The Preaching Donkey Podcast

Let me take a wild guess here... There are things you want to change about your church. You have a list. You dream about what it would be like if you could make the changes you want to make. If only your leadership team, elders, staff, congregation, etc would just get onboard with you!! This episode will help you with that! I'm going to walk you through the concepts from my favorite book on leading change in your church. This book is a tried and true gem. I've used the principles it teaches for years, and they are tried and true. What is it? Watch or listen to find out!

Ahh, a pillar of virtue. One who floats on the clouds unaffected by criticism, temptation, angry congregants and everything in between. That is basically what is expected of you at all times as a pastor. Is this fair? Is this biblical? Who gets to define how a "pillar of virtue" behaves? And how does this intersect with the qualifications for pastors that Paul lays out in 1 Timothy? In our final episode of this series on the unrealistic expectations pastors face, we'll dive into it all and discover how we should deal with this particularly hard to fulfill expectation.

Can weddings, funerals and baptisms lead to burnout? It depends on how you manage the expectation of being the officiant of all those ceremonies. In this episode, we discuss how to set the expectations and manage the responsibility of weddings, funerals and baptisms - and any other rituals, ceremonies or sacraments you're expected to facilitate.

I would guess that when you signed up to be a pastor, the absolute LAST thing on your mind was that one day you'd be expected to manage HR at your church. That you would effectively be a human resources director on top of being the spiritual shepherd and preacher of your church. Nevertheless, the expectation to hire staff, fire staff, develop staff, and build a good workplace culture probably falls on you - if you haven't done something about that expecation. In this episode, I'm going to give you a three part framework for how to manage the responsibility of HR in your church so that it doesn't take every last ounce of energy you have!

Your church needs money to operate. Almost nothing happens without it. And the expectation of raising enough funds for the church to meet its budget and fund special projects often falls squarely on you, the pastor. How do you manage such an important responsibility? In this episode, I'll give you a three part framework for fulfilling your role in your church's fundraising.

How do you handle the expectation of pastoral care in your church? Too often the senior pastor takes on this burden nearly entirely. This can become a massive drain on you - spiritually, emotionally and physically. The people in your church have to be cared for, but it doesn't have to be you carrying that burden. In this episode, I'll lay out a framework for making sure that everyone is taken care of without you losing yourself in the process.

When you signed up for ministry, did you know you'd be expected to function as a CEO? Oh, and you need to give a keynote address to the whole organization every Sunday. And, you better lead at a world class level. And bring the right team around you. And never let the church's attendance flatten or decline. And make sure you, your spouse and kids all remain pillars of virtue through every challenge. If you fail at any level as the CEO of the church, you will be replaced. Nothing to it, right? In this episode, we are examining the crippling expectation that pastors be the CEO of their church. We will discover a way to deal with this expectation so that we can come out on the other end with our sanity intact.

If you preach, you know the pressure of making your sermons awesome. But it's not just your content that has to be impeccable. Your delivery has to be at an expert level as well. You simply "must" be: -engaging but not too confrontational -humorous but not glib -biblical but not a seminary lesson -entertaining but still substantive -thorough but not long-winded. Easy peasy right? Recently a pastor wrote an article sharing why he has decided to leave pastoral ministry for good. His article went viral as so many people resonated with his sentiments on the pressures, stresses and unrealistic expectations pastors face. One of the expectations he lists is Professional Speaker. In this episode, we'll dive into that expectation to see how to manage it without losing our minds in the process.

Recently a pastor wrote an article sharing why he has decided to leave pastoral ministry for good. His article went viral as so many people resonated with his sentiments on the pressures, stresses and unrealistic expectations pastors face. In this episode, we'll dive into his article and see what we can learn from his experience. If you've ever felt as if they pressures of ministry are too great to bear, this episode is for you.

When we preach, we need one thing from our listeners in order to get our message across to them: their attention. If they are not listening, the message is not making an impact. This is why building tension in the beginning of your message is so important. It signals to the listener that the message is worth listening to. There are many ways to approach tension building, but in this episode I'm going to show you the best way.

