I pointed out how the KJV translators of the Hebrew started with an assumption that David was about to increase defense spending (they added “the use of” to the bow), while really Saul was naming this song of lament “the bow.”

In church, as in life, we tend to increase the “image” when we stumble. Who hasn’t tripped over their own foot in public and then furtively looked around to be sure we weren’t spotted? Maybe you saw someone looking at you, and you did that sheepish grin, or sort of laughed it off.

We have to keep that image alive!

In church, we tend to do the same. If you’ve been following what I have been writing about, you know we have to find the side door if we want to preach in a secular age.

Status and performance are not the way to lead in the future.

Excellence is dead.

Yesterday, right after I talked about how scary it can be to point out that people have left the church, or that the budget might be weaker next year, water began dripping on the stage behind me.

Seriously, my co-pastor got a trash can and put it on stage right behind me while I was preaching. It was the ultimate image of “we are just trying to keep it together.”

But here’s the reality. Everybody in the room is just trying to keep it together. Everyone everywhere is just trying to keep it together.

I’m not just talking about in church. We all live on the verge of a meltdown most of the time these days. Welcome to the age of the buffered self. It’s just too much to hold onto.

It’s so much work just to keep it all together that we all feel fragile all the time.

It’s actually a relief to be able to be honest about it.

This is something we need to learn how to integrate into our sermons. In our preaching, we have to be honest about the fragility, the pain, and the uncertainty of living through our days.

An image of perfection is a lie, and everyone knows it. Some people may like it for a while, but grief comes in the morning anyway.

Vulnerability and authenticity are what I talk about a lot and what I am leaning into more and more in my preaching and my writing.

I’ve created a sermon template to help us reach the buffered self underneath all the layers of false armor we wear.

I call it the Flashpoint Method. It’s a simple guide to preaching in a secular age in a way that can pierce the buffered self.

You can get the PDF here.

Oh, and if you were wondering, the leak was a disconnected hose to an AC pump in the attic. After the sermon, I crawled up there and (hopefully) fixed it. I guess we will find out soon!

But theory doesn’t help when it’s Thursday afternoon, and you haven’t yet bridged the gap between a deep exegetical insight and the actual ache of your congregation.

One of the biggest struggles I find in sermon prep isn’t a lack of study. It is so hard sometimes to translate an ancient truth for the modern listener! We spend hours in the text, but we struggle to move that truth into a place where it pierces the secular mind and heart.

To help with that, I’ve mapped out my own preparation workflow into a system I call The Flashpoint Method.

I’m making the core of this framework available for free to any preacher who wants it. It’s here to help you think through preaching in a secular world and offer you a way to strategically build your sermon to help speak to the postmodern mind.

You can download the guide here, no strings attached.

Just please feel free to reach out to me at any point and let me know what I can do to help you in your sermon preparation.

I live to help preachers grow. You can always reach out to me with any needs you have! Please feel free to reach out to me through this form at any point!

Then I read Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age, and I realized why.

Thirty years ago, we presented truth to people who still accepted the idea of truth. We called it “three points and a poem.” But today, people don’t rebel against messages like that; they just shrug and think, “That’s nice for him. He found something that works for him.”

I wasn’t willing to accept that. I’m not jaded or cynical enough to just say, “I’ll tell them the truth, and they can take it or leave it.” I want to preach in a way that makes people actually devour the Word of God.

So, I redesigned my sermon structure for a postmodern age. I developed a framework specifically to reach ears that have been “buffered” against the Gospel.

This 30-minute video is Lesson 1 of that framework. It’s the “Diagnosis”—and it’s the most important shift I’ve made in my study.

I want to help you master this and preach Christ to your people.

Three things to help you right now.

1 - Learn the full flashpoint sermon structure. Go ahead and grab this course and master this technique. If you want to master the full 5-lesson framework and get the complete "Flashpoint" blueprint, you can finish the course right here.

2 - Let’s Consult on this! I still have a few slots open this week to consult on preaching struggles. Click here to book a session on my calendar, and let’s talk about the text you are preaching on this week or this method.

3. Subscribe and get weekly updates from me here. Make sure to check the Sermon Prep section in your subscription! I want to be a resource for preachers.

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In the old world, people entered through the front door. They accepted propositional truth and welcomed someone who could articulate it well.

Those days are gone. No one answers the front door anymore. We are all skeptical of whatever you might be selling.

