The Preaching Donkey Podcast

Years ago I met with a pastor in my area who led a thriving church that he had planted the in 2003. At the time, it had grown from three families to 2,500 people in attendance. He spent an hour sharing a lot of fantastic insights about casting vision, setting direction, and bringing people along on mission to reach the community. But of all the insights he shared, one still sticks with me to this...

For more than a week, there has been an ongoing, unplanned revival on the campus of Asbury University in Kentucky. It's been the talk of social media and thousands have even have made the trip to be part of it. In this episode, I want to draw out three lessons that we, as pastors can learn from this historic event.

Do you ever get stuck in a sermon prep rut? I know I do. Sometimes the sermon comes together like a beautifully crafted work of art. But other times I struggle to get any thoughts to come together. It’s hard to break out of sermon prep stuck-ness, but I’ve learned a few things that help me overcome these stuck times, and I want to share them with you. In this episode, we cover 16 things you can do...

As a preacher you want to make your ideas come alive. When you labor preparing a message and perfectly craft your points you’re not thinking, "I’m sure this will be altogether unremarkable, but I’ll give it a try!" No, you’re thinking, "How can I make them see this and feel it and be changed by it?" We all want this because, what good is it if you make a great point, but no one feels it? If no one...

There is almost nothing more important to sermon preparation than your outline. It is the structure upon which your sermon is built. Without an outline that takes people on a compelling, purposeful journey your sermon will seem aimless. If your sermon is aimless, people will not give it their attention. In this episode, I'm going to show you my four-step sermon outlining method. It will give you a...

Every church I've served has had multiple services, but no one ever took the time to explain best practices for maintaining energy levels while preaching all of them. Maybe they thought everyone was born knowing this stuff? Well, I am going to share so that there will be something in the world regarding this topic. ;) In this episode, I'm going to share my 7-step survival guide to preaching multip...

Preachers do weird things. One weird thing we do is prepare our sermons alone. Every week you have to get up in front of a group of people and say words. Those words have to be engaging, powerful, motivating, encouraging, accurate, practical and spiritual all at the same time. Every. Single. Week. And you prepare alone. All by yourself. I think this started with Moses. He went up on a mountain and...

Being a pastor is unlike just about any other profession. Because of the holistic nature of the work, we tend to take on “pastor” as an identity and not just a profession. Add to that the spiritual component that we are not just providing a service to people, but showing them how life is supposed to be lived for God’s glory (no pressure). Most people don’t quite know what to do with us because we...

If you're in ministry leadership, I don't have to tell you ministry is hard. You know it, you live it. There are unique challenges to church and ministry work. But, often we make ministry harder on ourselves than it needs to be. In this episode, I'm going to discuss a Carey Nieuwhof article where he shares five ways pastors make ministry harder than it needs to be. In this we'll discover ways we c...

With each sermon you preach, you should be absolutely crystal clear what you want your people to take away from it. If you are murky about how they’ll be able to use your message, then you can be sure they’ll be clueless. As preachers who want to communicate well, clarity must be a top priority in every sermon. But it’s easy, and sometimes necessary, to focus most of your prep time on your content...

TODAY through Monday we're offering BOTH Killer Sermons Academy and Preaching Jumpstart in The Ultimate Killer Sermons Bundle at $200 OFF when you use promo code: BLACKFRIDAY200 at checkout. This takes it from $497 to $297 this weekend only! The Ultimate Killer Sermons Bundle includes Killer Sermons Academy Platinum: our most comprehensive, flagship course on sermon preparation and delivery. It is...

It’s more important than ever before to work on gaining and keeping the attention of your listeners while you preach. Capturing and maintaining attention is one of the most difficult things a communicator must do. The reason we have to work harder to gain and keep attention has to do with what competes for the attention of our people every time we preach. Our listeners are so distracted, and we ne...

