Connecting Intentionally

March 23, 2026

Building Authentic Relationships for Deeper Impact

Effective preaching goes beyond delivering messages from the pulpit—it requires cultivating genuine relationships with the congregation. This is part two of a five-part series of posts that explore principles to help you preach contextualized sermons to people who are different than you.

This principle focuses on the importance of intentionally connecting as a generational immigrant so you can foster the trust and relatability that are necessary to increase the impact of your sermons.

The Challenge of Generational Distance

As pastors age, they can soon discover they are significantly older than many in their churches. Even when the congregation grows older with their pastor, the future of the church depends on it growing younger.

When there is a generational gap between the preacher and the congregation, it can inadvertently create barriers where younger parishioners feel misunderstood or distant from their pastors. The clergy–laity boundaries many practiced in the past can be off-putting for younger members.

What It Means to Intentionally Connect

Intentional connection means making an active effort to engage younger or older generational cohorts in ways that acknowledge their unique perspectives and needs.

It involves lowering traditional boundaries, being approachable, and demonstrating genuine care.

Practical Ways to Build Connection

Here is a truism: the more connected the congregation feels to their preacher, the more receptive they are likely to be to his preaching.

Here are four ways preachers can build connections that will result in more effective preaching:

Be accessible: Simple gestures like being visible in church lobbies or responding to social media interactions show availability and interest.
Share vulnerabilities: When pastors are appropriately transparent about their own struggles and failures, it builds authenticity and trust.
Engage beyond Sunday: Investing time in mentoring, attending social events, or hosting informal gatherings helps build deeper relationships.
Say “yes” more often: Affirming and encouraging younger generational cohorts by saying “yes” to prayer requests or meetings can have profound positive effects. The book Growing Young by Powell, Mulder, and Griffin is especially helpful on this point.

The Payoff of Connection

When younger Christians feel genuinely known and supported by their pastors, they are more open to hearing challenging biblical truths.

Relatability increases receptivity, making preaching a collaborative journey rather than a one-sided lecture.

Pastors need to remember that ministry is as much about being present and connected as it is about the content of sermons.

Kill the Celebrity

August 27, 2026

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.

The Name on the Front of the Jersey

June 4, 2026

In 2006, Dave Stone stepped to the podium at the North American Christian Convention in Louisville, Kentucky. He had just become the lead minister at Southeast Christian Church following Bob Russell’s retirement, a transition that would have rattled most preachers into playing it safe. Stone didn’t play it safe. He preached from Ephesians 4 and asked a room full of church leaders a deceptively simple question: What is the greatest benefit of serving together?

He walked through three answers — unity, maturity, and testimony — and built the case that all three are real, but the last one matters most.

What makes this sermon worth revisiting nearly twenty years later isn’t the exegesis, though the exegesis is solid. It’s the storytelling. Stone understood something every preacher needs to learn: the right story doesn’t just illustrate the point. It becomes the point.

He told about his Uncle Greg, a quadriplegic with cerebral palsy, who went to a camp for developmentally challenged adults. A church member named John Miller volunteered as Greg’s counselor for four days, feeding him, dressing him, even rigging up a flotation device so Greg could swim for the first time in his life. At the end of the week, they asked Greg the standard question: What was your favorite part of camp? Greg raised his arm, pointed at John, and said one word: You.

That story does more theological work than a dozen propositional statements about humble service. And Stone knew it.

He closed with another story, this one from his own childhood. In 1967, his family was hit head-on by a hydroplaning car while on a trip in Illinois. His mother suffered a skull fracture. His father had twenty-one pieces of glass surgically removed from his eyes. Blind and alone in a strange town, the first visitor who took his father’s hand was an elder from a local Church of Christ. When Stone’s father mentioned that his congregation worshipped with instrumental music (a real fault line in the Restoration Movement) the elder said five words that carried the whole sermon home: That doesn’t matter. We just want to help a brother in Christ.

Stone admitted he’d forgotten that elder’s name. Then he landed the plane: I’ve forgotten the name on the back of his jersey, but I’m pretty certain what the name was on the front.

That’s how you close a sermon. You don’t explain the metaphor. You trust it.

Stone trusted it, and the room felt it.

Thicker Skin, Softer Heart, Tighter Lips

August 13, 2026

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.

Fresh preaching insights await.