Tag: preaching and teaching

Essential Church’s Andrew Arndt is joined by Rory Green, Associate Lead Pastor at New Life East to talk all things preaching and teaching ahead of the Essential Church Learning Community on September 19th. (9:49) The duo goes on to discuss the “Five key elements of successful preaching” — Preparation, Presence, Authority, Content, and Creativity. (20:05) Along with conversations around preaching as “show-and-tell”, (29:15) how to move from writing a sermon, to mind mapping one, (43:26) as well as an announcement of a brand new podcast called Preaching Lab. 

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Host: Andrew Arndt

Guests: Rory Green

Producer: Briggs Boyd 

In this episode we sit down to talk about some of the marks of genuine Spirit-inspired preaching.

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What I found fascinating reading through Micah is that the same word used for “wind” is the word used for “Spirit”… one wind is holy and one is not… not everyone knows how to discern the difference… 

Pastors should pray before they preach… we are under tremendous pressure these days… there are thousands of land mines… the temptation is to fall under the fear of man and to preach in a way that simply satisfies the base…  

The occupational hazard of the experienced preacher is that we can do this from our heads… we get good at outlining ideas, but we can forget that a good sermon is supposed to come from the living center of our union with God… 

Pastors should revere the Scriptures… right now there are a lot of people demanding content that is not Scriptural… they want us to preach on certain topics that are not informed and shaped by the Holy Scriptures… 

I believe it is going to become more and more important for pastors to explain why these texts are still important for us today… we need to get back to helping people understand the overarching narrative of the Scriptures… 

One of the things that we have learned is that by preaching the Scriptures, we get all the “felt needs” topics thrown in… we just have to be willing to hang in there for the long game… 

When you do preach it should be producing the fruits of the Spirit… what kind of people is your preaching producing…? How is it shaping them…? And in what spirit are you preaching the text…? Anger and divisiveness are not of the Holy Spirit… 

Many people think that the issues we’re seeing in our culture demand an angry response… I am very concerned about what’s happening in our culture… but I want to speak out on them in a radically new way… 

Pastors should be pointing people to Jesus… I know that sounds obvious, but the Great Commission has not been amended… we have the same assignment the saints of old had: to bring people to Jesus…

In this episode we sit down to talk about the what’s and why’s behind choosing guest speakers, as well as some “good manners” for guest speakers to abide by.

Part of the reason to have guest speakers is to bring something to your church that doesn’t exist on your team… like a new voice or a new thought… the body of Christ is much broader and more diverse than most churches can represent out of their own pulpits…

Another reason to have a guest speaker is because I want my church to know who my friends are… I want them to know who our overseers are… who is speaking into my life and the life of my staff…

When our guest speakers come in, they are interested in us… they want to check in on us… there’s a sense of spiritual enrichment…

95% of the time, when I invite a guest speaker, they are pastors of their own congregation… they understand what I’m after and trying to accomplish… they are there to care deeply for the sheep… they’ve come in to add to my work and love the people who are in front of them…

Here are some good manners for guest speakers… first, find out how long they want you to speak for and finish on time…

Secondly, dress for the culture of the church you’re speaking at… if they do suit and tie, you do suit and tie… if they do jeans and a t-shirt, do jeans and a t-shirt…

Third, don’t create any messes… there are sermons I can preach to my congregation that I could never preach to another person’s congregation…

Fourth, let other people sell your books… I believe in my books but when I go to another person’s church, I don’t sell my product… if they want to sell them, that’s fine, but that’s not why I’m there…

Fifth, don’t be demanding… be low-maintenance… if you’re going to be a blessing, then go to be a blessing…

Lastly, go there to learn… a lot of times, my best ideas have come from my preaching trips… if we go in as learners, prepared to ask a lot of questions, it’s amazing the ideas we’ll get…

A good guest speaker is a person who, when they leave, the congregation is more in love with their church, and not with the ministry that just got on a plane and left town…

I tell young pastors to find older, faithful leaders who are finishing the race well, and have them be your guest speakers… your young congregation will thank you…

For this conversation, we discuss how courageous preaching requires us to say things that are costly.

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I feel quite honestly that pastors are choosing the charming, winsome, attractional side of preaching at the expense of calling people into the greater good of following Jesus…

Every pastor in America is being compared to the four or five most popular preachers… all week long our congregations have instant access to the ten or twelve most popular preachers, and then they gather to listen to us and we’re getting compared to them…

The pressure I feel is to be like those other preachers… but that’s not my mission… my mission is to shepherd my congregation in a way that challenges them…

Jesus said that it wasn’t the healthy who needed a doctor but the sick… the preacher like the doctor doesn’t have to be boring or mean to be effective but they do have to be truthful… if at the end of the day we’re not diagnosing what’s wrong, we’re not doing our job…

If our preaching is void of the medicine that will heal people, we’re giving them appetites for things that will not change their lives…

John says that Jesus came full of grace and truth… if we’re preaching the person of Christ, we’re getting grace and truth at the same time…

We should be aware of social injustice and social ills… if they are talking about it in the lobby of the church, you should talk about it in the pulpit of the church… if you’re not going to address it, then your congregations will search for answers in other places…

Our primary focus, however, is not preaching about social ills… our call is to point people to the person of Christ… our people should walk in with questions about social brokenness, and walk out with a compass that points them to the person of Jesus…

When we’re really preaching Jesus, we wind up transcending the petty differences and tribes that are so easy to fall into…

I always say to pastors: don’t preach to win fans… the greatest trap we can fall into is preaching in order to win over fans… we’re called to preach to win over disciples…

Here’s a practical question for pastors: when was the last time you preached a sermon where you knew ahead of time that it would cost you something? Courageous preaching requires us to say things that are costly… 

Have you ever had a week where you feel like you should just pack up your study and give up preaching altogether? It was a week like that for Pastor Daniel Grothe that sparked this conversation about The Life of the Preacher. Listen in as we talk about what we find at the core of the calling to preach the Word of God.

