Clear Preaching

Send us Fan Mail We've spent a lot of time on this podcast talking about the preacher and the text, and the preacher and the Spirit. This episode is about the preacher and the people — because preaching was never meant to happen in isolation. Here's the truth that anchors everything: the preacher is not a solo practitioner. He or she is a member of the body — placed within it, accountabl...

Send us Fan Mail 📋 Take the free Clear Preaching Self-Assessment — 24 questions, 5 minutes. Find out which area of clarity (Thought, Structure, Language, or Delivery) is costing you the most: https://clearpreaching.com/assessment 🎓 Join the Clear Preaching Academy: https://clearpreaching.com/join-the-academy Before we ask how to preach, or even why we preach, there's a prior question most p...

Send us Fan Mail 📋 Take the free Clear Preaching Self-Assessment:   https://clearpreaching.com/assessment 🎓 Join the Clear Preaching Academy: https://clearpreaching.com/join-the-academy There are two truths about preaching that sound like they're in tension — and learning to hold both is one of the most freeing things that can happen to a preacher. The first: you bring yourself fully to the...

Send us Fan Mail Every preacher has a clarity gap. Find yours. Take the free Clear Preaching Self-Assessment at clearpreaching.com/assessment ------ Half of churchgoers say their pastor doesn't understand their family situation. That's not a theology problem or a character problem — it's an illustration problem. And most pastors have no idea they have it. In this episode, Jonathan M...

Send us Fan Mail Every preacher has a clarity gap. Find yours. Take the free Clear Preaching Self-Assessment at clearpreaching.com/assessment ------ You spent twenty hours in the text. You wrestled with the passage. You wrote and rewrote your Take-Home Truth until it was honest and precise. And somewhere in your congregation, three people already pulled up a summary of that passage on their phone...

Send us Fan Mail Every preacher has a clarity gap. Find yours. Take the free Clear Preaching Self-Assessment at clearpreaching.com/assessment ------ Every week, preachers sit down to prepare a sermon. And every week, many of them start in the wrong place. They open a commentary before they've asked the most important question: Who is actually sitting in front of me on Sunday? In this episode,...

Send us Fan Mail Every preacher has a clarity gap. Find yours. Take the free Clear Preaching Self-Assessment at clearpreaching.com/assessment ------ "Clarity" has become the word everyone in preaching circles is using right now. Coaching programs. Seminary institutes. Training cohorts. It's everywhere. But when everyone uses the same word, the word starts to lose its meaning. In thi...

Send us Fan Mail Every preacher has a clarity gap. Find yours. Take the free Clear Preaching Self-Assessment at clearpreaching.com/assessment ------ Most preachers know they need illustrations. Fewer know what makes an illustration actually work. The problem isn't that preachers don't tell stories — it's that they tell stories that entertain without landing. The illustration ends, t...

Send us Fan Mail Every preacher has a clarity gap. Find yours. Take the free Clear Preaching Self-Assessment at clearpreaching.com/assessment ------ AI can write your sermon in 90 seconds. It cannot tell you if your sermon has a point. Most pastors are using AI tools in some form now — and there's nothing wrong with that. The problem is what happens when a preacher lets AI do the heavy liftin...

Send us Fan Mail Every preacher has a clarity gap. Find yours. Take the free Clear Preaching Self-Assessment at clearpreaching.com/assessment ------ Sermon prep doesn't have to feel like chaos every week. Most preachers sit down to prepare without a clear, repeatable process — and it shows. They read, study, collect ideas, stare at a blank page, start over, and patch something together by Sat...

Send us Fan Mail Every preacher has a clarity gap. Find yours. Take the free Clear Preaching Self-Assessment at clearpreaching.com/assessment ------ Most preachers spend the least preparation time on the part of the sermon the congregation experiences first. Before you announce your text, before you say a word about the passage — something has already happened in the room. The congregation has alr...

Send us Fan Mail Every preacher has a clarity gap. Find yours. Take the free Clear Preaching Self-Assessment at clearpreaching.com/assessment ------ Most preachers have sat with a rich biblical text and felt pulled in multiple directions. The passage says several true things. You can only preach one. How do you choose — and how do you know you're not just preaching what you already wanted to...

Send us Fan Mail Every preacher has a clarity gap. Find yours. Take the free Clear Preaching Self-Assessment at clearpreaching.com/assessment ------ Episode 5: Domain Four — Clarity of Delivery Most of what has been written about delivery in preaching treats it as a performance category — voice, presence, energy, gesture. Those things matter. But this episode is about something different. Clarity...

Send us Fan Mail Every preacher has a clarity gap. Find yours. Take the free Clear Preaching Self-Assessment at clearpreaching.com/assessment ------ Your congregation never sees your exegesis. They never see your outline. The only thing they encounter — from your first word to your last — is your language. And most preachers have never systematically evaluated it. In this episode of the Clear Prea...

Send us Fan Mail Every preacher has a clarity gap. Find yours. Take the free Clear Preaching Self-Assessment at clearpreaching.com/assessment ------ "You have studied the text carefully. You know it well. You have commentaries open, cross-references marked, theological context understood. And then you sit down to build your outline — and something is harder than it should be. The sermon does...

Send us Fan Mail Every preacher has a clarity gap. Find yours. Take the free Clear Preaching Self-Assessment at clearpreaching.com/assessment ------ "Here is a question worth sitting with: how well does your congregation follow your sermon when you preach? Do you even know the answer? Do you assume they do, or do you know they do?  Some preachers/churches provide the congregation some form of...

Send us Fan Mail Every preacher has a clarity gap. Find yours. Take the free Clear Preaching Self-Assessment at clearpreaching.com/assessment ------ I have preached sermons I worked hard on, believed deeply, and watched land with far less force than I intended — and for a long time, I didn't know why. In this first episode, I tell the story behind Clear Preaching: the early years of confusion...