Now we welcome guests to the side door. The side door is the messy entrance. It’s the place where the dust and muddy boots pile up. It’s far less tidy and presentable, but it’s the door we all use for trusted friends.

Our side door is the pain in our lives. It’s the fear, doubt, and hidden anxieties that we keep hidden and tucked away.

When we stand in the pulpit, we can acknowledge these realities.

You lie beside your spouse and scroll reels because you are afraid to be vulnerable.

You have a panic attack in the grocery store because you’re far too busy and distracted by a million things to plan dinner, but you feel the overwhelming pressure to perform and measure up. But you keep failing to do enough to make yourself feel like you are good enough.

You have everything the world has told you you should attain in this life, yet sometimes you lie awake at 3 AM wondering why you still feel empty.

These common pain points are the struggle of Taylor’s age of authenticity. Most of us feel things like this, and a million variations on the same theme.

To preach the gospel in the ruins of the old world, we need to name these pain points, these fears, and these deeper questions, because they begin to make the glass bubble of our buffered selves shake and tremble.

And then we ask something like, “Let’s see what this passage might have to say about that?”

You see, in the Christ-centered preaching model, first, we named the pain (the FCF), then we named the truth of the bible, and we proved it. In this model, we name the pain and then interrogate the passage to see what it says about that pain of living in this world.

This is the place where you get to do your exegetical work. Explain and illustrate those concepts, just like Chappell taught.

And this section of the sermon leads you to a tension.

Imagine a rope, or better yet, maybe a rubber band. One end is the tension and agony that you named. You anchor that truth in the reality of living and hurting in this life. Then we show the beauty of the text, the glory of Christ, and the hope that is in the passage. Through the first two parts of the sermon, you are pulling that tight.

Then you want to have a statement that I call “the Flashpoint.”

This is similar to Chappell’s “propositional truth.” You might say something like,

“Your fear of being vulnerable is a fear of not being loved, but because of the love of Christ, you are safe.”

“If Christ is really your savior, you can stop trying to prove your own worth.”

“Your meaning was never meant to come from ‘owning,’ but from ‘belonging.’

This statement can act as a punchline. It’s when the tension is at its highest, and the truth is like a snap. It’s a moment of altered awareness.

After this, you can ask a question like, if this is actually the answer, then what should we do?

And then you bring home what we traditionally call the application. You let them know that this is the way to live into their new life in Christ. This has the added benefit of not letting the listener sit still in what Bonhoeffer called “cheap grace.” If they want to experience the benefits of grace, there are certain things that they need to do. Or they could just sit still and continue to feel the dread, anxiety, and ennui of their own private, buffered life.

This is a way to deliver a sermon by entering through the side door, rather than the front. Since the front door is closed and bolted in the age of authenticity.

If you would like to know more about how to develop a sermon using this method, I would love to connect and help. Let me offer you a few options.

1. The Flashpont Fieldguide PDF - This is an extended PDF with sermon samples and a full development plan for using this method

2. The Flashpoint Method Full Course - This is an online 6-session course with sermon samples, video lessons, and optional (of course) homework to help you learn this method. The first session is completely free; you have nothing to lose.

3. Connect with me - If you are a preacher trying to improve your skills in the pulpit, I would love to talk with you. Feel free to reach out to me, and let’s connect and help you reach the people in your church!

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Most preachers working today, whether they know it or not, stand on the shoulders of the giants of church history. The most recent giant of preachers has been Bryan Chapell.

Chapell wrote Christ Centered Preaching because the pulpit had devolved into a sort of moral therapeutic deism. Preachers through the 20th century had gotten into the habit of preaching messages that can be summed up by “how to have a better life.” Somehow, the gospel and the work of Christ got lost in this maze.

The brilliance he brought to the text was what he called the Fallen Condition Focus. Ask the question, “What is the human condition that this text speaks to?” And then ask what this passage shows us about the way Christ meets us in the fallen place.

Chapell presents a model for propositionally leading the people of God through the text, demonstrating that truth. I learned directly from Chapell and still value his contribution to our field immensely, but things have changed.

The Change of Climate

We need to be honest about something: we are not driving on the same roads that Chapell was when he mapped the propositional machine of the sermon. Chapell developed that map within a framework of modernism, but now we live in what Charles Taylor calls “A Secular Age.”

In this new world, propositional truth means very little to most of the people who listen to your sermons. They hear your “truth” claims as merely one alternative “truth” among many.

