The sermon that got away.
I have been preaching for about thirty years, and I still remember the ones that did not land.
It was Spring 2011. I was asked to preach a special service to young adults and had built what I thought was a great sermon, challenging those students to live like Daniel and the three Hebrew young men . . . holy vessels in an unholy place. The message was packed with narrative from Daniel 1 and Daniel 3, carried scattered but important statistics about the state of youth in our world, and made a passionate plea for them to choose not to eat and not to bow.
I was genuinely excited about the opportunity, and I felt I had nailed the construction of that one. When the preaching was finished, the room lacked the response I had dreamed about. Did they not hear what I had just said? Could they not follow the argument I had laid out in front of them? Nobody said anything to me afterward . . . good or bad . . . encouraging or discouraging . . . a sermon that seemed to land neutral. Something just did not come through the way I had planned.
I could have blamed the room that evening. I could have blamed the distractions they were dealing with or the week they had had. The truth is, the sermon left my study in worse shape than I thought it did, and every problem that surfaced that Friday evening was already sitting in my notes when I finished them.
That is when the question got hold of me, and it has not let go since. How much of what I mean actually arrives as intended?
I pulled out those notes recently . . . and knowing what I know now, I can see exactly why the evening went the way it did.
This is what my week looks like.
I pastor Life Church Winghaven in O’Fallon, Missouri, a church my wife Angela and I planted and still lead together. Sunday is not a theory for me. It comes every seven days, the same as it does for you, and it does not care how the rest of the week went.
I also teach preaching at the university level, and I have for sixteen years now. Somewhere in there I wrote a book called Life Preaching, and I keep teaching Introduction to Preaching to rooms full of students who are about to find out how heavy this work actually is.
So I am writing sermons on the same schedule you are. I am also grading them, which is a strange way to live, and it has taught me more about clarity than anything else I have done.
The research followed the problem.
I went back for a Doctor of Ministry at Gordon-Conwell, and I aimed the whole thing at oral clarity. Clarity in the ear, in real time, in a room where nobody can rewind you.
What I found in the research matched what I had been living. Sermons rarely fail all at once. They lose people at a specific point, and that point is usually predictable. Sometimes the idea was never clear enough in the study. Sometimes the structure worked beautifully in the notes and vanished from the pew. Sometimes the language went soft right where it needed to be concrete. Sometimes the delivery let go of the room before the close arrived.
That is where the four domains came from. Every one of them was shaped by scholarship and then tested every seven days in a real pulpit, which is the only test I fully trust.
Preaching is the pastoral proclamation of God’s Word to God’s people so they listen, believe, and act.
Every word in that sentence is load-bearing for me.
Pastoral, because this is done for people you know and carry.
Proclamation, because you are announcing something true rather than floating a suggestion.
God’s Word, because the authority is in the text and never in the preacher.
Listen, because hearing happens without permission and listening takes work from both of us. Your job is to make listening possible.
Believe and act, because a sermon that stops at understanding has stopped short of what it was for.
Clarity serves every part of that sentence. When clarity breaks down, the people you love the most miss the thing you most wanted them to have.
We figure this out together.
I want to be honest about what I am offering you. I still walk off the platform some Sundays knowing it got away from me. I still have weeks where the idea does not come clear until Saturday night. I am a few steps up the same trail, turning around to tell you where the loose rock is.
Preaching is lonely work, and most of us do it without anyone qualified to tell us the truth about it. That is why I built Clear Preaching. As a room where preachers can bring their actual sermons, hear something honest, and get better together.
I am pulling for you. All of us are still learning this.
The particulars
- Doctor of Ministry, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, with research in oral clarity in preaching
- Sixteen-plus years teaching preaching at the Bible school and university level
- Roughly thirty years of weekly preaching
- Author of Life Preaching
- Lead pastor, Life Church Winghaven, O’Fallon, Missouri, planted and co-led with Angela McClintock
- Founder of Clear Preaching and the Clear Preaching Academy
- Host of the Clear Preaching Podcast
Start wherever you actually are.
If any of this sounded familiar, you are the reason I built it. Start with the free assessment and find out which domain is costing you the most. Come into the Academy when you want the room. Reach out about coaching when you want somebody in your corner every other week.
You don’t have to carry the calling alone.