Preaching Teams Free Up Time

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:

Taking Time

Sharing the load with fellow preachers frees us to take our time in sermon preparation, and to allow our ideas to mature and take root in our own hearts.  During my first ten years of pastoral ministry, I preached three sermons every week.  I’m a guy who loves to preach, so if you had asked me even then, I would have said it was my favorite part of the job.  But if you had pressed me to be honest, I would also have had to admit that the production rate took its toll not only on me, but on the quality of my preaching. 

I became quite adept at “sermonizing.”  I could read a passage, do a little research to make sure my interpretation was not too far off, create an outline, fill it in with the appropriate material, and deliver it with some degree of spontaneity.  And my hearers would walk away commenting on what a good job I had done.  But deep down, I knew that neither they nor I had been well served.

A sermon should be more than a good talk well-spoken.  It should be a word from God, delivered by a preacher who has been with God.  It should be a truth spoken from a heart that has struggled with it, embraced it, applied it, and begun to reap its rewards.  When you are generating three, two, or even one sermon a week, there simply isn’t enough time for this to happen consistently.  A preaching team frees the preacher to take the time necessary to deliver not just a good talk, but a message from God’s heart.