I think this is just as true with worship pastors (even when they don’t talk, you can just sense it). Transparency and openness draws me in to worship more than the perfectly composed set.

This also reminds me of the thought, it’s hard to lead people where you haven’t been yourself.

Great post! For years I tried to be like other well-known pastors. Tried to preach like them in everything-length, delivery, etc. It got me what I didn’t want-a fake. If other pastors are like me they suffered from insecurity and inadequacy. I was so low down on myself that I tried to copy. Freedom came when I realized that God wanted me to be me, or should I say His? This came to light for me just yesterday. I am preaching a Confessions of a Pastor series (a take off from your book) and I talked about my struggle with my prayer life. One of the ladies came up to me and said, “I love this series. It is so good to know you are like me.” I took that as a compliment. We have enough sharp people who know inauthenticity when they see it. Now…this week is on purity. Let’s see how many think that afterwards.

Thanks again C for hitting the nail on the head.

Great post. Thanks for sharing your insight. I work with college students and I would say that transparency and authenticity are the most important thing to them in the preaching of God’s Word. If those things aren’t present in the speaker, then they won’t listen to what the speaker has to say.

rhett

I’ve never had a student come to me and compliment me for my clever use of analogies, using the right combination of scriptures, or a funny story.

But I do hear students say “thank you” for opening myself up and reminding them that I am struggling through this with them. It empowers them to start struggling and wrestling with it too.

“Don’t pray for sermons, let sermons come from your prayers”

This means that prayer must be more than a ’santa claus relationship’ with us doing all the talking, it requires listening and journaling. God speaks it to me and works it through me before I dare speak it to anyone else. This causes me to use the pronoun ‘we’ a lot more than ‘you’ (and subsequently holsters my pointer finger - ha)…

We’ll have a lot more confidence when we know God has given us the message rather than us coming up with something and then asking Him to bless it.

Looking forward to the dialog this week. Thanks Craig!

I wonder if anyone here has ever done that to “test” his or her flock. It seemed irresponsible to me.

I also try to interject personal stories, struggles, doubts, etc. into my talk. It is a subtle way to let people know that you are human too!

Craig, just curious…is there anyway you could share what one of your outlines looks like? Maybe make the document available here? I’d love to see how you organize your thoughts. Just wondering…

Everytime I am honest with the text and the people, God works through me.

The Bible is a book of authenitic and transparent lives - all of the character flaws are laid out for all to see, why do we try to hid ours?

Thanks for the post!

The first is something that has helped me for a long time - when in doubt, preach to myself. Of course, it’s important to let people know when you’re doing that.

Second, preach to your own PAST mistakes, challenges, etc. Share how you got it wrong, or learned to get it right, and where God was in the process.

Yeah … that comment spun us into a whole different conversation.

Right or wrong though I think there are probably lots of people like him.