So many pastors get burned out and fatigued because they lack balance. They are giving 100% of themselves 100% of the time. This is not sustainable and will lead to an inevitable crash landing. But there are two simple things you can do to keep yourself from burnout: Take a real day off; and have a real vacation. In this episode, we'll explore why it's so vital to guard your time off as a pastor,...

There are many things that can distract you while you preach. Distractions can easily interrupt your flow, make you lose your train of thought and potentially derail your message. It’s important to prepare for potential distractions ahead of time so that you're ready when they come. All preaching distractions fall into one of two categories: internal or external. Internal distractions exist inside...

Sermon preparation can be vexing. It's important to put in the necessary hard work and deliver a sermon that is worthy of a listen. But when I write about the importance of working hard at sermon preparation, well-meaning people sometimes respond with this argument: "Just let the Holy Spirit guide you! No need for all this work." It is their desire to protect the purity of the process and not tarn...

Often when I am preparing a message, I'm asking myself, "What is the point I'm going to make in this message?" Granted, that's a valid question. But there is a more important question to ask that goes a level higher than that: What's my objective for this message? To know if you were successful at something you’ve tried, you have to know what you were seeking to accomplish. This is true in every a...

As a preacher you should never shy away from tough topics. If the Bible addresses an issue, you should too. You want to help your listeners have a holistic view of how biblical truth intersects with every aspect of their lives. But the more controversial the topic the more important it is to handle it with care. I have preached on topics ranging from what the Bible teaches about alcohol consumptio...

As preachers we must guard against a prideful spirit. It is a trap that can destroy our effectiveness and our ministries. But we need confidence in order to boldly proclaim God’s word. A tension exists between pride and confidence. Most of us would say that being confident in our abilities is generally good, but being prideful in ourselves can be detrimental. We know that the Scriptures contain ha...

There are few things more vulnerable than preaching. If you do it right, it is a moment when you bare your soul for the world to see. So it makes sense that you wonder what people think of your preaching. You want to know if your sermon worked. Sometimes you just want someone to tell you that you did great so you don’t feel as awful about your mediocre sermon (we’ve all been there). Most of us wal...

In our effort to become better preachers we often learn from the best preachers in our generation. We watch our heroes and take notes gleaning all we can from them. This, by the way, is a good thing. While you should never seek to copy someone else or become them, you can always learn a great deal from studying best-practices. But we have a lot to learn not only from our contemporaries, but also f...

Prominent mega church pastor, Matt Chandler, steps down for an indefinite leave of absence from his preaching role at The Village Church in Flower Mound, TX. This is due to "unguarded and unwise" interactions between him and another woman on Instagram. This comes in the wake of many scandals involving high profile pastors stepping down from their roles - some permanently losing their ministries. B...

The days leading up to a sermon can be very stressful for a preacher. Your sermon content is on your mind constantly. The responsibility of preparing a sermon can be daunting because when Sunday comes you have to deliver. This is why you need a plan, a guide, a schedule to keep you on track. In this episode, we'll explore the reasons you could benefit from a schedule and how to create one!

Some preachers alliterate their outlines making all their points begin with the same letter. Sometimes just the main points are alliterated, other times the sub-points are alliterated, still other times the sub-sub-points are alliterated. At one point it was taught as a great way to organize your message and really get your listeners to remember. To make it stick, alliterate! was the mantra. But w...

Churches rely on the generosity of their members to fund the church's ministries. It stands to reason that pastors would want to avoid doing things that end up reducing their members' giving. But many pastors and church leaders are unknowingly hindering their church's giving. This is according to an article on Carey Nieuwhof's site which we're diving into in this episode. Fortunately, every one of...

The environment in which we preach is not always friendly towards pastors. The trust that a person in ministry might have had three or four decades ago has been eroded. Rather than implicit trust, we are more likely to be met with distrust, doubt and skepticism when people find out we're in ministry. But we still are called to preach the gospel with confidence. How do we do this? In this episode,...