In this climate, a propositional sermon, no matter how Christ-centered it is, bounces right off the glass bubble post-modern people have created to protect themselves from the transcendent.

The Change in Transmission of Truth

If the gospel is the fuel to life transformation and human flourishing (and I believe it is), then the sermon is about transmitting the truth of the passage to people who need to hear, understand, and apply it. In a Secular Age, we need a way to communicate that truth to help people actually integrate it into their lives.

We don’t need to help people discover what is true; we need to show them why they need it to be. We need to make them ache with longing that the truth we proclaim might just actually be the way.

We do that by leaning hard into what Taylor calls Cross Pressure. In a secular age, humans still feel a longing for truth. We work hard to curate our lives, and yet we always have a missing piece.

The mother raising her children while building her career is checking all the boxes society calls “success,” yet still feels something is missing. The man who has everything has a hard time connecting with the people he loves and wonders why his children no longer hug him when he comes home. All of us have nights when we lie awake and wonder, “What am I missing?”

We use that and make it point to the FCF, not because it’s true, but because we feel it in our bones.

Enter the Flashpoint Punchline

After we exegete our cultural need and longing as humans, and then we explain and illustrate the passage, we need to find a way to drop the proposition in the moment when the need is deepest.

We don’t name the truth up front. We hold up the problem, and then hold up the truth of God’s word. Then the truth can be presented like a punchline. It should create relief and recognition at the same time.

This is the truth that changes everything.

In my next post, I will offer more specific details around this method, which I call the Flashpoint Method. Subscribe, or check out the course I developed, teaching you exactly how to use this.

He’s not a “church guy.” And he isn’t intellectual, he’s just a salt-of-the-earth regular guy. The kind you can count on. He doesn’t have time for fluff. He likes things that work.

He asked me a simple question.

“So, Jared, what are you preaching on this Sunday?”

I started talking. I talked for five minutes. I explained the historical context of the Babylonian exile. I walked him through the Hebrew nuances of a specific verb. I shared my three sub-points.

I was feeling pretty good about it. I felt “deep.”

He stopped chewing. He looked at me. He looked confused.

“So... what’s the point?”

I didn’t have an answer. I had a mess.

I had forty pages of notes. I had six commentaries on my desk. I had spent twenty hours studying. But I couldn’t tell my friend, in one sentence, what God was saying to him on Sunday morning.

I had failed the napkin test.

Complexity is a Mask

We like complexity. It makes us feel smart. It makes us feel like chefs.

If the sermon is complicated, surely it must be deep, right? Wrong. Complexity is usually just a mask for confusion. If you can’t say it simply, you don’t understand it yet.

In the blueprint, we call this the big idea.

In the construction world, every building has a “primary load.” Everything else—the drywall, the paint, the fancy light fixtures—is secondary. If the primary load isn’t centered, the building collapses.

Your sermon has a primary load. One idea. One truth. One specific challenge from the chef to the guest.

If your sermon is about “everything,” it’s actually about nothing.

The Napkin Rule

Here is the rule for the waiter in the blueprint:

If you can’t write the core of your message on a cocktail napkin, you aren’t ready to preach it.

If you need a legal pad to explain your point, you aren’t serving a meal. You’re dumping a grocery store onto the table. You’re asking the guest to do the work you were too lazy to do in the kitchen.

A faithful waiter doesn’t just bring the food. He brings the order. He knows exactly what is on the plate. He can summarize the flavor in a sentence.

“This is a story about how God’s grace is bigger than your biggest failure.”
“This is a command to stop worrying because the King is on the throne.”

One sentence. Sharp. Clear. Nutritious.

The Fog of Jargon

We hide behind jargon because it’s easier than being clear.

It’s easy to talk about “theological paradigms.” It’s hard to talk about how a lonely widow can find hope on a Tuesday night.

When we fail the napkin test, we create a fog. And when the pulpit is a fog, the pews are a blackout. People leave church feeling “impressed” by our vocabulary, but they aren’t changed by the Word.

They can’t eat a fog. They need a steak.

The Test

This week, before you finish your notes, I want you to grab a napkin. Or a Post-it note. Or a scrap of paper.

Write down your one big idea. No “and.” No “also.” Just one subject and one predicate.

If you can’t fit it on that tiny piece of paper, go back to the kitchen. You aren’t done scraping the paint yet.

