you'd like to have Luke take a look at him info at faithful and fruitfulcom. We'd love to hear from you. If you would be so kind, you can leave us a review on Apple podcasts or over on Spotify.
Speaker 1:That'll do a great service to helping other preachers and other pastors find this podcast and hopefully take a seat at the table and find some encouragement and some challenges as well, and ultimately that's what we want to be is just one voice of encouragement. We hope that you are finding community. We hope that you are finding just relationships with other preachers, other pastors, other ministry leaders to help challenge you and grow, and if we can be a part of those voices, that would just be tops for us. Luke, really excited. The next episode we're going to be talking about preaching through weddings and funerals. Man, I was terrified the first time that I was told you need to be the preacher for this wedding and it was something that my pastor said that just calmed my nerves. I'm going to leave it right there. Oh man, I can't wait to hear.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening. We can't wait to hear from you and we can't wait to be back again. Take care, and yeah, next episode preaching through weddings and funerals.