Recently I received a question from a subscriber who asked me about how to move from preaching messages with multiple points to preaching one-point messages. I love this question because it begs another question: Why would you want to preach a one-point message? In this episode, we'll explore how to prepare and preach a one-point message as well as why it can be a great way to go!

Church attendance is in decline overall. But this is not just among those who have left the faith entirely. Even those who are committed Christians are attending church less and less. In an article on his website, Carey Nieuwhof explores why. In this episode, we'll dive into the ten reasons he gives for why church attendance is declining and what we can do about it in our churches.

If you've ever watched a video of yourself preaching, you've probably noticed some things you're doing that are distracting to your listeners. All of us could use some coaching in this area. When I look back through videos of my sermons I notice more distracting tendencies than I care to admit! But there is hope and we can all overcome these by knowing what they are and working to eliminate them. In part two of this series, I want to offer five common distractions I've observed in preachers over the years. For each one I'll give simple solutions to correct them so that your messages are as distraction-free as possible!

Every preacher has physical tendencies that unintentionally distract the audience. Sometimes these are known by the preacher and other times they are ticks and habits that must be pointed out to be changed. All of us could use some coaching in this area. When I look back through videos of my sermons I notice more distracting tendencies than I care to admit! But there is hope and we can all overcome these by knowing what they are and working to eliminate them. In this episode, I want to offer five common distractions I've observed in preachers over the years. For each one I'll give simple solutions to correct them so that your messages are as distraction-free as possible!

Living things grow. If something isn't growing, it's dying. This is why a church that is not growing is a cause for concern. A church should be alive and one way to know if a church is alive is to look at the numbers. Numbers aren't everything, but numbers represent people and each person has a story and every story matters to God (I didn't come up with that, but I love it). Every church leader should be intentional about positioning their church for growth. This is why I've pulled together my list of the best five books on church growth. Each one of these books will give you strategies and actionable best-practices to help grow your church.

A few years into my preaching ministry, I began to be intrigued with this idea: What if I could train myself to not need notes when I preach? What if I could prepare in such a way that I could deliver a message and never look down, but maintain eye contact and physical engagement with my listeners from start to finish? What if you could, too? In part two of this series, we'll dive into more of how to train ourselves to not look at our notes when we preach.

We've all seen this happen. The preacher walks up to the stage with a Bible, some pieces of paper, and a binder. He spends the first few seconds placing everything on the podium. While he's doing this the audience is mostly looking at the top of his head as he looks down. As he begins speaking he reads from one piece of paper, looks up, finds another one in his binder, reads it, looks up again, and then looks down for his next idea. Aside from the sloppiness and the seemingly un-prepared vibe this gives off – it also risks not engaging the audience. Let's contrast that scenario with the preacher who gets up on stage and speaks with clarity and command of the room, engages everyone with eye contact and energy, and you never see him look down, fumble through pages, or read from anything but the Bible. From a communications perspective, the preacher in our first scenario is far less likely to connect with his listeners. He is missing a vital aspect of capturing people's attention immediately. Considering the fact that I'd like to avoid making the fatal mistakes the preacher in the first scenario made, I began to be intrigued with this idea: What if I could train myself to not need notes at all? What if I could prepare in such a way that I could deliver a message and never look down, but maintain eye contact and physical engagement with my listeners from start to finish? What if you could, too? In this episode, I want to share with you how I've trained myself to preach without looking at my notes.

It amazes me the insights and wisdom available to us in great preaching books. My preaching ministry has benefited vastly from some of the books I've read on the topic. I've pulled together the books that have impacted my preaching the most. Each one of these books will help you improve your preaching in distinct ways. I love all of them for different reasons, and my copies are all marked up. In this episode, I'm sharing my list of the best 5 books on preaching.

