Leadership Journal

Monday stank.

I was disappointed with the sermon I delivered on Sunday and I couldn't conceive of another one for next week. My email was full, last month's giving was down, and the fire marshal stopped by my office to deliver his own sermon about our inadequate exit signs. I entered the pastorate to do and equip others for ministry, I thought to myself. This wasn't what I signed up for.

I couldn't eliminate all these frustrations, but shortly after that rough Monday I started a practice that revitalized both my equipping and teaching ministry. Someone attending a home Bible study stopped to tell me how good it was. I went to Steve, the study leader, to encourage him. He was so excited about it that I said, rather impulsively, "Steve, what would you think about helping me teach through this series on Sunday mornings?"

"Sure," he said.

I panicked. I didn't know Steve well. I'd never heard him speak up front. The Andy Stanley study he taught had a picture of Godzilla on the cover. What had I done? The right thing, as it turned out. This rash invitation is what ended up helping me rediscover why I'd been called to ministry in the first place.

I discovered the value of teaching others to teach others. Of course this is nothing new—it's right out of 2 Timothy 2:2—but the practice changed our church's approach to teaching, and my approach to ministry. We discovered that team teaching often does a better job keeping people's interest than one person teaching. And I found a new way to mentor and train people in Bible study and application. I love it. I've now team taught with more than a dozen people. This is exactly what I signed up for!

Aaron is one of my favorite teaching partners. We started teaching together when he was in college, and he has helped to develop this process through the years. And since this is an article about team teaching, we thought it would be appropriate to try a little team writing. Here is his take on picking the right study.

Picking the right study is crucial to the team-preaching process. The first time Dan and I did a sermon together, we found this out the hard way. When team teaching was still a new idea, Dan asked if I would like to help him with a sermon. Without asking any questions, I quickly agreed. Big mistake. After I agreed to help, Dan told me the topic of the sermon he wanted help on. It was in Old Testament, in a passage I had never seen before. And honestly, I wasn't that interested in it. Of course we met and talked about it, I studied, and we delivered the sermon with a degree of success, but something crucial was missing.

After that we realized that team preaching isn't just about snagging a preaching partner. It's about matching the right sermon topic with the right person. When I wasn't invested in the topic, I didn't study as much as I should have. I had less to contribute to the devel-opment of the sermon, and my delivery was not passionate. After Dan and I met to talk about how it went, we came to the same con-clusion: it could have been better. It was easy to find out why. I had helped preach Dan's sermon, rather than being part of the process to find a sermon that fit me. Collaboration should have started earlier.

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