The Preaching Donkey Podcast

For your sermons to be most effective you should have moments of great intensity balanced with moments of relief. I once preached a sermon on how to change. The sermon was intense because it dealt with the fallen human condition. I talked about addiction, abuse, pain, hang-ups, hurts and everything in between. The general feel of the sermon was intense. It was heavy. When I finished preaching the...

"Shorter sermons are almost always better." That was the title of one of the first articles I published at Preaching Donkey back in 2014. I felt strongly that a shorter sermon is a more effective sermon simply because there is less room for fluff and filler. Over the years I've adjusted my view, and I want to share my thoughts on this issue. Is a shorter sermon better? Is a long sermon preferable?...

Pauses are great. They can add emphasis and give more weight to your point. A well-placed pause is a powerful public speaking tool that you should know how to use. But the wonderful effect of a pause is destroyed by a terrible public speaking mistake preachers make: the audible pause. What’s an audible pause? Well, um, it’s uh, um, I think it’s uh… (Sorry, just had to do that). An audible pause is...

There’s nothing like a good snoozer of a sermon. We’ve all sat through them. We’ve all given them at one point or another (myself included). But what does it take to preach a sermon that makes your listeners fall sound asleep? What does it take to defy everyone’s ability to pay attention? If you aspire to give boring sermons that help your people catch up on rest while you preach, there are five e...

As a preacher, it’s easy to focus on your content and not really consider if your listeners are ready to hear it. You’ve been studying your material all week, and you’re totally energized by it. It’s all you’ve thought about for days. You are so excited to finally share these thoughts that are bursting out of you. But your listeners aren’t there yet. They walked into church with everything on thei...

Why Charismatic Churches are Growing - Lessons for Pastors. Grab your FREE 21-Day Guide to Creating Killer Sermons: https://preachingdonkey.com/21days For the last several decades, attractional churches have reigned supreme. They've gone by different monikers. Sometimes known as seeker sensitive, modern, etc. The idea in many of these churches, and in evangelicalism at large, has been to make sure...

Holographic Tech for Multisite Video Preaching (Too Much or Spot on?) Grab your FREE 21-Day Guide to Creating Killer Sermons: https://preachingdonkey.com/21days I've served on staff at multi-site churches as well as single-site churches. There are unique challenges and approaches to leading a church with more than one campus. When it comes to multi-site ministry, there are basically two approaches...

BREAKING: Southern Baptists Refused to Act on Abuse, Despite Secret List of Pastors | Grab your FREE 21-Day Guide to Creating Killer Sermons: https://preachingdonkey.com/21days A new report by Christianity Today's Kate Shellnutt details the results of an investigation into the Southern Baptist Convention's handling of abuse survivors within its churches. From the report: "Investigation: SBC Execut...

TWO Ways to Approach Preaching (One is common but terrible) Grab your FREE 21-Day Guide to Creating Killer Sermons: https://preachingdonkey.com/21days This week as I was preparing my message for this Sunday, something hit me. It would be so easy to preach this text completely detached from it personally. Hear me out, in any sermon, it would be so easy to stand up, teach through a text, boldly proc...

Four MISTAKES to Avoid when ENDING a Sermon Grab your FREE 21-Day Guide to Creating Killer Sermons: https://preachingdonkey.com/21days How you begin your sermon is vital. It can mean the difference between your listeners checking out or deciding to pay close attention. The things you say at the beginning of a sermon are what your listeners subconsciously use to build a framework for your whole mes...

Half of All Pastors OVERWORKED & Need TIME MANAGEMENT Grab your FREE 21-Day Guide to Creating Killer Sermons: https://preachingdonkey.com/21days A recent survey finds over half of all pastor say they're overworked and struggle with time-management. This is a topic I'm passionate about because I think churches can do so much better when the pastor is in a healthy place. In this episode, we'll d...

One of the most difficult tasks we have as preachers is making our messages stick with people. We all want our listeners to walk out the door and take action on what they've heard from God's word. But this is not an easy task. People are distracted and there are many things competing for their attention when we preach. One way that we can help this problem is by making our points stick in people's...

