Finding Your Voice in the Pulpit
One preacher’s honest journey from imitation to identity
Cindy didn’t call herself a preacher for a long time. Not because she wasn’t one. Because the word didn’t seem like it belonged to her.
She’d say she was speaking. Teaching. Sharing. Anything but preaching. In the world she came up in, preaching was what men did. The few women she could look to as role models were all drastically different from each other and, at the time, intimidating. The unspoken measure of success for a woman in the pulpit was whether she could preach like a man. And Cindy knew she couldn’t. More importantly, she didn’t want to.
When I sat down with her to talk about personality and preaching, I expected a conversation about technique. What I got was one of the most honest reflections on identity I’ve ever heard from someone behind a pulpit.
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Finding What You’re Not
Cindy told me that in the beginning, she was lost. She watched how other people — both men and women — handled themselves in the pulpit. She studied their delivery, their timing, their approach to difficult topics. She was trying to find her way, not just as a preacher, but as a person.
And here’s the thing that struck me: she said she started finding her voice by figuring out what she didn’t want to do. She’d watch someone and think, “That’s not me. I don’t like that. That’s not true to who I am.” And slowly, by defining what didn’t fit, she began to see what did.
One thing she knew early: she didn’t want to be the kind of preacher who recycled the language of the latest book instead of leading people through the Word of God. She wanted the Scripture to teach, to lead, to do the work. That conviction became the foundation of everything she built.
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From Impressing to Influencing
Cindy was candid about a tension most preachers won’t admit: the desire to impress. She said it wasn’t always conscious. But early on, she wanted to impress the congregation, the leadership, even God. She thought that if everyone was going “Wow!” it would validate her calling.
The turning point came when she stopped asking “Did that impress them?” and started asking “What do I want to happen?” The answer was influence. And influence, she realized, works completely differently than impression.
When you impress people, they end up intimidated by you. When you influence them, the walls come down.
Influence says to the congregation: we are more alike than we are different. I don’t have it all figured out. Let me share my journey with you, because I’ve been where you are now. That kind of openness doesn’t weaken the preacher’s authority. It deepens it.
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Vulnerability, Not Confession
This is where Cindy drew a line that every preacher needs to hear. Vulnerability in the pulpit is not confession. There’s a difference.
She told me she’s said to congregations, “The first five years of my marriage were horrible. We probably both wished we could’ve gotten a divorce. But we were in ministry.” She said it calmly, without shame, because she knows that’s not where they are now. Then she says, “But God didn’t leave us there.”
What she doesn’t share is what was ugly about those five years. She gives enough for people to know she understands. Enough for them to believe she’s actually walked this road, not just read about it. But she doesn’t unload her unresolved pain onto a congregation and call it transparency.
Her rule of thumb: don’t preach about something you’re still in the middle of. If you don’t have the victory over it yet, you don’t know where to lead people. You’re not far enough past it to say the right thing. Preaching is supposed to lead people to a better place — and if you’re stuck in the middle, you can’t get them there.
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The Power of Humor
One thing you notice quickly about Cindy is that she loves to laugh. And she sees humor as a strategic tool, not just a personality trait.
When people laugh, their defenses drop. They’re more open than at almost any other moment. And in that window — when they’re relaxed and engaged and thinking “She’s funny” — you can share something harder to absorb. Something they might resist if their guard was up. Humor doesn’t replace substance. It opens the door for it.
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There’s Only One You
Cindy gets asked to mentor other preachers — often. People jokingly tell her, “When I grow up I want to be just like you.” She always gives the same response:
There is only one me, and you are not it. But there is only one you, and you need to fully be you.
She doesn’t take people on as a solo mentor. She offers to be part of their mentoring team — because if you only have one voice shaping you, it’s more cloning than development. You need multiple influences, multiple perspectives, and the freedom to take what fits and leave what doesn’t.
That’s what finding your voice actually looks like. It’s not discovering the one right way to preach. It’s peeling away everything that isn’t you until what’s left is authentic, grounded, and free.
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Redefining Preaching for Yourself
Near the end of our conversation, Cindy said something that I think unlocks the whole struggle. She told me that maybe all it took was for her to redefine preaching by asking herself, “What does preaching mean to me?”
Once she answered that question on her own terms — not borrowed from a tradition, not measured against someone else’s style, not limited by someone else’s definition — she could finally say, “Yes. That is something I can do.”
Today, she walks into rooms without fear and without intimidation. Not because she’s arrived, but because she knows who she is. She knows what she brings. And she’s not competing with anyone.
She told me: “I think I can be successful standing behind the pulpit without stomping, yelling, snorting, and spitting, and be effective.”
She can. And so can you — in whatever way God made you to be.
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You belong in the conversation.
Clear Preaching exists for every kind of preacher — loud or quiet, seasoned or just starting, manuscript or no notes. The free email course walks you through the full preaching journey, and Course 1: Clarity of Thought (found in the Clear Preaching Academy) helps you build every sermon around one clear, powerful idea.
Find your starting point at clearpreaching.com.
