Behind the Pulpit

Pastor Mike gives us a behind the scenes look at what goes into preparing a sermon. And some insight on what is going on in the pastor’s mind on Sunday morning.

So hello and welcome back to the Hope Worth Having podcast joined as always by Pastor Mike. Pastor Mike, how are we doing today? Hey, we’re doing great. Wonderful. All right. So today I’m going to want to kind of give the people a little bit of behind the scenes look at what a pastor does throughout the week, which correct me if I’m wrong, but most of your week probably involves getting ready for that big sermon on Sunday,

right? It does. It takes a lot of time. I kind of dedicate my mornings to studying and in my afternoons to the staff and different members that have particular needs and then I try to dedicate my evenings to the family.

Yeah, that’s awesome. That’s a great schedule. So today we kind of want to take a look sort of behind the scenes at what goes into preparing a sermon, you know, just something maybe some people will definitely be interested in and just kind of maybe hearing how how the sausage is made a little bit.

So what’s kind of your process when you’re going about deciding what you’re going to preach on on a Sunday? Where does kind of the prep work start? Well, it first begins with prayer and spent a lot of time just seeking God and making sure that the direction he wants us to go and just trying to hopefully get some spiritual discernment even through prayer of where the church is at collectively and what are some of the particular needs.

And some of these things come about sovereignly in that, you know, as I was seeking, you know, direction from the Lord about teaching the book of 2 Corinthians, this was all before COVID ever broke out, but it’s the letter of encouragement and that’s the whole theme of the book.

And so it really I felt like the Lord knew what was coming and what the people needed. And so it kind of just came together really good after I’m praying and I try to put together a teaching schedule.

and that is evaluated every Monday. I try to go out in my teaching schedule at least eight to ten weeks and partly because of I have so many times there have been times where I’ve spoken up to 10 or 12 times in a week so you have to kind of plan these things out and then have your preparation time for these opportunities.

Now that’s not every week so I don’t want anybody to feel that I’m doing that every week but most of the time every week it’s three to five I’m speaking in different platforms venues and whatever but for me then as we’re trying to determine what what is going to be taught is I take so let’s just take second Corinthians for example is that I’m going to I want to I want to know the themes of the book um and so that’s what I would do is I would I would study the themes and then I would start breaking down the chapters and then I would start breaking them down into uh sermon themes and titles uh for um the congregation and then it really boils down to this I just answer I look at the text and I answer six questions I’m not saying all six are there but I do try to answer as many as I can how when where what and why and who and so we spent a lot of time doing that that’s great um so you were kind of talking about you’re going through the book of second Corinthians um is that kind of something you’ve always done you just kind of pick a book and you kind of work through that going verse by verse is that just something why don’t you talk about that yeah and so I think it’s it a lot of pastors have to decide um their philosophy on teaching and so for me 90 percent of my teaching is going to be what is called often expository preaching so I’m going to let the Bible determine my message as opposed to me imposing my thoughts upon the text um and I’m a big believer that God has given us his word his truth sets us free and sanctifies us and so really all I need to do is be the messenger and help deliver that message in a practical way to the congregation and that doesn’t mean that there aren’t times that I address topics obviously when there’s great tragedies in our country um we could take uh many years ago 9 11 uh you know we want to address these big issues of course I’m a big pro -life guy so I’m times that the pastor has to address cultural things that are going on but most of the time for me the message is already there and we just gotta deliver it.

Yeah, I agree 100%. So I kind of like how you go order by order. You know, are there any other kind of ways, have you always done that in your pastoral career? Is that kind of been something you’ve done, you know, since the beginning or is that kind of something you figured out?

I’ve always done it that way. I haven’t always been as committed to it as I am today. That’s the way I was trained in college. And so I always set out to do that. But in my early years, I did do a lot of topical issues relating to marriage, parenting, finances, and they were all great.

And I always tried to make sure I stayed true to the Bible. But I would get feedback from the congregation and some people would say, hey, my kid’s already grown up and I don’t wanna hear a message every week on parenting, or hey, my kid’s.

