Preaching Teams Share the Load

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:

Not only are preaching teams biblically valid, they simply make good sense in contemporary ministry.  Here’s the first of several reasons why:

Sharing the Load

The first and most obvious benefit of a preaching team is that it frees the senior pastor from carrying the entire load of the proclamation ministry of the church.  This is important for a variety of reasons, not least of which is the mental health of the pastor. 

Few professions generate a higher level of stress than the pastorate.  Pastors are called upon to bind up the wounds of broken people, manage conflict, intervene in unhealthy relationships, and address administrative headaches.  Add to this the constant demand of sermon production and many pastors find themselves feeling as if they are constantly dodging bullets in a firefight while at the same time trying to compose sonnets on the meaning of life. 

A preaching team can be a pressure valve for a pastor, but this is not the only reason, or even the best reason, to share the preaching load.  In fact, “sharing the load” makes possible all of the benefits to follow in this series of posts.