3 Questions with Patrick Lightfoot

Tony Johnson was back on the podcast this week, and he said something in the first five minutes that I haven’t stopped thinking about: “I was preparing for a different style of preaching than what is natural for me.” He was preaching based on the way he prepared, rather than preparing for the way that he preaches. Read that twice. I had to.

Tony told me he used to build these meticulous outlines — detailed enough that he could hand them to someone else and they could preach the message. But when he got up to preach, he wasn’t using the outline at all. He was following the red circles and blue stars he’d scribbled on it. The notes were theater. The real preparation was happening somewhere else entirely.

So he blew it up and started over, building a process that matches how his brain works. Mondays through Wednesdays, he just lives in the passage: reading it, praying over it, letting it marinate. No writing. He calls this white space, and he’s convinced it’s one of the most underused tools in a preacher’s kit. Some of his best material shows up at two in the morning on a trip to the bathroom, not at a desk with a deadline looming. Thursday, he sits down and builds a mind map, breaking the message into four or five movements he can hold in his head rather than a manuscript he has to follow. Less prep time. More authenticity. A sermon that feels discovered rather than delivered.

Now, Tony’s got a teaching team of five to seven preachers to coordinate, which most of us reading this don’t have. But don’t let that get in the way of the real point. If you’re the only voice at a church of 125, you can still build a team around your preparation, even if you’re the only one standing up on Sunday. Ask a few trusted voices in your congregation what they think people need to hear. Let your spouse hear you talk about something you love and compare that energy to your preaching voice. Tony’s litmus test was simple: are you performative, or are you proclaiming something that’s naturally been embedded in you?

He also mentioned something that stuck with me. 2|42 has moved away from Tony underlining scripture on a screen when he preaches and gone back to him simply holding a Bible in his hand. No graphics, no bumpers, just him, the text, and the room. Turns out people aren’t as hungry for polish as they are the Word.

Find the process that fits how God wired you. Then get out of your own way.

Better preaching makes a bigger impact.

Episode Summary

Discover how preacher Tony Johnson transforms his approach to sermon preparation, emphasizing authenticity and responsiveness. Learn practical tips on adapting your preaching style, engaging your congregation, and cultivating your unique voice.

In the fall of 2016, yard signs started popping up all over Lincoln, Illinois. One neighbor had a Trump sign. Another had a Hillary sign. And squeezed between them, on lawn after lawn: “Jesus. Period.”

People assumed it was a political statement. It was actually a sermon series.

Ron Otto, my guest on this week’s Better Preaching Podcast, has preached at Lincoln Christian Church for almost twenty years—the longest preaching tenure in that church’s history. And those signs announced the most audacious thing he’s ever attempted from the pulpit: an eighteen-month journey through the entire Gospel of Luke, starting one December and ending two Easters later. He told his congregation, “Your pastor’s doing this because he’s courageous.” Then he did it. The church’s highest average attendance came during that series.

Why did it work? Ron credits a cassette tape.

Years ago, somebody handed him a recording of Fred Craddock teaching on what he called the nod of recognition and the shock of recognition. Craddock’s warning to young preachers went something like this: in our rush to say something nobody’s ever heard before, we hunt for obscure passages and clever angles—and we steal from our people the joy of the nod. That moment when a listener leans back and thinks, “I know this story. This is one of the stories of Jesus.”

But the nod is only half the sermon. The shock of recognition comes when the listener suddenly realizes the story is about them. They’re not observing the prodigal son from a safe distance. They’re standing in the far country holding the pig slop.

I’ve heard it put another way: every sermon needs amen moments and aha moments. The amen is the nod. The aha is the shock. Preaching that’s all nod is comfortable and forgettable. Preaching that’s all shock is clever and exhausting. But when familiar texts suddenly turn and look your people in the eye—that’s when the Word does its work.

So here’s the encouragement, preacher: you don’t need obscure passages to be profound. Ron seldom goes looking for them. Preach the stories your people already know, and trust God to spring the trap.

Eighteen months in Luke. Yard signs in an election year. A congregation nodding along—right up until the story turned and shocked them.

Jesus. Period.

Because better preaching makes a bigger impact.