Or my finances are doing great and I probably could teach you more you’re in your you’re in the 20s I could probably teach you more about finances than you could teach me and so I realized that um, probably the best thing to do is to take the bible And start there and then make applications to those particular areas So if those if issues came up of principles about parenting I would jump on it or marriage or finances And then my strategy became focus on those areas relating into small groups bible studies uh where people can um That have particular those particular needs they could sign up for those classes as opposed to always just Segmenting,

uh the whole congregation and hey, this message is only for parents You see i’m saying and I leave out, you know, maybe 50 or 40 percent of my congregation Yeah, um, so you were kind of talking about those different those different questions you look for, you know The who what when where why and how’s um, so let’s say you’ve kind of gone through a chapter Let’s say chapter three and second corinthians And now you’re kind of looking at your your kind of main your main verses for that upcoming sunday What are the things you’re kind of looking for in that passage you’re going with?

Okay, let me find this or that or how do you kind of start putting the sermon together once you’ve kind of broken it down Into what you’re preaching on. Yep. So, uh first is any particular passage. I want to know the theme within the theme Um, so you always have to start with the big picture and then how does this segment of the passage relate to the big picture?

Because the apostles and prophets did not just write randomly Uh, they didn’t just have moments of inspiration say oh, I better write that down real quick Uh, but rather they were moved by the spirit of god in a train of thought and the thematic message And so that’s the first thing I want to do within the big picture of like second corinthian this letter of encouragement.

What is God telling us particularly about encouragement and what is He trying to communicate to us? So then after I go through the process of trying to answer the questions, then I want to start outlining the sermon.

And the reason that we outline it is for the purposes of disseminating it in a way that is retainable and applicable to people’s lives. So I try to focus on action points or points that are practical that you can use.

So for instance, we might look at a particular passage and it might be teaching us about a particular theme. And so I might say, okay, how can we do that? God is calling us to be holy. How can we do that?

What are the practical principles that God is teaching us on how to do that? So, once then I outline it, then what I try to do is find supportive verses for each point. So, every point that I make, I want to back it up with the Bible, not just in my text, but one of my goals is I want people to see how the Bible is a unity, and that the Old Testament, the New Testament are all speaking the same message,

and it’s all coming together, and it’s not just Pastor Mike took one verse and he took off on it and built his own little theology, but this is consistently woven throughout the Scriptures, this great truth, and this wonderful principle.

So, then we want to try to illustrate, try to come up with maybe either personal stories or stories of history, things that have recently hit the news that can help illustrate what we’re talking about.

So, that’s really important, and then the last part, as I work on an introduction and a conclusion, I know a lot of people would think, man, why wouldn’t you do that first? But, so I want to, it’s kind of like cooking, okay, you cook the meat first, and then you might throw the salad together, the appetizer together, and then maybe a little dessert at the end, but you don’t cook them first.

So, the meat is cooked first, and then we want introduction to capture people’s attention, and then we want a conclusion to bring people to a response. Yeah, that’s a good point. I like how you, I like that order, you know, your cooking illustration.

If, you know, you make the salad first by the time the meat’s cooking, you know, the salad might, you know, start going bad, or, you know, you might end up making a side that doesn’t really work with, you know, that specific dish, and so I really like that.

So, yeah, those are some really good points. some really good points. I like that. So do you think kind of going kind of verse by verse in a specific book, do you think that maybe helps your congregation, your audience, maybe get kind of learn it better?

Yes, they’re learning God’s Word, but they’re also learning it, you know, kind of sequentially. Do you think that kind of helps with their retaining of the information, if that kind of makes sense? Yeah, yeah, I think so.

And let me say this, that in my planning and praying about what book am I going to preach, I pretty much follow this pattern. It’s going to be an Old Testament book. Then second, I want to teach them a New Testament book, and then I want to teach them the Gospels, one of the Gospels.

So we rotate that because like you said, it needs to be sequential, and it needs to be holistic. And so we’re trying to, you know, a lot of pastors will just preach in the New Testament. or a lot of pastors might just focus on the gospels or some people are very fascinated with the Old Testament and all that’s good, but you have to have a balanced meal, right?

So if I’m coming and I’m only getting hamburger every day or every Sunday, then after a while I get tired of it. I’d like a little mixture of something different. And so we strive for balance and we feel like that the reason we keep coming back to the gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John is because the Christian has to keep coming back to the core of their faith and that is the gospel of Jesus Christ.

And it’s easy to get enamored with a particular section of the Bible. Like a lot of people love prophecy and they love the book of Revelation or the book of Daniel and they just dwell on it, dwell on it and dwell on it.