Every time we preach we have an opportunity to fulfill our God-given calling to impact lives with the truth of God's Word and the hope of the gospel. But the effectiveness of our preaching is impacted by a host of variables we cannot control, including distractions in the room. But there is something we can control, and that is how well we prepare. I find one of the most often neglected aspects of effective sermon preparation is rehearsing the sermon. By rehearsing I mean preaching the entire message by yourself (or to a handful of people) before you actually preach the sermon to your church. The reluctance to rehearse is varied. Some preachers might think it's awkward to preach to themselves. They're totally right, by the way. It is awkward, but that does not mean you shouldn't do it. Other preachers might avoid it because they don't think it's necessary. Still others may have just never thought of it. In this episode, I will show you why I believe the often neglected step of rehearsing the sermon is essential to great sermon delivery. We'll also dive into how to rehearse your message for maximum impact.

You make points in every sermon you preach. You try to communicate at least one point. One idea. One bottom line. You may have one major point but a number of supporting points. The point is, you make points. Get the point? So, what do you do with every point you make? Is it enough just to say the words. “My main point is _________. Okay, let's close in prayer.” Well, we both know that would be insufficient. We have to do more than just say a point for it to stick. But how do we do this? How do we develop sticky points that land on people in powerful ways? If you find that your points are not getting across the way you want, it might be that they're missing three key ingredients. In this episode, we are going to dive into the three things you must do with every point you make in your sermons.

Have you ever prepared a sermon, but when it came time to preach it, you felt led to preach something else? Or you felt led to change up entire parts of the sermon? It happens to all of us, and it's wise to be ready for those moments. There are a number of considerations to deal with, in this episode, I'm going to share seven with you. Seven things to keep in mind if you are going to switch things up last minute.

One of your jobs as a preacher is to teach your listeners how to live out the truths you preach from Scripture. Preaching, of necessity, requires application. We're preaching for life-change. We're preaching to make the written word become the living word in people's daily lives. But the application part of the sermon is often the most difficult to execute well. I once listened to a sermon where the preacher concluded with a list of 13 ways to apply the message. Thirteen ways! Most people struggle to remember thirteen different truths from one sermon, much less apply them. He was well-meaning, but the buckshot approach just doesn't work. With that said, drilling down on just one application seems too narrow. You have a varied audience with varied needs. The text has one meaning, and hopefully your message can be summed up in one big idea, but the way the text can be applied to someone's life is innumerable. You can't list every possible way it could be applied, but you want to get your listeners to see for themselves how it applies to their situation. I've discovered that it's often best to simplify it in my mind. When I unnecessarily make the process of teaching application too complicated it tends to be unhelpful. So, I've simplified it down to three categories of how I give application. Keep in mind, these are just categories. There is a lot of freedom within each one, but I like to have the basic framework. In this episode, I'll share them with you.

This week I attended the Exponential Conference in Orlando, FL. This is one of the largest church leadership conferences in the world with over 5,000 pastors and church leaders in attendance. I observed some trends in the capital 'C' church that I found to be incredibly encouraging. In this episode, I'm going to share those three observations with you and what we, as church leaders, can learn from them and apply to our own contexts.

Years ago my church hosted a conference to encourage and equip our lay leaders and staff. One of the speakers at the event impacted me with her engaging presentation. She spoke for nearly an hour training our leaders how to do ministry effectively in our context. About halfway through her presentation I had filled my page with notes and was eager for more. I started to think about what made the experience so captivating. Turns out, she had four key traits of irresistible speakers. In this episode, I'll share the four traits with you and show you how you can use each of them in your next sermon.

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Years ago I met with a pastor in my area who led a thriving church that he had planted the in 2003. At the time, it had grown from three families to 2,500 people in attendance. He spent an hour sharing a lot of fantastic insights about casting vision, setting direction, and bringing people along on mission to reach the community. But of all the insights he shared, one still sticks with me to this day. I want to share it with you: "Tell your church what they are and eventually they'll become that." These words rang inside my head as he explained that his job as a pastor is to set the expectation high and let his church know he believes that's who they are. Eventually, they will become that. Great leaders set high expectations and truly believe their church is capable of meeting them. I've found this to be true over and over again. In this episode, we will explore this concept and discover how to speak TO our church ABOUT our church to build the kind of church God is calling us to build.

