Five Things I’ve Discovered About Preaching after Five Months as a Senior Pastor
I've preached for over a decade as a student pastor, teaching pastor, and as an itinerant speaker. But there's a difference between preaching to a crowd and pastoring from the pulpit. To be clear, I’m far from an expert at this, but I have learned a little something.
When you carry the vision, the culture, the budget, the people, and the guest experience all week, and then stand up to preach on Sunday, the sermon simply feels different. Five months into leading Movement Church, here are five things I’ve discovered.
1. Write with your voice, not your fingers.
The fastest way to flatten a sermon (and make your prep take longer!) is to type it. Keyboards make you write for readers. Sermons need to be written for hearers.
I dictate my manuscripts now using a tool called Willow Voice, and it has changed my prep entirely. (no this is not an ad - I wish!) I talk the message out the way I'll actually say it Sunday, and it captures my cadence, my phrasing, my voice. (You really should check it out!)
Bonus: it made me faster at everything else, too. Texts, emails, notes. Voice-first writing didn't just upgrade my sermons. It upgraded my week.
2. You have to preach every Sunday, but you don't have to start from scratch every Monday.
Sunday comes every seven days, forever. That reality will either panic you or train you.
The best material isn't manufactured under a deadline - it’s collected over a lifetime. For almost a decade, I've filed every illustration, anecdote, and observation from Scripture into one massive Notion vault.
Every week, I pull from that well. I'm never starting at zero, because I've been making deposits for ten years.
If you're not doing this yet, start today. The sermon you'll preach in 2031 is hiding in something God will speak this week.
3. Give your people what they need, not what you want.
Sometimes, as communicators, we can make preaching an opportunity to share our favorite ideas or our latest theological convictions. I've done it.
Preaching to the same people you’re pastoring every single Sunday won't let you get away with that. Every week, the question goes from "what do I need to say?" to "What do the people of Movement Church, in this season, need to hear?"
Now, with that being said, I still believe in the principle that God will often feed you, as the person entrusted to share God's word, with the exact principles, Scriptures, and convictions that He needs your people to hear.
Still, the filter can never be, "What do I want to share?” but “what do they need to hear?"
4. It is leading to fruit, even if you don’t see it immediately.
Every Sunday, you're sowing seed. You won't always see a massive harvest in the moment. Some weekends end in a wave of salvations (we saw 92 on Easter Sunday) and some lead to dramatic, immediate life change, like a testimony we received of God freeing a woman in our church from a long-time battle with anxiety, and others, well… don’t. Maybe you see just a couple of hands raised and hear a few ‘great sermon, pastor.’
But God is doing something, each and every sermon… Sometimes it’s immediate and obvious, other times it’s beneath the surface. And while you don't get to schedule the harvest, you do get to be faithful with the seed. Keep sowing!
Isaiah 55:11. "So shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it." This is the promise of God each and every time you and I share His Word!
5. Preaching matters. Don't let anyone talk you out of it.
There's a popular idea right now that preaching is important but secondary. That assimilation systems, excellent environments, one-on-one meetings, and discipleship pathways are what really build a church, and that, especially as a church planter, is where you need to focus.
I disagree!
While each of those things is vitally important, and I spend considerable time on all of them, preaching is the number one way you move your church, create culture, and disciple your people. It isn't one responsibility on the lead pastor's list. It's the central calling.
Preaching is the only thing that you get to do that addresses the vast, vast majority of your entire church all at once.
So don't outsource your pulpit. Don't squeeze your prep into the margins. The sermon is the thing.
That's why, in Acts 6, the 12 disciples find other gifted, godly men to do other significant acts of ministry, so that they can stay focused on their central calling: prayer and the preaching of the word.
Five months in, I'm still learning so much… But I'm more convinced than ever: the central responsibility and privilege of the Lead Pastor is the preaching of the Word of God, that the Word still works, and God still uses imperfect people to share His perfect Word with the people He loves so much.
So, men and women of God: Keep preaching!