And what happens, they start speculating, they start coming up with, whatever kind of theories that they have and they’re really not rooted in day -to -day living and they’re not rooted in living out their faith and reaching people for Christ and coming back to the gospel of Jesus Christ.

So for me, that’s very important and I want our people, my goal really is that by before I get promoted to heaven that I could preach out of every book of the Bible. Now I told an evangelist friend that one time that what was my goal and he said, well, how long have you been in the gospel of Luke?

And I said, two years. And he said, you’re never gonna make it. And so I realized I can’t stay forever in these books as much as I love them. So I did change up a little bit in trying to be a little bit more big picture in my approach to the books.

But my goal is people can see the holistic message of Christ, the redemptive story that is threaded from Genesis all the way through revelation. And I believe this gives us hope. I believe it gives us strength and it keeps us from being discouraged and defeated by circumstances and moment by moment challenges.

Yeah, so, you know, a lot of pastors, they’re really big on the illustrations. I think I saw, and, you know, kind of illustrations and, you know, kind of going big on that. And like, I think the other week I saw an example of one of these, you know, blue check mark pastors, which, you know, whatever, that’s fine.

They, you know, they got a lot of followers. They created on their kind of like stage, he was talking about, he must’ve been talking about, you know, Jesus coming the storm. So he had his crew, I guess, create like a whole, like almost fake lake and he was rocking in a boat the whole time during his sermon.

So what do you kind of think about these kind of like big illustrations, kind of like going huge on those, like what are kind of your thoughts on, on illustrations and that? So building a sermon is like also building a house.

And if you build your house full of windows, which is how I would describe an illustration, is that it’s gonna shatter, it’s gonna look odd, and it really is gonna distract from the point as opposed to emphasizing the point.

So I think there are two warnings that I would have about illustrations, is that number one, and make sure you’re not the hero of every story, because that gets a little old after a while when Pastor Mike did this and Pastor Mike did that, and it just seems like he’s always, it’s kind of like social media, I tell people, it’s not reality.

People post the positives in their life, and you get the impression that these persons never have a bad day, and everything’s always wonderful. And the truth is we all have ups and downs in our lives, and the truth is every pastor has good days, but there are times he makes mistakes, and he mishandles things, and things aren’t going as good as they should have.

So you gotta be careful that the pastor doesn’t become so egotistical that every story is about how great he is. That’s number one, because that gets old. But number two is that you don’t build your message on glass, that it’s all windows, that you bring structure, you bring a foundation, that you bring truth to the people, and let them process it in their own mind, and begin to understand even its own application to their own life.

Because many times, I will teach on things, and people will say, well, Pastor, this meant a lot to me, and this is what helped me in, and that was my point. But the Spirit of God works like that, and he works in different ways.

One time I was teaching on finances, and a lady came forward and got saved. How’s that happen? I can’t believe it. But the Lord works in mysterious ways. And so I just think that illustrations have to be balanced.

The other thing I would say this, and I know I told you, too, but you know how pastors are we always think of something else, but is that See, I have a lot of confidence in the Bible. So I believe in what is called the sufficiency of Scripture.

And I don’t think Mike has to do a lot of dramatic experiences around it to help people get the point. I’m very confident that God’s Word, faith comes by hearing the Word. It’s powerful. It’s sharper than any two -edged sword.

Am I against drama? Am I against people doing extra stuff? I’m all fine with it, but it’s like anything. Too much cake can destroy your diet. So you just got to stay balanced. And you got to stay within who you are.

I always tell people, Pastor Mike is not an entertainer. I’m just not good at comedy. I tell jokes and my kids say, dad, please. It’s embarrassing. And so I try to stay with who I am. Not every pastor is as creative as other pastors.

And that’s good if you’re creative. Man, use those gift sets. But just be content with who you are and use it to proclaim the word of God. So you talk about you kind of make an outline. And I’m assuming you kind of take that outline up with you when you go to preach on Sunday morning, right?

So about how detailed are your outlines? Are you lining out full points? Are you just kind of giving yourself little reminders here or there to kind of keep you on track? What does your outline kind of look like?

So that has evolved through the years. When I first started, I did a lot of expertaneous preaching in the sense that I just kind of got up there, opened my Bible. I studied the passage and everything.

