Preaching Teams: A Community Message

This post is an excerpt from my e-book, Preaching Teams: Sharing the Load and Building the Kingdom Through Collaborative Proclamation. For a free download of this 40-page book that covers a philosophy and rationale for team preaching, as well as many practical tools and tips gleaned from my 20-plus years on preaching teams, please click here:

Community Message vs. Pulpit Stardom

Another danger for the contemporary church is the human tendency toward leadership idolatry.  People make idols of their favorite leaders, and leaders let them – exposing an idolatry of their own. 

Have you noticed that churches tend to take on the personalities of their pastors?  People begin to think like the pastor, talk like the pastor, adopt many of the habits of the pastor.  If the pastor is formal and stern, the church will be formal and stern. If the pastor is good natured and easy going, the church will be the same.

This happens as people sit under the preaching of a particular pastor whose personality begins to shape the very culture of a church.  It can be a fairly benign phenomenon, except for one problem:  The more central the pastor/teacher is to the spiritual life of the congregation, the more peripheral is Jesus.  Churches gathered around the personality of a pastor are in constant peril of losing sight of the Master.  The consequences are most disastrous and painful when the clay feet of the pastor begin to crumble.

A well-functioning preaching team can be an antidote to the problem of ministerial idolatry.  When a group of preachers with differing personalities and styles feed a flock with a consistent gospel message, the focus naturally shifts from the preacher to the gospel.  The messenger becomes secondary, and the message becomes primary.  We decrease.  Jesus increases.