For more than a week, there has been an ongoing, unplanned revival on the campus of Asbury University in Kentucky. It's been the talk of social media and thousands have even have made the trip to be part of it. In this episode, I want to draw out three lessons that we, as pastors can learn from this historic event.

Do you ever get stuck in a sermon prep rut? I know I do. Sometimes the sermon comes together like a beautifully crafted work of art. But other times I struggle to get any thoughts to come together. It's hard to break out of sermon prep stuck-ness, but I've learned a few things that help me overcome these stuck times, and I want to share them with you. In this episode, we cover 16 things you can do this week to get unstuck in your sermon prep.

As a preacher you want to make your ideas come alive. When you labor preparing a message and perfectly craft your points you're not thinking, "I'm sure this will be altogether unremarkable, but I'll give it a try!" No, you're thinking, "How can I make them see this and feel it and be changed by it?" We all want this because, what good is it if you make a great point, but no one feels it? If no one does anything with it? An effective illustration is the secret sauce that makes your listeners grab onto your ideas on an emotional level. A good illustration will reach out and grab your listeners and pull them into your content. It will make them care. But how do you use illustrations for the maximum impact? You can have a killer illustration that you misuse and have it fall flat. You can give a great illustration at the wrong time and have it lose its punch. You can have an amazing story that you tell poorly, or an interesting analogy that doesn't quite fit, or a metaphor that you fail to connect to your point. I've made all of these mistakes, and I want to help you avoid them! In this episode, we'll dive into the 4 must do's of using illustrations to make your sermons come alive.

There is almost nothing more important to sermon preparation than your outline. It is the structure upon which your sermon is built. Without an outline that takes people on a compelling, purposeful journey your sermon will seem aimless. If your sermon is aimless, people will not give it their attention. In this episode, I'm going to show you my four-step sermon outlining method. It will give you a framework for building sermons that take people on a meaningful path toward life-change.

Every church I've served has had multiple services, but no one ever took the time to explain best practices for maintaining energy levels while preaching all of them. Maybe they thought everyone was born knowing this stuff? Well, I am going to share so that there will be something in the world regarding this topic. ;) In this episode, I'm going to share my 7-step survival guide to preaching multiple services.

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 everything I say, but I bet you'll find some common frustrations and maybe (hopefully) feel understood.

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.

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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 except you. But there's another type of distraction that is just as disruptive. External distractions come from something other than you, and they are largely out of your control. They vary from a crying baby to someone leaving during your message to someone coming in late to someone with an insidious cough. What can you do about distractions when you preach? Whether they are internal or external, is there a way to overcome distractions? While some distractions can't be avoided, they can be managed. In this episode, we're going to explore five ways to overcome preaching distractions.

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.

As preachers we must guard against a prideful spirit. It is a trap that can destroy our effectiveness and our ministries. But we need confidence in order to boldly proclaim God's word. A tension exists between pride and confidence. Most of us would say that being confident in our abilities is generally good, but being prideful in ourselves can be detrimental. We know that the Scriptures contain harsh warnings against pride. You can be a confident person without being prideful, but it often seems like a fine line. A closely related character trait to pride and confidence is fear. Fear can be a huge inhibitor. Most of us bounce back and forth between pride and fear. Sometimes we're prideful of our accomplishments looking for others to notice how awesome we are and validate us. Other times we are insecure in our abilities and fearful of what other people might think. Thus there is an ongoing struggle for what motivates our preaching. We must be motivated by the right things and avoid being motivated by the wrong things. In this episode, we'll explore two motivations we must avoid and how to replace them with something much better.

There are few things more vulnerable than preaching. If you do it right, it is a moment when you bare your soul for the world to see. So it makes sense that you wonder what people think of your preaching. You want to know if your sermon worked. Sometimes you just want someone to tell you that you did great so you don't feel as awful about your mediocre sermon (we've all been there). Most of us walk away from a sermon we've preached with this resounding thought: Validate me, tell me how great my sermon was because I need to feel worthy as a person! Categorically positive feedback is acceptable from your mom or your spouse. Everyone needs someone cheering them on. But you have to pursue more meaningful feedback from others if you want to get better. You should seek feedback that actually makes a difference. You want the kind that tells you if your sermons are doing what they're supposed to do – making an impact. But most people don't give this kind of feedback naturally. You have to ask for it, and you have to receive it constructively. So, how do you get more helpful feedback on your sermons? We'll discover an easy way in this episode.