This post is an excerpt from a book in development on the tools, techniques, and methods preachers need to know. If you subscribe and follow me, I will let you know when it’s available, and you can get access to a lot more.

I don’t recommend it, but it did save a ton of money.

For months, my home wasn’t a home. It was a jungle gym. A high-tech eyesore. We were wrapped in steel scaffolding and wooden planks. Every time I looked out my window, I was staring through a grid.

It was loud. It was messy.

And it wasn’t a “crew” doing the work. It was me, my firstborn son, and his best friend. We were doing it ourselves because, frankly, it was cheaper. But the job was brutal. We were dealing with old lead paint. There was a lot of scraping and sanding and dust, all while we were trying not to poison ourselves or the soil.

The scaffolding was the only thing keeping us safe. We needed that structure to reach the high peaks (it was 4 stories tall). Without that scaffolding, the job was impossible.

My neighbor wasn’t thrilled. I don’t blame them. Some of the scaffolding had to be anchored on their side of the line. My renovation was their headache. My process became their problem.

Then one day, we finally finished. We tore down the steel. We loaded the truck. We drove away.

Suddenly, the house was stunning. The color was sharp. The trim was crisp. For the first time in months, you could actually see the architecture.

But imagine if I’d left the scaffolding up. Imagine if I had told the neighbors, “I want you to see the sweat! Look at this setup! We spent months scraping lead paint up there!”

Admire my work!

You wouldn’t see the house. You’d see the tool. The very thing used to build the beauty would be the thing blocking you from enjoying it.

Preachers do this all the time.

The Scaffolding of the “Original Languages”

We’ve all heard that guy. Maybe we’ve been that guy.

The one who spends five minutes on a Greek aorist participle. Maybe we quote three dead Germans to prove a point the Bible already made.

We do this because we want to show our work. We want to be the chef. We bring the raw onions and the shipping invoice to the table. We want the guests to know just how hard we worked in the kitchen.

But when we do that, we’re like my scaffolding. We’re crossing the property line. We are imposing our “work” on the listener’s “worship.” We force them to look at our process instead of the Master’s product.

The Kitchen vs. The Table

This is the technical stuff. Tools. Greek. Hebrew. Commentaries.

These tools are vital. We must use them. We need the scaffolding to reach the high, difficult places of the text.

But the scaffolding belongs in the kitchen. Not at the table.

A faithful waiter knows the ingredients. He’s done the homework. He knows where the “lead paint” was scraped away. But he doesn’t lead with the invoice. He leads with the steak.

If you spend too much time “showing your work,” you’re sending a message. You’re saying the Bible is a puzzle for geniuses. Not a meal for hungry people.

You’re making yourself in your study the hero, when it is supposed to be Christ.

The Scaffolding Test

This week, look at your notes. Look at that word study. Look at that commentary quote.

Ask yourself:

Is this helping them see the house? Or am I just showing them the scaffolding?

If the Greek helps you understand the text, great. Use it to fuel your delivery. But leave the jargon in the kitchen.

Serve the meal.

Show off the house.

Leave the scaffolding in the truck.

This post is an excerpt from a book in development on the tools, techniques, and methods preachers need to know. If you subscribe and follow me, I will let you know when it’s available, and you can get access to a lot more.

The image he used of a spider dangling by a slender thread over a hot candle wick? It still gives me chills.

When Edwards preached that sermon in the 1700s, people didn’t just say, “That was a nice talk, Pastor.” They literally ran to the altar. They were terrified. They were broken. They embraced the grace of God in a way that sparked a Great Awakening.

Now, let me ask you a question.

Was Edwards faithful to the text? Absolutely.

Was he theologically correct? Yes.

But if you stood up in your local church this Sunday and preached that exact same sermon, in that exact same tone, what would happen?

You wouldn’t get a Great Awakening. You’d get a protest in the parking lot and a dozen “unsubscribes” before you get to your benediction.

The “Site” Has Changed

In the book I’m working on, I call this the Site Analysis.

In construction, you don’t build a beach house the same way you build a mountain cabin. The environment dictates the engineering. As preachers, our “Site” is the gap between the Ancient Word and the Modern World.

The Truth hasn’t changed. The Bedrock is still the Bedrock. But the soil on top? That has shifted significantly since the 1700s.

When we stand in the pulpit today, we have to ask ourselves a hard question:

Do we want people to hear the truth and rebel, or do we want them to hear the truth and embrace it?