Simple Vs. Deep: Which is Better for Sermons? Grab your FREE 21-Day Guide to Creating Killer Sermons: https://preachingdonkey.com/21days When it comes to preaching, information transfer is not enough. We must aim for transformation in our listeners. But how to do preach messages that result in the transformative life-change we're seeking? Some say you gotta be super deep. Others say keep it really...

A recent Pew Research study finds post-pandemic church attendance in America is plateaued - What this means for pastors. Grab your FREE 21-Day Guide to Creating Killer Sermons: https://preachingdonkey.com/21days We are now solidly two years into the pandemic. With most restrictions lifted and churches back in full pre-pandemic operation, one thing is still lagging behind - attendance. A recent stu...

Grab your FREE 21-Day Guide to Creating Killer Sermons: https://preachingdonkey.com/21days Developing your skills as a preacher is a lifelong endeavor. You never "arrive" and that's part of what makes preaching such a challenging, but incredibly rewarding task. This is why I love talking about how to find your voice as a preacher. Your voice is the only one God gave you. My voice is the only one G...

Grab your FREE 21-Day Guide to Creating Killer Sermons: https://preachingdonkey.com/21days When it comes to fulfilling your church's vision and impacting your community, you won't get far without funds. This is why giving is so important to churches. But the method in which we receive donations has changed over the last few years - especially in these last two years of the pandemic. In most church...

Grab your FREE 21-Day Guide to Creating Killer Sermons: https://preachingdonkey.com/21days It would be fair to guess that someone in your church or someone you know has been going through a deconstruction process. What is deconstruction and why does it seem like everyone is talking about right now? And what's the difference between deconversion and deconstruction? And how does this affect our mini...

Grab your FREE 21-Day Guide to Creating Killer Sermons: https://preachingdonkey.com/21days When it comes to sermon length, how long is too long? How short is too short? Do people care how long the sermon is? Someone should look into this! Well, they did. By "they" I'm talking about a recent survey conducted by Grey Matter. They discovered what congregants think about a variety of factors affecting...

In this episode, Lantz Howard of Champion Hope joins me to discuss how to be calm. In a season of chaos and stress, as leaders we must manage ourselves well. Self-management and self-leadership include training ourselves to be calm even in times of stress. As 2021 is coming to a close and 2022 is right around the corner, putting into practice what Lantz reveals in this episode will serve you and y...

According to a recent article in Christianity Today, worship songs do not last as long as they used to. Thirty years ago a worship song would be song in church for a decade or more. These days, that time is cut my two-thirds or more. Why has this changed and what does it mean for the way we select songs for our congregations? In this episode, we'll dive into all of the *fun* surrounding music, wor...

Grab your FREE 21-Day Guide to Creating Killer Sermons: https://preachingdonkey.com/21days A recent Barna survey revealed that 38% of pastors want to quit ministry. Many of them would if they had any other way to make a living. What has led to this trend? Why are so many pastors burned out, tired, frustrated and wanting out? There are many facets to this, and we'll dive into all of it in this&nbsp...

Grab your FREE 21-Day Guide to Creating Killer Sermons: https://preachingdonkey.com/21days When you finish writing a sermon, it's important to make sure it's completely ready to go before you preach it. But this can be complicated if you don't what to look for or how to determine if your sermon is complete. In this episode, I'm going to give you three simple questions you can ask yourself before p...

The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill Podcast by Christianity today has been the best podcast to come out in a long time. In it, host, Mike Cosper, profiles the story of Mark Driscoll who rose to prominence as the leader of Mars Hill Church, President of Acts 29 and #1 New York Times Bestselling author.  The podcast holds nothing back in telling the story - the good and not so good parts of the jour...

It is important to evaluate every message you preach. Intentional evaluation can keep you from repeating distracting mistakes and help you know what's working in your sermon delivery. But, many preachers avoid evaluation altogether because there's not enough time or it just feels like a negative process. In this episode, I'll show you a simple, yet effective, way to quickly evaluate any message an...