In conjunction with our most recent print issue of Leadership Journal, an exploration of the State of the Pastorate, we asked a series of pastors a simple question: what is the current state of your pastorate? The full collection of essays will be updated throughout the week.
What’s the state of your pastorate? Let us know online through tweets, blogs, drawings, or smoke signals. Include the hashtag #mypastorate, and we’ll feature our favorites in a post next week.
There are lots of areas in my ministry that need work. I have a leadership coach, and I read books and get feedback so that I can lead better. I’m working on boardsmanship with our elders, and getting 360-degree feedback from our staff. I’m listening to podcasts and going to strategy breakfasts at Stanford and learning about data visualization, which they did not cover in seminary.
But I’m also working on getting better at preaching.
Even though I’ve been here over a decade, I’m trying to improve.
This project has surprised me a little bit, because preaching would an area where I get dinged less at evaluation time than others. But one of the most important principles a leader can remember is that it’s often more helpful to spend time building up a strength than shoring up a weakness. So I decided to work at getting better at preaching.
I was with a preacher friend this last summer who preaches regularly without notes. I asked him how he did it. When I first started speaking, I would memorize each talk I gave word-for-word. I liked speaking that way, but when I began preaching every week, it wasn’t practical. Plus, I fainted twice in a row using that technique, so I didn’t think the strain was worth it. I eventually ended up using long manuscripts that are written out close to word-for-word, and I like the discipline and precision that gives.
But I had feedback from people I respect who brought unchurched folks to our service and who felt like the notes got in the way. And, since we have become a multisite church, I’ve realized what a difference it makes to people at various sites if the speaker (usually me) is looking directly into the camera.
Plus, I thought it was time to try something different just so I don’t fall into a rut.
I have noticed a number of preachers that I admire—Andy Stanley is one—who are able to address their listeners in a way that seems very direct and unmediated by not using notes. But I wasn’t quite sure how to go about it. This summer I heard another noteless preacher—Perry Noble—mention that he took the week before he’d be delivering the message to spend about one hour a day practicing giving the message in order to be able to give it without notes. I decided to give it a try.
Trying to cut the notestrings
I’m only a few months into it, but so far I’ve gotten enough feedback on the positive side to suspect it’s worth the time. It’s actually required less than an hour a day.
Typically it works like this: on Monday I’ll spend a little less than an hour talking through the message a few times. I’ll write on margins of the manuscript a word that summarizes that particular paragraph or section. By Wednesday or Thursday we’ll do a run-through that we can video (partly because we could use it for some sites in case of emergency), and by the time I’ve made it through that experience, I breathe a sigh of relief that it’s now deliverable. But I’ll keep running it through my mind—sometimes on car rides, or while I’m walking the dog. (Our dog is growing spiritually, too.)
Also, I’ll have a large screen on the platform with me on which the congregation can read the Scripture texts, and key statements, and quotes—so I’m never more than a few moments away from the next critical idea I have to remember.
Prepping beyond just this week
Just to make things really interesting, I’ve added one more change to message preparation. Until this last year, I’ve always written sermons the same week that I was going to give them. But another pastor I admire—Ken Shigematsu—has written about how he works on messages a week ahead of time. I started trying that, and got on so much of a roll that at the moment I’m working on messages that are three weeks ahead. I find that this gives me more time and space to work on leadership issues, and it also allows ideas to percolate and gives a greater chance to put ministry ideas like visual aids or concrete actions steps into play.
Another reason I’m trying to improve my preaching is because I think it’s helpful for other folks that volunteer or serve on staff or are part of our congregation to know that even though I’ve been here over a decade, I’m trying to improve.
The painful side of preaching spit and polish
I’m still learning in sometimes-painful ways, though.
Recently after one service, I was pretty excited about how well (relative to my standards) the sermon had gone. “It will be fun to send that one to the other venues,” I said. The team looked down at their feet. “We can’t do that,” said one of them.
“Why not?”
“Because of the spittle.”
“Spittle?”
“Yep. You had a big gob of spittle in the corner of your mouth through a big chunk of that message. Jesus could work miracles with mud and spittle, but the sites hate it when we send them a video where you have spittle.”
Great. So now it turns out that not only can we not use this video, but that I actually have a chronic spittle problem that everybody on staff knew about except me. We will have to appoint a Spittle Detector who can send “Wipe Yourself” signals during sermons on a regular basis.
I’ll bet Calvin never had to deal with this.
So my mind is more full with multiple sermons, my heart is more full with the joy of growing, and my mouth is more full with stuff I’d rather not think about. But I’m also getting stretched in ways that I haven’t been stretched before, and I’m working on developing muscles that needed a new workout.
Someone asked cellist Pablo Cassals why he kept practicing so many hours a day when he had been on the concert tour his whole life long and was now in his eighties. I love his answer:
“Because I think I’m getting better.”
John Ortberg is editor at large of Leadership Journal and pastor of Menlo Park Presbyterian Church in California.
