Preachers do weird things. One weird thing we do is prepare our sermons alone.

Every week you have to get up in front of a group of people and say words.

Those words have to be engaging, powerful, motivating, encouraging, accurate, practical and spiritual all at the same time.

Every. Single. Week.

And you prepare alone. All by yourself.

I think this started with Moses. He went up on a mountain and heard from God. He came down and told the people, “This is what God said.” We’ve never really changed the model. Preachers have been preparing sermons alone ever since.

I used to prepare my sermons alone. I would read commentaries, watch sermons and research articles, but it was mostly just me, by myself.

If you’re like most preachers, you prepare alone. But is there a better way? Could you benefit from bringing others into the process? The answer is yes, and in this episode, I'm going to show you how!

Being a pastor is unlike just about any other profession. Because of the holistic nature of the work, we tend to take on “pastor” as an identity and not just a profession.

Add to that the spiritual component that we are not just providing a service to people, but showing them how life is supposed to be lived for God’s glory (no pressure).

Most people don’t quite know what to do with us because we seem like non-persons to them. They don’t understand us, but we really wish they did. We don’t feel any different than anyone else, and sometimes we feel like explaining ourselves, but most of the time we just live with it.

Pastor, I want to speak on your behalf today. I want to help you put into words what you might be feeling and wish people understood about you.

In this episode, I’m sharing from my thoughts and experiences of being a pastor for fifteen years and working with thousands of pastors here at Preaching Donkey. You may not relate to...

If you're in ministry leadership, I don't have to tell you ministry is hard.

You know it, you live it.

There are unique challenges to church and ministry work.

But, often we make ministry harder on ourselves than it needs to be.

In this episode, I'm going to discuss a Carey Nieuwhof article where he shares five ways pastors make ministry harder than it needs to be.

In this we'll discover ways we can avoid making ministry unnecessarily difficult for ourselves.

With each sermon you preach, you should be absolutely crystal clear what you want your people to take away from it. If you are murky about how they’ll be able to use your message, then you can be sure they’ll be clueless.

As preachers who want to communicate well, clarity must be a top priority in every sermon. But it’s easy, and sometimes necessary, to focus most of your prep time on your content and not your listeners. This makes it so crucial to think through how your listeners will receive and use your message.

In this episode, I want to give you three simple tests that will help you ensure that your sermon is ready to go in terms of its impact on your listeners and their ability to apply it.

It’s more important than ever before to work on gaining and keeping the attention of your listeners while you preach. Capturing and maintaining attention is one of the most difficult things a communicator must do.

The reason we have to work harder to gain and keep attention has to do with what competes for the attention of our people every time we preach.

Our listeners are so distracted, and we need to know what we’re up against. Some of these distractions are new, and some are as timeless as humanity, but they are all present every time you stand up to preach.

In this episode, we'll dive into four things that compete for your people’s attention when you preach - and what to do about them.

So many pastors get burned out and fatigued because they lack balance.

They are giving 100% of themselves 100% of the time.

This is not sustainable and will lead to an inevitable crash landing. But there are two simple things you can do to keep yourself from burnout: Take a real day off; and have a real vacation.

In this episode, we'll explore why it's so vital to guard your time off as a pastor, and even more importantly, we'll discover how to do it.

There are many things that can distract you while you preach.

Distractions can easily interrupt your flow, make you lose your train of thought and potentially derail your message. It’s important to prepare for potential distractions ahead of time so that you're ready when they come.

All preaching distractions fall into one of two categories: internal or external.

Internal distractions exist inside your head. Your mind goes a million miles an hour while you preach. You think about a lot of things in the moment:
-you can’t decide what your next word is going to be
-you wonder how your message is coming across
-you’re not sure if you’ve adequately made your point
-you realized you’ve talked yourself into a corner
-and on and on

All of this goes on in your head while words are coming out of your mouth. It makes it difficult to stay focused on your message. These internal distractions come at you from your own thoughts. No one knows they’re happening...

Sermon preparation can be vexing.

It's important to put in the necessary hard work and deliver a sermon that is worthy of a listen.

But when I write about the importance of working hard at sermon preparation, well-meaning people sometimes respond with this argument:

"Just let the Holy Spirit guide you! No need for all this work."

It is their desire to protect the purity of the process and not tarnish it with technique. They see preaching as this otherworldly exercise that the Holy Spirit superintends.

In their view, the work of the Holy Spirit is thwarted when the preacher makes an effort to improve his preaching.

In this episode, we'll look at why this is a misunderstanding of the Holy Spirit's role in sermon prep.

Often when I am preparing a message, I'm asking myself, "What is the point I'm going to make in this message?"

Granted, that's a valid question. But there is a more important question to ask that goes a level higher than that: What's my objective for this message?

To know if you were successful at something you’ve tried, you have to know what you were seeking to accomplish. This is true in every area of life but especially in preaching.

This is why I nail down the objective of my message early on in the process of writing it. The objective drives the process from there.

In this episode, I will show you how to arrive at the objective for a message and lay out one more vital question you must ask before writing any sermon.

As a preacher you should never shy away from tough topics. If the Bible addresses an issue, you should too.

You want to help your listeners have a holistic view of how biblical truth intersects with every aspect of their lives. But the more controversial the topic the more important it is to handle it with care.

I have preached on topics ranging from what the Bible teaches about alcohol consumption, to sex and sexual issues, to marriage, and financial giving.

Along the way, I have learned a few things about how to approach these types of sermons, and I would like to share with you. In this episode, we'll dive into nine tips for preaching on controversial topics.