But I just kind of laid it out there. And as I developed, I realized that sometimes I would get off message, all right? And I would go down rabbit holes that could be destructive or it wasn’t helpful, it wasn’t edifying.

And so then I decided I would kind of bring more structure and go back to my main points and things like that. Now, in this part of season of my life, I do a lot of writing, whether I’m blogging or writing for a book or I’m writing for working on further education.

So I do, I don’t write out my sermons, but I do have extra notes under every point so that I can refer back to them in my future writing. And it’s just, it makes it a lot easier for me, especially if I’m blogging, to be able to have some of this content.

Yeah, no doubt. So now let’s kind of talk about when you’re up kind of given the sermon. kind of sticking with this idea of the outline. Do you ever, especially now that your outlines are a little bit more, you know, concise and kind of keep, do you ever kind of go off script?

And what I mean by that is you kind of like have maybe something planned, but you know, as again, pastors always are kind of thinking and thinking new things. Do you ever kind of get on in the middle of a sermon, you kind of takes a turn where maybe you were focused on, you know, let’s say the holiness of God was the topic, but you’ve kind of, you kind of switched it and you started talking about maybe,

you know, he’s faithful to his promises. While those two things are, you know, interconnected, of course, it’s kind of like a little bit of a different topic. So does that kind of ever happen to you?

Yeah, absolutely. Many times as you’re preaching, the Spirit of God can lead you in a unique direction that is particular to a need. Remember, the Spirit of God knows the people, lives in the hearts of the believers.

And so you may lay this out. but sometimes the Lord can take it a different direction. And that has happened several times. And we always try to be sensitive to that. We pray for that. We pray that the Lord would help us to not be prideful or stubborn and be proud of our outline that we wouldn’t go a different direction.

You know, Charles Spurgeon said that when he was preaching, he would sometimes have up to seven different thoughts in his mind. And, you know, I tried to do that once in the sense of just calculating how many thoughts were running through my head while I was preaching.

And the best I could come up with was three. So it just tells you how brilliant Charles Spurgeon was. But, you know, there are things that are running through your head and thoughts. And so you wanna be sensitive and you wanna be able to go to the direction that God has given you.

Now, the other thing is if, as you accumulate years of study and writing and serving and speaking, things just reemerge within you. And so like I could be, you know, teaching and all of a sudden I just remember things and I just feel impressed to remind the church about these particular truths.

And so you’re almost like just a walking library. And every once in a while the Spirit of God just pulls a book off the shelf and says, hey, make sure they remember this. Awesome. So once you kind of get done with the sermon, what are some of the goals you have hoped to accomplish or some of the things you have hoped to get across, you know, at the end of each Sunday, you know, 12 when you’re heading out to lunch,

what are maybe some of the things you’re looking back on or like, I hope we accomplished this. I hope we got this done. So my first goal is that if anybody walked in as an unbeliever, that they would walk away a believer, that they would have faith in Christ.

That’s my, I’m very passionate about that. And I believe that’s part of what pastors should do in doing the work of an evangelist and calling people to respond to the gospel. And I’m a big believer that every time God’s Word is taught, it demands a response and giving people that opportunity, I think, is important.

And I know there’s different ways to do that, and I’m all for all of them, but I’m just wanting to encourage the response. But the second thing is that I’m hoping that God’s people are encouraged. You shouldn’t come to church and feel like you’re berated or that you just feel like you were attacked.

Now, I know that I’m not trying to make everybody feel good, but I am trying to make sure that everybody’s encouraged in the Word. The world’s tough, man. And there’s a lot of battles, there’s a lot of struggles, there’s a lot of hurts.

And I just did a funeral for a man, and his wife died of Alzheimer’s. you know for several months all he could do was during this COVID season is go to her window of and he couldn’t hardly interact with her.

That’s all he had and I don’t want him to come and I see him sitting out in my congregation every morning Sunday morning and I know he’s hurting and he’s struggling and his wife just got promoted to heaven and he’s been going through a grief process long before she even died and I don’t want him to be discouraged.

I wanted to walk away holding on to some hope and feeling like he was helped today and he can take another step for God and so I have you know I think of a couple that lost their son and you know I want them to have a sense of of hope in the promise of the resurrection and sometimes people say why do you continue to teach us these same truths because every week some people it’s all they got to hang their hat on and and they’re barely making it because they’re in so much hurt and grief.

