Rethink Mission: Inspiring gospel-centered missional churches

Daniel Montgomery at the Lead Conference in St. Louis.  Photo courtesy of Brea McAnally.

Maybe not you specifically. And maybe not today.

But I know what it’s like to be so hyped going into a sermon and feel so defeated coming out of it.

I know what it’s like, only hours after preaching, to do a Google search for “[enter your favorite preacher here] bad sermon” just to see if I could find a written record of one of my heroes confessing their preaching screw ups.

Yeah. Just me on that one.

The problem with preaching is this: we love God’s word and feel a call and even a certain amount of gifting to proclaim it. We know that preaching is important in the life of our church and to the vitality of the worship gathering.

Yet there is a creeping feeling that we could be doing it better.

And we can’t trust our fans or our critics, because in their eyes we’re either always awesome or always off.

Furthermore, with the ubiquity of the podcast, everyone is listening to the best communicators out there. As preachers, we are listening constantly to the best preachers, but who is helping us find our own voice?

You need a preaching coach.

I’m not just trying pimp my services here; you need an objective, outside voice who is consistently helping you get better.

Preferably you can find a preaching coach (or a group of other teachers) who know you and your context.

But if you don’t have access to one, this is one way that Rethink Mission helps pastors. We are currently taking applications for our first preaching cohort.

Here’s the way it works: on Monday you submit a link to an audio or video download of your most recent sermon. By Thursday, you and I have a follow up phone call to evaluate what was good and what was not so good based on a simple list of criteria:

• Biblical – were you faithful to the text?
• Gospel-centric – did you point your listeners to the gospel and it’s implications?
• Missional – were you aware of and sensitive to the presence of non-Christians?
• Applicable – was your sermon helpful?
• Authentic – were you yourself?
• Authoritative & Pastoral – was there a unique combination of what Tim Keller calls warmth & force?
• Compelling – did you capture and hold your listeners attention?

Update: the first group is currently filled. Applications will open again at a later date.

-JMac

Tags: preaching

This entry was posted on Monday, September 7th, 2009 at 12:59 am and is filed under church. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.