7 Practical Ways to Grow as a Preacher

I’ve (Nate) grown up around great preaching and preachers. Even from an early age, I consumed preaching. I used to fall asleep to cassette tapes of Adrian Rogers, Jerry Vines, and James Merritt. For as long as I can remember, I have loved good preaching. Once I began to preach myself, of course I worked to become a better preacher. However, the path to better preaching is slow, regardless of how many sermons you’ve heard or how motivated you are. We’ve both been preaching and leading churches for some two decades now, so we have a fair share of reps under out belt at this point and let’s just say—You won’t become a great preacher overnight! But here are 7 more practical things that have helped us become more settled as preachers. We think they are likely helpful things that have shaped many of the preachers we admire and hopefully will serve you well too.

1.  DEVOUR THE WORD OF GOD (AND RESOURCES THAT HELP YOU UNDERSTAND THE WORD)

A preacher's greatest tool is the Word of God, the Holy Scriptures. We must strive to be men of the Book! The best way to get there is simply by spending much time with an open heart and an open Bible. There’s simply no shortcut to reading and mediating on the Bible. This is not novel, but rather an encouragement to develop a deep conviction here and refresh that conviction year by year, month by month, and day by day. You will not know your Bible simply by listening to others preach. You must seek out the Word for yourself. The more time you spend in the Bible, the more familiar you will be with the various passages you will preach, the better you will be able to connect your sermon to the overall metanarrative, and the more quickly you will be able to supplement your teaching with valuable cross reference passages. Also, the more you know your Bible, the more you’ll find your skill grow in using the Bible to illustrate the Bible (i.e. bringing supplemental passages to bear on your main text in a way that illustrates the main idea). For those of us who seek to be Christocentric in preaching from the whole Bible, one key way to do this is to spend abundant time in the New Testament so that when we read the Old Testament connections become more obvious.

2.  FIND YOUR VOICE 

I know many people give this practical tip, likely because it is so important. It takes time for a pastor to get comfortable in his skin and for a preacher to get comfortable with his voice. We come to the act of preaching with different personalities, dispositions, and life history so it’s unwise to think that we can all preach the same way. Often, we create a portrait of the ideal preacher in our heads and attempt to be like that image, even if that image doesn’t match the personality we’ve been given by God. There’s great danger here, danger that I’ve felt as Danny Akin’s son—We can feel inferior if our voice is different.

Preaching can really war on your insecurities. That can be a good thing. We can allow God to refine core convictions about His Word through the act of preaching in such a way that frees us to be ourselves. This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t learn from good preachers, or we shouldn’t replicate the habits that make them effective, but it does mean that we need to learn what we do well and spend time doing that. If you aren’t funny, don’t try to be funny. If you aren’t the best at storytelling, work on other ways of illustrating points. If you’re more introverted and struggle with voice inflection, know that and work to leverage other facets of effective delivery. To do this, you are going to need to get reps as a preacher. You might not find them in your church, so you should consider pulpit supply, nursing homes, retirement homes, or weekend retreats as contexts where you can learn who you are, what sounds most natural coming out of your mouth, and get more comfortable “rightly handling the Word of truth.”

3.  PURSUE GRAVITY WITH SIMPLICITY 

We should be humbly confident in the pulpit: Humble, we are jars of clay, but confident, because we possess a life-altering Treasure. You are a sinner speaking to sinners, so to quote Dwight Schrute, “Keep it simple stupid.” We made the mistakes in our younger days of creating lengthy main ideas and points. They sounded good in theory, but the execution left much to be desired.  We should work hard at being concise, compelling, and clear. You’ve likely heard the notion of the mountain of complexity. Imagine a giant mountain that represents complex ideas. On either side of the crest are two low points that we could call “Simplicity.” There’s simple on the near side of complexity before you climb the mountain. This isn’t what we’re after. This is laziness—preachers unwilling to do the hard work of thinking deeply about the biblical text.

But then there’s simplicity on the far side of the mountain of complexity. This location represents the person who has been willing to climb the mountain but has the maturity to come down the other side and make that complexity accessible to the congregation. This second point of simplicity is where true wisdom is found. To get to that level of simplicity most of us should consider manuscripting our sermons. This doesn’t mean you always to take the manuscript into the pulpit with you, but writing your sermon forces discipline that will help you put phrases together, synthesize, craft your argument, and make your applications clear. In addition, a manuscript can act as a good commentary for you later when you come back to that text.

