The Quiet Gift of Pastoral Preaching

I recently had the opportunity to sit down with Dr. Daniel Overdorf, President of Johnson University and a professor of preaching for more than twenty years. As we talked about homiletics, sermon preparation, and the craft of preaching, I found myself reflecting on a question that every preacher should ask from time to time:

Have we forgotten the hard part of preaching?

Not the public speaking.

Not the illustrations.

Not the PowerPoint slides.

The hard part is immersing ourselves in the biblical text long enough for it to shape us before we ever attempt to shape a sermon.

Daniel described the temptation his students face. They are assigned a text, and almost immediately their minds jump to sermon ideas, outlines, illustrations, and applications. The impulse is understandable. Most of us have done the same thing.

But Daniel tells his students to resist that urge.

First, become an exegete.

Then, become a preacher.

That distinction struck me because I have seen the same tendency in my own preaching. Sometimes we become so focused on preparing a sermon that we neglect to study the Scripture from which the sermon should emerge.

When I taught homiletics, I told students to “roll around in the text like a bee rolls around in a flower until it’s covered with pollen.” The image may sound odd, but the principle is important. Stay in the text. Live in it. Wrestle with it. Let it challenge your assumptions and reshape your thinking.

Only then should you begin constructing a sermon.

The danger is that we develop what Haddon Robinson called the “one big idea” before we truly understand the passage. We decide what we want to say and then search the text for support. Good preaching works in the opposite direction. The text speaks first. The preacher responds.

Daniel emphasized something else I have come to appreciate more with age: clarity matters.

Creative preaching is valuable. Artistic preaching has its place. But if people leave wondering what you were trying to say, creativity has failed its purpose.

The most effective preachers I know can explain profound truths with remarkable clarity.

Finally, we talked about application. Not vague application. Specific application.

Don’t simply tell people to evangelize. Help them picture what faithfulness looks like when they walk into work on Monday morning, attend a family reunion next month, or sit down with a struggling friend.

People remember pictures more than abstractions.

Perhaps that’s why Jesus told so many stories.

I am convinced that the most powerful sermons I’ve heard were never the cleverest. They were the ones that emerged from a preacher who had spent enough time in the text to hear God’s voice before trying to amplify his own — and then applied what the text was saying in vivid pictures.

And maybe that’s the lesson many of us need to revisit.

The hard part of preaching is still the most important part.

On a recent episode of the Better Preaching Podcast, I asked Tyler McKenzie a question with a twist. I usually ask guests what advice they’d give young preachers. But Tyler is forty, so I flipped it: what would you say to encourage the preacher who’s been at it for decades — the fifty-five-year-old, the guy staring down sixty?

I confess I had a personal stake in the answer. I’m fifty-nine.

Tyler gave me two words: longevity and locality.

Longevity is about trust. Tyler observed that preachers earn trust two ways. Talent earns it fast. Charisma burns hot. But that kind of trust is shallow, and it can be snuffed out as quickly as it flared. The other way is time. Twenty, thirty, forty years of showing up. Keeping your character. Doing the funerals, the hospital hallways, the hard conversations nobody saw. That trust runs deep, and it multiplies transformation. Then Tyler said the sentence every veteran preacher needs taped to his study wall: “Some of your best sermons may be your last sermons.” Not because your exegesis finally matured — though it has — but because your people are finally, fully listening. You’ve earned their ear. The leadership currency you spent decades accumulating was never meant to sit in the vault. Spend it.

Locality is longevity’s twin sister. Stay somewhere long enough and the place gets into you. You stop telling people where you’re from and start belonging where you are. You learn the city’s history, its wounds, its ways. And that knowledge preaches. Tyler tells his team, “Don’t write music for Spotify. Don’t write sermons for Instagram reels. Write sermons for the congregation in front of you.”

That one stung a little. We’re pulled toward the national and the viral. I can tell you who’s headlining the World Cup and recap last night’s collapse of the San Antonio Spurs in excruciating detail. But can I tell you my neighbor’s name? Can I name the felt needs of the people in the third pew? We pour attention into matters we cannot influence and starve the ones we can.

So, to my fellow village elders — Tyler assures me that’s a compliment — don’t coast. The decades behind you aren’t a résumé. They’re a runway.

Finish strong. Your best sermon might be your next one.