In our effort to become better preachers we often learn from the best preachers in our generation. We watch our heroes and take notes gleaning all we can from them. This, by the way, is a good thing. While you should never seek to copy someone else or become them, you can always learn a great deal from studying best-practices. But we have a lot to learn not only from our contemporaries, but also from those who have gone before. One leader and preacher who we can learn a great deal from is Paul. Paul, the Apostle, was not only a top notch theologian who wrote a huge part of the New Testament. He was also a missionary, pastor, church-planter and movement leader. We can gain a lot from watching his life and ministry. In this episode, we'll discover five practical things preachers can learn from Paul.

Prominent mega church pastor, Matt Chandler, steps down for an indefinite leave of absence from his preaching role at The Village Church in Flower Mound, TX. This is due to "unguarded and unwise" interactions between him and another woman on Instagram. This comes in the wake of many scandals involving high profile pastors stepping down from their roles - some permanently losing their ministries. But this situation has some nuances that few seem to acknowledge. For far too long, we've seen a lack of accountability in the church. Is this situation different? Did the elders at The Village Church actually do their job? In this episode, we'll explore the statements from Chandler and Patterson, and draw out some lessons we can take away from this situation as pastors and church leaders.

The days leading up to a sermon can be very stressful for a preacher. Your sermon content is on your mind constantly. The responsibility of preparing a sermon can be daunting because when Sunday comes you have to deliver. This is why you need a plan, a guide, a schedule to keep you on track. In this episode, we'll explore the reasons you could benefit from a schedule and how to create one!

Some preachers alliterate their outlines making all their points begin with the same letter. Sometimes just the main points are alliterated, other times the sub-points are alliterated, still other times the sub-sub-points are alliterated. At one point it was taught as a great way to organize your message and really get your listeners to remember. To make it stick, alliterate! was the mantra. But we don't see as much alliteration anymore - at least not to the extent it was happening in the 90s and 00s. But does it make a difference? Alliterate or not, does it matter? We'll explore the wonderful wacky weird world of alliterated outlines in this video.

Churches rely on the generosity of their members to fund the church's ministries. It stands to reason that pastors would want to avoid doing things that end up reducing their members' giving. But many pastors and church leaders are unknowingly hindering their church's giving. This is according to an article on Carey Nieuwhof's site which we're diving into in this episode. Fortunately, every one of the five generosity killers is reversible and can be fixed. But you have to know what they are first. Let's dive into it in this episode.

The environment in which we preach is not always friendly towards pastors. The trust that a person in ministry might have had three or four decades ago has been eroded. Rather than implicit trust, we are more likely to be met with distrust, doubt and skepticism when people find out we're in ministry. But we still are called to preach the gospel with confidence. How do we do this? In this episode, we'll be diving into an article by Ed Stetzer in which he lays out some ways to communicate with confidence in this climate.

For your sermons to be most effective you should have moments of great intensity balanced with moments of relief. I once preached a sermon on how to change. The sermon was intense because it dealt with the fallen human condition. I talked about addiction, abuse, pain, hang-ups, hurts and everything in between. The general feel of the sermon was intense. It was heavy. When I finished preaching the first of two services that day I could not shake the feeling that the sermon needed some relief. It was too heavy. It was overwhelming in a way that wasn't productive. You might be thinking, Wait! Heaviness is good. Intensity is good. People need their toes stepped on! That's just the Holy Spirit working on them! I don't deny that some intensity is needed. I don't deny that God can use the heaviness to move people. And I understand the power of his Word to cut through hard hearts and break down barriers. But we are communicating with human beings who need to process the intensity. If your preaching is nothing but intense, then eventually all your words begin to sound the same. If every single word is vitally important, then no words are important. You get the most out of your intensity when it is balanced with relief. In this episode, we'll discuss how to strike a productive balance between intensity and relief.