4.  EMBRACE ROBUST THEOLOGY

You might think that the call for simplicity means you can’t go deep but that’s not the case at all. The more we preach, the more we see that congregations long to be led to consider the glory of God and the beauty of the gospel in all its brilliance. They want preachers who are willing to call them up to consider the great things of God. Put the cookies on the bottom shelf for sure, but in every sermon put a few cookies on a higher shelf and invite the church to stretch to grasp these truths. I would encourage you to use theological vocabulary but to do so with clear, understandable definitions and illustrations. However, do not just focus on systematic theology, but Biblical theology. One of the best ways to do this is to grapple with how every passage fits into the macro-story of Scripture and relates to the person and work of Jesus Christ. Many in our churches have been taught an encyclopedic view of the Bible for far too long. Some fail to see how the overall story of the Bible fits together and how the Trinitarian God is on display from cover to cover.

5.  WORK TO USE ILLUSTRATIONS AND STORIES WELL

This is merely a way to be a good communicator and makes things stick with your hearers. Obviously, there are limits here—the illustrations and even the humor should not be remembered for their cleverness but used to serve the main point of the sermon. Jesus did this incredibly effectively in the Gospel accounts. He masterfully used images, illustrations, metaphors, and object lessons to capture His dominant idea. We think modern preachers are helped when they see the work as both a science and an art. As a science, we want to exegete the text and make sure that the main point of our sermon matches the main point of the text. As an art, we should consider how we connect this main idea to our hearers in ways that draw them in, keep them engaged, and help them remember what we’ve said.

If we are going to move the whole person, there needs to be consideration for how we will draw them into this redemptive story and how to communicate it in an engaging way. This could be a shocking statement, a quick turn of phrase, or something comedic to bring an idea to life. As we said earlier, it will take time for us to learn our own voice in order to do this well, so we should practice the art of preaching every time we preach.

6.  GET HONEST FEEDBACK

Of course, your grandma bought you a milkshake the first time you preached and told you what a great job you did. Your mom and your wife likely think (or thought) that you are downright brilliant. But every sermon isn’t a homerun. We all have blind spots that hinder our effectiveness. Preachers, especially new preachers, need to find some people who can give honest feedback. It’s wise to find diverse people—don’t simply ask other people like you to give feedback. In particular, you’d be wise to consider getting feedback from some women in your church, since many men tend to use illustrations and application that relate better to men. You should also consider older, wiser believers in the church. These individuals are likely unimpressed by charisma in the pulpit, and they want solid meat to chew on. Also, older Christians are often less afraid to speak honestly and truthfully to developing preachers. Finally, consider inviting other pastors or residents to give feedback on the work. If we are going to preach better, it will take a humble, learning posture to do so.  

Around our (Matt) church, each Sunday we have a Basecamp question that goes out to all of the pastors that asks them to reflect on the morning’s sermon using the categories of keep, start, and stop. Keep - what’s something the preacher did well, and they should keep on doing. Start - What’s something that you wanted them to do more in the sermon. Stop - What’s something that was unclear or distracting that the preacher needs to watch out for next time.

7.  LEAD AS YOU PREACH

The act of preaching is the best time to do mass discipleship in the church. When else do you have all of the people together for a single chance to exhort them in the same direction? There’s something special about the gathered congregation sitting under the teaching of God’s Word. So, use this moment as a time to lead the people toward what you are trying to accomplish in them and through them. You don’t want your sermons to sound like commercials for upcoming events, but you do want to connect your preaching to the overall direction of the church. It may be wise for the elders to consider main themes that bubble up from the book you are preaching and make a unified and concerted effort to press certain points of application from week to week. It’s helpful (necessary) for us to think about preaching as shepherding and understand that we are not merely attempting to communicate information but to use the text of Scripture to move people to places they will thrive.

God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise and what is weak to shame the strong – Which is why, to quote Spurgeon relating our work to Pilgrim’s Progress, He has chosen us “to kill dragons and cut off Giant’s heads and lead on the timid and trembling in personally-conducted tours to Heaven”: May we be found faithful in the task until we all make it safely to the River’s edge and see the One we do it all for face to face!