Some of us wear “getting cancelled” like a badge of honor.

We think if people are mad, we must be doing it right.

But the Gospel is supposed to be incarnational. When God wanted to talk to us, He didn’t just send a memo from the clouds; He “pitched His tent” (John 1:14) in our specific neighborhood. He spoke our language. He used our metaphors.

The Edwards Check

This week, I want to challenge you to run your sermon through what I call The Edwards Check.

Look at your favorite “tough truth” in your notes. Maybe it’s a point about sin, or judgment, or a controversial moral stance. Now, ask yourself:

• If I preach this exactly as it’s written, will it move my neighbors toward grace or push them toward a protest?

• Am I “pitching the tent” of this truth in a way that my city can actually inhabit?

This isn’t about watering down the message. It’s about Double Listening. It’s about listening to the Word so we have something to say, and listening to the World so we know how to say it.

If we don’t do the site analysis, we aren’t being “bold.” We’re just being loud. And the world has enough loud voices.

What the world needs is a bridge.

Thoughts? Have you ever preached a “truth” that landed like a lead balloon because you didn’t account for the “site”? How do you navigate the tension between being bold and being relatable? I’d love to hear your “messy” stories in the comments.

It was horrible.

I spent my shifts surrounded by the smell of old grease and that eerie, orange glow of the heat lamps. The crown jewel of Ryan’s was the “Mega Bar.” It was a sprawling, steam-table wasteland where the mashed potatoes had a slightly metallic aftertaste, the rolls were harder than the table, and people wandered around with glazed eyes, stacking fried chicken on top of chocolate pudding.

The problem with a buffet isn’t a lack of food. It’s that there’s too much of it, and none of it is actually good. You leave feeling heavy, but not nourished. You’ve consumed 4,000 calories, but you can’t remember what a single one of them tasted like.

As preachers, we do this to our congregations all the time.

We think that being “biblical” means covering as much ground as possible. We think that if we aren’t preaching through three chapters of Nehemiah in a single sitting, we aren’t being “deep.” We want to show our work. We want to be the Chef who proves he can handle the whole pantry.

But here is the truth: If you try to serve a buffet, your people will leave with spiritual indigestion.

The “Sweet Spot” (5–12 Verses)

In the book I am working on, I call this work The Excavation.

This is where we stop talking about our hearts and start talking about the Text. And the very first step in being a faithful “Waiter” is knowing how to select a manageable portion for the table.

Most new preachers (and a lot of tired veterans) try to preach too much text. They pick a whole chapter because they’re afraid of “missing something.” But remember our “1,800-minute” math from last time? If you pick 30 verses, you can only spend about 60 seconds on each verse if you want to stay within your 30-minute time budget.

That isn’t preaching; that’s a flyover. You’re showing them the view from 30,000 feet, but they’re down on the ground, and they’re hungry.

I’ve found that the “Sweet Spot” for a 30-minute sermon is usually between 5 and 12 verses.

Obviously, sermons are different. And each pericope is different. If you hold me to that, I will let you down. I once preached a sermon on the book of Jonah. But in general, a good rule of thumb is 5-12 verses. Narratives might be more, but you can still preach a great sermon on 5 verses of a three-chapter narrative from 1 Samuel.

Depth Over Distance

When you narrow the scope, you increase the depth.

When you only have eight verses to handle, you have time to look at the “load-bearing” words. You have time to sit in the tension of a single comma. You have time to build the bridge (that Double Listening we learned from John Stott) for one specific truth instead of trying to build ten flimsy bridges for ten different ideas.

The Chef wants to be impressive by showing how much he knows about the whole Bible. The Waiter wants to be helpful by making sure the guests actually get some protein in their system.

Faithfulness isn’t about how many chapters you covered; it’s about how much of the Word actually covered the hearts of your people.

Hack Your Passage

This week, as you look at your passage, I want you to try something “messy.”

Look at the 20 verses you were planning to preach. Now, find the 8 verses that actually have the “meat.” Cut the rest. I know, it feels like a sin to cut Scripture. But remember: you aren’t removing it from the Bible; you’re just saving it for a different meal.

By narrowing the scope, you give the Holy Spirit room to breathe in the details. You stop rushing, and you start serving.

Ask a preacher standing behind a pulpit with five minutes of material and twenty-five minutes of silence left to fill.

Or, even worse, ask a congregation listening to a preacher who has no idea where he’s going but is determined to take them there anyway.