10 Things I’ve Learned As A Preacher by Daniel Grothe_ Essential Church Podcast

Preaching is simultaneously the most joyful and maddening work I could ever do… we all have a little Jeremiah in our bones: “Who am I?”…

On paper we would all say, “Well of course the life of a preacher is a life of prayer…” but on a busy week, what people typically do is white-knuckle it trying to crank content out, forgetting that prayer is probably our best play…

There’s a difference between exegeting a text and discerning what the Spirit wants to do in this moment with these people right here, right now… I’m always saying, “Lord, who is this for? What is the pulse of this moment?”

When you preach to your congregation, that should come out of your life with these people… there shouldn’t be a disconnect between your life with them in the coffee shop and your preaching to them…

A story has a way of sneaking behind people’s defense mechanisms, and if Jesus is the consummate storyteller, then it’s okay for us…

There’s a profound element of mystery that not enough preachers appreciate, and so we fill in the mystery with talent, expertise, more stories, content, etc., and it becomes an anxious space…

For me, before I preach, the thing that I must do is quiet the space [of my heart]… I find a quiet place and say, “Come, Holy Spirit…” I need to clear the mechanism so that the Spirit can quiet me… if I go up there with all that anxious energy and I haven’t quieted myself, something’s not right…

QUESTIONS FOR YOU AND YOUR TEAM
1) Which of Daniel’s 10 things resonated most with you and why?
2) What does it look like for you to have your messages grow up out of the soil of a healthy life lived in authentic community?
3) Which of these 10 things was most challenging to you and why? Where do you need to grow?

In this conversation, Pastors Brady Boyd, Andrew Arndt, Daniel Grothe, and Glenn Packiam (who are all members of the New Life Church teaching team, talk about finding that unique voice that each preacher (or leader) must discover.

The tension is, on the one hand we have to be learners, and yet one the other hand we have to be comfortable with our own personalities…

Often when we begin, we find ourselves practicing on templates that have been given to us… the early years are about finding good mentors and people to follow… and at some point down the road you begin to settle into your voice… now, after I’ve done all my study, I always shut the door and say “God, who am I and how does this text live in me…?”

The key is finding that place in yourself that needs to be “amplified”… the issue isn’t whether or not you’re learning from others, but whether you’re letting it get deep enough in you is that it comes out of you naturally…

You can only really impart who you are, what you’ve lived and embodied in private… public communication has to be birthed from private impartation…

There has to be a great amount of humility when we stand up to preach… if we’re not aware of the moment we’re in and the opportunity we’ve been given, we don’t need to be on the stage…

All public figures have an idealized self, which can feed our temptation to ignore the darker sides of who we are… Jesus allows us to integrate both sides of who we are and we need to let people see how the grace of God holds all that together… appropriate transparency helps people to see that you are not just an idealized version of yourself…

[When it comes to transparency and vulnerability], if you find yourself oversharing from the pulpit, it might mean that you don’t have enough appropriate community around you…

QUESTIONS FOR YOU AND YOUR TEAM

• On the spectrum of “learning from others” to “settling into your own voice,” where are you right now? Where do you need to grow?
• What do you find most challenging about this podcast? Why?
• Are you living deeply enough in God that you have a surplus out of which to share? How can you improve here?
• On a scale of 1-10, how well are you and your team doing at modeling appropriate vulnerability from the pulpit? Explain why you gave the rating you did.

Episode 005 – Cultivating a Team-Teaching Model, Pt. 2

Show Notes

The risk [of doing this] is not being needed any more… the reward is seeing someone run ahead and thrive…

Every one of us is an “interim pastor”… the church will outlast all of us… therefore, I have a choice: to preach and lead [by myself] or begin sharing some of the responsibility…

I realized that when I announced this, the church might actually like one of these guys more… but it’s ridiculous to think about it that way… we need to model something more beautiful than what the world models… if you don’t have joy in watching people thrive, you’ll never have people around you who do thrive…

The stage can’t be any of our identities… the stage and the pulpit are our privilege, but not our identity… and too many senior pastors get their identities from the pulpit…

This model starts with the senior pastor realizing that he has to share the responsibility… [and that requires] that we find our identities in the right things…

[When we made this switch] people were disappointed… they like me, I’m their pastor… we had to manage that, we had to walk alongside people… [but the result will be] that I’ll hang around here longer, with more energy and vision than if we stay at this current pace…

[This] is a way of reinforcing to people that we need one another… when you see from the pulpit not only weakness but also the strength that comes from others, it gives people permission to ask for help in their own lives…

A “man of God” syndrome has permeated the American church… I’m not sure that that’s biblical, and I’m certainly sure it’s not healthy…

The people who are most prone to learning, reading, and listening tend to make the best preachers… there’s a natural call, a genuine passion, and they are willing to work at it…

For young preachers and teachers: are you willing to do the hard work? The 10,000 hour rule is in effect… you have to preach a lot of sermons…

Say yes to every chance you get to speak and discern what happens…

The worst person to give the pulpit to is someone who ONLY wants the pulpit…

Questions for you and your team:
1) What are the risks for you and your church in moving towards a team-teaching model?
2) Do you have a culture that allows others to thrive?
3) What concrete steps can you take to starting moving this direction?