Somebody might have lost their job somebody might come in and just found out they got a tumor in their brain. You know there’s just so much going on in people’s lives and and and for me as a pastor I just want to be upbeat encouraging.

I’m not afraid to preach against sin and I’m not afraid to deal with and I want the Spirit of God to convict but my goal is people will be encouraged and comforted and then I do pray that and hope that people will make changes in their life that if the Bible has brought anything to their attention the Spirit of God that they need to change.

That I do hope people walk away and say you know what I got to get better at that and or I got to work on that or I got to get that out of my life and if we see those kind of things then I’m telling you I’m elated I’m excited and very motivated.

Great. So do you ever kind of get off the stage or while maybe you’re preaching, do you ever kind of have a feeling of, oh, you know, I’m really on today, or you know, even in the in the opposite vein, you know, you’re kind of going you’re like, not really coming out the way I would like doing what do you kind of do kind of in those moments where you’re feeling like, you know, you’re kind of killing it you you know you’re on fire versus the moments where you’re kind of in the middle of a sermon you’re like,

Oh, this isn’t just this isn’t landing like I thought. When you’re preaching. It’s like a, it’s like being a craftsman. I don’t think anybody, whether they place athletics, or their work with their hands, or they speak, or whatever it is.

I don’t think they ever feel like that they did a great job I think there’s a discontentment that always resides our hearts because we’re striving for excellence and so I don’t think Michael Jordan ever walked off the court and said I was amazing today.

I think he was like always critiquing himself, always finding little areas that he needed to do better and so for me I’ve never felt that way but I have felt like I laid the biggest egg in the world and that that was the worst sermon in America and so the Lord works mysteriously because many times people will write me a letter and said that sermon helped me so much and when I look at it from my perspective as a craftsman of a sermon I think man that was a mess Mike you did a horrible job but somehow God took that mess and used it and so it doesn’t excuse mediocrity and it doesn’t excuse not bringing your A -game but you’re thankful that even in our weaknesses and our failures that God can still use us and so the pastor is always being humbled the Lord works that way he humbles him in the pulpit and he does it by sometimes you know I can tell you some funny things where I have tried to say one thing but I said something else and it’s so humbling like one time I told the church that the apostle Paul I meant to say that he nurtured the church but I said he neutered the church and the entire congregation broke out in laughter and couldn’t stop laughing I couldn’t stop laughing and we just had to shut her down it was a great day but that was so humbling to me and he you know just like oh I can’t believe I did that so you have these experiences where you mispronounce words or you get stuck and you can’t get it from your head to your mouth and you can’t get it out or you you know like one time I was preaching I couldn’t even quote John 3 16 it just wouldn’t come out no matter what I had to do and finally the church somebody the church stood up and just quoted it for me and so the Lord keeps you humble and he brings you back that on Monday morning get back at it and you get back and you get back to the basics and you get back to doing it the right way.

So kind of as we wrap up is there a place because you’ve given you know probably thousands of sermons so is there a place where you know people can maybe find some of your older sermons maybe the greatest hits or not as great hits of Pastor Mike.

Well you’ve just given me a great idea but of course all my sermons that are since technology has been out you can go to YouTube or Hopeworth having YouTube channel and there’s you several years there then of course we have a library here and people in the old days people would request CDs.

But you can go to our website, hopeworthhaving .com and you can there’s an archive section. So I’m not sure how far it goes back, but I’m sure it goes pretty close to 10 12 years back, and you might catch some of those fumbles that I’ve had through the years.

Yeah, that’s great. Um, and so if you are, you know, interested in continue listening to a Pastor Mike sermon or just, you know, need a church of your own, maybe your church still hasn’t opened back up.

Check out Hopeworth Having, we live stream our service Wednesday nights and Sunday mornings on YouTube and Facebook. So check it out and, you know, maybe, maybe you’ll be lucky to catch the next great fumble of Pastor Mike’s career.

But, uh, hey, Pastor Mike, thank you so much for taking time out and, you know, kind of given a little behind the scenes look at, you know, what what really goes into a pastor and and a sermon in the heart, you know, behind it as well.

Thank you so much. It’s been a joy to be here. All right. And listeners, thank you again. And if you like what you hear, give a subscribe, tell a friend. And, you know, we hope you have a great rest of your day and always remember that in Christ there’s hope worth having.