Sharpen your voice. Strengthen your message.

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.

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.

I had the pleasure of sitting down with Tony Johnson, lead pastor at 2|42 Community Church, for the latest episode of the Better Preaching Podcast. Before we got anywhere near a sermon illustration, we spent a good five minutes on the vertical bar in “2|42” versus the humble backslash. Apparently there’s an etiquette to this. Who knew church branding had its own grammar police?

But once we got past my keyboard ignorance, Tony said something that’s been rattling around in my head ever since. He told me that when he arrived at 2|42, the phrase floating around the staff was “kill the celebrity.” Then he credited a wiser voice — Steve Larson — with refining it: it’s not about killing the celebrity, it’s about minimizing it. Because the moment any of us steps behind a pulpit, some measure of celebrity attaches itself whether we invited it or not. The question isn’t whether it exists. The question is what we do with it.

Now, Tony’s fighting that battle across seven campuses with a team of preachers. Most of you reading this aren’t. You’re the only voice your congregation hears, week in and week out, in a building where everybody already knows your name, your kids, and probably your car. So what’s the equivalent for you?

I’d argue it’s this: minimizing the celebrity in a small church isn’t about diluting your platform among other voices. It’s about refusing to let the pulpit be the only place people see you. It’s showing up in the hospital room without a sermon in your back pocket. It’s letting a deacon teach the text you were wrestling with in Wednesday night Bible study instead of saving every good insight for Sunday. It’s being willing to say “I don’t know” from the front row of a small group, not just the platform. The solo pastor’s version of “just another guy on staff” is being just another sheep in the flock who happens to carry the crook that week.

Tony told me he wants to sound the same in the pulpit as he does in a hallway conversation — no performance layer bolted on for stage lighting. In a church of eighty, there’s nowhere to hide that gap anyway. Your people know if Sunday-you and Tuesday-you are strangers. Minimizing the celebrity, for you, might simply mean letting that be true on purpose instead of by accident.

Because the gospel doesn’t need our personality to shine; it needs our honesty. When people watch a preacher wrestle authentically with a text, whether from a stage or a folding chair, they don’t walk away impressed by the preacher. They walk away believing they can wrestle too.

Give the full conversation with Tony a listen at betterpreaching.org.

Better preaching makes a bigger impact.

Some pastors close out the year with an elaborate written review—pages of reflection, goals, and
spiritual inventory. Chris VandeLinde is not one of those pastors. By his own admission, his
December plan is Christmas Eve, a nap, family, and a lot of sweets. I respect the honesty.

But this past January, Chris—Lead Pastor of Cornerstone Christian Church in Shiloh, Illinois,
and my guest on this week’s Better Preaching Podcast—sat down and prayed a dangerous prayer:
“Lord, how do you need me to lead differently this year?” He’d just taken some hits in December,
the kind that felt personal and unfair, arriving right through the vulnerable chinks in his armor.
The enemy has good aim.

What God gave him fits on a sticky note, which is still stuck to his desk: thicker skin, softer
heart, tighter lips.

Thicker skin. You signed up for this when you said yes to leading a movement that calls
suffering gain. You cannot let an emotional attack from someone with no investment in your life
cost you two days of ministry. Be Elijah on Mount Carmel, not Elijah whimpering under the
broom tree.

Softer heart. Here’s the trap: thicker skin tends to harden the heart right along with it. Chris
insists those two must never run parallel. As the skin toughens, the heart should be softening
toward the broken, the hurting, and the far-from-God. Even the people pushing hardest against
you aren’t your enemy. God’s got a plan for them too. Ezekiel says He replaces hearts of stone
with hearts of flesh. That surgery is ongoing.

Tighter lips. Chris is a verbal processor. His words, though thirty minutes of conversation
confirmed it. God’s correction was simple: some things you work out with Me, not with an
audience. Not every frustration needs to be shared. Some prayers are meant to stay prayers.

I told Chris this sounds like the title of his first book, and I’m only half joking. It preaches.
Because most of us in ministry get the formula exactly backwards: thin skin that bruises at every
criticism, a hardening heart that keeps people at a distance, and loose lips that process every
wound out loud.

God’s order is better. Toughen up. Tender up. Hush up.

That’ll preach in 2026—and every year after.