I would listen to the preacher if they would do this!
10 Things I Wish I Was Told as a Pastor
Summary: An article considering what folks listening to church sermons are thinking and hoping upfront speakers will discover. These 10 simple requests will drastically improve the public speaking into a transformative and engaging encounter.
I was twenty-years old sitting in the comfy, spinny chair in my pastor’s office. Not the one in front of the giant desk for his appointments, his chair! He was seldom in the office and made his space available for the staff interns who would grab any available space. Today I had dibs in the posh space instead of my basement corner heated by the whirring copy machine. My supervisor, the director of the children’s and family programs at the church was standing at the doorway talking with me about my plans for the future. I was in college, paid part-time as an intern at the church and still considering my career direction. She was an aged and wizened older woman who had successfully run an accounting firm and since being widowed had focused on a new full-time career of serving in the church. She was proven and respected as she sought to overcome the barriers of being the only woman in the boy’s club that typified our church staff. She invested in the interns that came into her scope of ministry and I was hers that summer. In that conversation she offered a statement I would carry with me for the next thirty years, “Mike, I hope you can one day see what I see. You have a very special call of God into ministry.” I did embrace this initially but have since contended with this statement. It has followed and at times pushed me into roles, pursuits, adventures, and failures.
A young man can hardly understand the scope of what that means, especially when spoken by an older adult, an authority within their spiritual and social world. Young men are hungry and longing for something bigger than them self and I took that and ran with little self-reflection until decades later. I must confess that in those years I had a difficult time listening and receiving anything that felt like critique. My calling moment, those words spoken from my supervisor in that office, became a scaffold in which my growing ego clung to in those years. Advice, feedback, and others’ perspective felt suspicious, understandably. The voices around me in those twenty-five years of church work were either congregants, colleagues, supervisors or supervisors of my supervisors. Kind and well-meaning, but convoluted by conflict of interest. These 10 things would have been difficult for me to hear, much less take in and implement if offered to the younger me. There are many more things I would offer from my present vantage but in this article I focus on the upfront preaching-teaching aspect. These requests come having sat through hundreds of sermons and services since my last formal pastoral role. Oh how different it is to bear the service as a congregant after so many years up front. I still want to be challenged. I still love the service and the sermon and the pastor and all those churchy things. But I am having a very, very difficult time listening! So with kindness and urgency I offer what follows.
I would listen to the preacher if they would do this! 10 things I wish I was told as a pastor
Speak to me rather than give some lecture, rambling talk or data dump. Consider me, say what you have to say, and stay on point. What may have been interesting to you in your study this week and all your learnings I do not need to hear. You obscure what you say when the sermon is inundated with these details and I stop listening.
Skip the sales pitch. Give freely and know the response will come if I’m convinced it’s genuine and transformative. I read the roundabout and inauthentic pitch as manipulative. My trust in you diminishes when I feel a sales pitch coming. Be honest. Be genuine. Share what has impacted you, don’t over-swing and amp up the performance to make up for lack of power. Frankly, I would respect you more for not saying anything at all than saying something you’re still workshopping.
Say something that matters to me. What do YOU have to say to ME? Change my mind or help me see something valuable that will change my mind. Qualifiers like this is “the word of the Lord“ or “God spoke to me” excuse lack of substance or artificially inflate the importance of the sermon. You are the spokesperson I’m looking at, so bring it.
Say it succinctly. On occasion I can endure long speeches if particularly engaging and I’m in the right headspace. That’s a rare time. Mostly, your 30-40-55 minute sermon feels unrefined and is boring. You’re doing all the talking and I have to endure it. The greatest public speaking platform in the world teaches speakers to change the world in 18 minutes. If you have disagreement, consider the commonality of church-goers and service participants with TED audiences.
Connect to my feelings and help me care. I remember what I feel, I forget facts and data. And when you decide to employ shame as that feeling, you join all the other voices in my head and world. If you are safe, sincere, and encouraging you have a chance to earn my trust. After so many sermons I leave shaking my head asking, “So what?” Answer that before I leave!
One point. One big, giant idea. That is all I want for this sermon. If you have three points so life-changing that they must be told, give them each the chance they deserve - at three separate times. It’s gonna be hard to not share all the good stuff you’ve learned in your prep this week – you’ll have to “kill some darlings” as they say. One well-developed and presented idea means so much more than many underdeveloped and poorly presented ones.
Tell me a story. This might be the single most important thing you can do! Please know that I will remember this more than anything else you say. Instead of just telling us what happened this week or a funny anecdote, connect it to your big idea and I promise I will never forget what you said.
Change the voice onstage. Want me to look forward to your next sermon, don’t have the same speaker week after week. Create regular space for the female voice, aged, young and culturally-diverse voices. Make these more than fill-ins when you’re on vacation or sick or as a token pulpit supply to say that you rotate the upfront teaching. Set these folks up for success and be assured their success reflects well on you.
Take weeks off regularly from upfront speaking. It will make everything else I’m sharing possible. I can’t imagine any other margin will permit your upfront quality to elevate. You have so much to do as it is and your great ideas could use extra weeks to develop instead of being rushed to the upcoming service.
Find a feedback loop so you can improve your presentation skills. You have not arrived and the humility to acknowledge and grow increases my trust in you. It can be hard to assess your effectiveness because the congregation wants to protect your feelings and be close to you. They are not comfortable with anything feeling like direct criticism of their pastor. Find some way to get accurate feedback and implement the discovery.
A Pastor Speaking to Pastors
Let’s give folks a reason to listen! Let’s make that central part of the service anticipated rather than tolerated. Let’s surprise folks. Let’s be memorable. Let’s transform people’s hearts and minds!
If you are a pastor reading this I’m here to partner with you and help. You’ve gotten to the end of this article (or had a loving friend or supportive congregant forward this) because it probably resonated. It may have stung or touched on that place of self-doubt or overwhelming expectation. On top of that, few pastors and preachers have real friends or folks they can turn to. The upfront role convolutes two-way relationships like that. Few pastors let the boundary between professional and personal down. The professional-private boundary remains a fortress. Loneliness and isolation describes the life of pastors.
If you are looking for a genuine and safe place to be, grow and receive needed coaching, reach out! As I walk with men, one group I care for deeply are pastors. Who is the pastor of pastors? Who is their chaplain in grief and loss? Where can they transparently share their hurts and anger? I carry in my body the vivid memory of the vocational pastoral journey, one few choose and one marked by inner wounding. My hope is to resource men for the journey they have chosen and one focus is coaching those doing the same for other men.
From here I turn my attention to this coming church service. I come with anticipation and hope – might this week be different? I still believe in miracles!
Has this resonated?
If you have read this article and found it resonating please forward this to someone you know. And if courageous enough to do so, forward this to your own church staff and pastor!