Preach Relevant Messages

March 30, 2026

Addressing Real-Life Challenges of Generational Cohorts

Relevance matters in preaching. Sermons that connect Scripture to pressing, real-life issues stimulate spiritual growth and help listeners navigate the complexities of their world.

This is the third in a series of five blog posts that will help you preach contextualized sermons to people who are different than you. This principle emphasizes that relevance is not about watering down the gospel but applying it meaningfully.

Understanding Generational Challenges

Each generation navigates unique challenges shaped by the social, cultural, economic, and technological changes during their lifespan.

Churches often excel in family ministry, but recognizing and empathizing with generational differences is essential to build and strengthen bonds within the church family.

Shifting from “Ought-To” to “How-To”

Preaching should move beyond telling the congregation what they should do and include practical instruction on holy living.

Listeners need to be told more than, “God wants you to serve.” They need to hear suggestions about how to serve.

Financial stewardship sermons should address the realities of debt and budgeting rather than only the principle of tithing.

Connecting Grace and Truth

Like Jesus, preachers should balance grace and truth.

Younger generational cohorts often distrust institutions that have failed them, making it crucial to preach God’s grace while also calling for honest repentance and transformation.

Examples of Relevant Topics

Preaching relevant sermons strengthens faith by showing the Bible’s practical power in daily life.

Navigating relationships and singleness with dignity and purpose
Managing financial pressures with biblical wisdom
Dealing with disappointment and unmet expectations in life and faith
Finding hope and identity beyond consumer culture and social media

This can be challenging, especially for preachers who are accustomed to preaching expository sermons.

When ministers preach only verse-by-verse sermons, congregations benefit when pastors find ways to address relevant topics within the scope of their preaching calendars.

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.