We’ve all been on both sides of that equation. We’ve been the preacher “circling the airport” because we didn’t know how to land the plane, and we’ve been the listener checking our watches, wondering if the “in conclusion“ part was actually a lie.

Last week, we talked about the “Bridge” between the Bible and the Newspaper. But this week, we have to talk about the weight of the clock.

AKA - The 1,800-Second Problem

In our culture, thirty minutes is a sitcom. It’s a lunch break. It’s a quick commute. But in the pulpit, thirty minutes is 1,800 seconds that you are essentially borrowing from the people in the pews.

If you have 100 people in your room, a 30-minute sermon isn’t just 30 minutes of your time—it’s 50 man-hours of human attention.

That is a massive stewardship (and we all know we’ve blown that stewardship sometimes).

I know that most of my Saturday night panics (remember those?) didn’t come from a lack of “spirituality.” They came from a lack of Architecture. I was panicked because I was trying to fill 1,800 seconds with “intuition” instead of a plan.

Why Unorganized Sermons Feel Twice as Long

Have you ever noticed that a great 45-minute sermon feels like ten minutes, but a bad 15-minute sermon feels like an eternity?

This is the Attention Span Curve. When a sermon is unorganized—when it lacks a blueprint—the listener’s brain has to work twice as hard. They have to try to figure out how your story about your cat relates to the passage in Nehemiah. They have to try to find the “point” through the fog of your parenthetical asides. Eventually, the brain gets tired of doing the architect’s work for them. They stop listening, and that’s when the clock starts to feel heavy.

Organizing your sermon isn’t about being “slick” or “professional.”

It’s about being kind.

Structure is a gift you give to your listeners. It provides the handrails they need to stay with you on the journey. When you are organized, you take the “mental load” off the guest, allowing them to focus on the Chef’s meal instead of trying to figure out where the silverware is.

The 30-Minute Sit

This week, I have a challenge for you that might feel a little “messy.”

Sit in a chair for 30 minutes. No phone. No Bible. No notes. Just sit there and feel the length of the time.

It feels like forever, doesn’t it? That is the space you are asking people to give you every Sunday. When we realize the weight of that gift, we stop trying to be “clever,” and we start trying to be faithful.

We realize that we don’t have time to waste on “fillers” or ego-driven tangents.

We owe it to the Master Chef—and to the guests at the table—to build a structure that makes every second count.

(Probably cited as an “Old Dead Guy”)

I was proud. I felt like I had done my “job.”

In the words of last week’s post, I was a great chef. (Queue groans)

Then, at the door, a man in his thirties shook my hand. He looked exhausted. He shared his personal pain with me, he said, “My company is laying off half its staff on Tuesday, and I don’t know how I’m going to tell my kids we might lose the house.”

That’s where the rubber really hits the road, isn’t it?

All the “wise and learned truths of scripture” were sort of missing the point of his pain. What do you do with Greek verbs when you’re worried you might lose your job?

In my quest to be a “faithful waiter,” I had spent so much time in the kitchen studying the ingredients that I forgot who was sitting at the table. I was serving a meal that was nutritionally perfect but completely inedible for the person actually sitting in front of me.

The John Stott Principle

The late John Stott used to say that the preacher must live between two worlds. He argued that we should stand with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other.

He called this Double Listening.

We listen to the Word of God with reverence and humility, seeking to hear exactly what the Spirit said to the original audience. But we must also listen to the World with empathy and curiosity, seeking to hear the underlying fears, hopes, and “cross-pressures” that define our neighbors’ lives.

If you only listen to the Bible, you risk becoming a historian who is irrelevant to the present. You are building a beautiful fortress that nobody can find.

If you only listen to the newspaper, you risk becoming a motivational speaker who is powerless for the future. You are building a tent that the first storm will blow away.

The Bridge Builder

The “Blueprint” for a faithful sermon is actually a bridge.

A bridge requires two piers. One is deeply rooted in the foundation of the Ancient Text. The other is anchored in the shifting soil of the Modern World. If you only have one pier, you don’t have a bridge; you just have a pier that leads to a drop-off.

Preaching is the work of building the span between them.

This week, as you look at your notes, don’t just ask, “Is this biblically accurate?” (Though that is the bare minimum). Ask yourself: “Where is the friction?”

• Where does this ancient text rub up against the specific anxieties of my town?

• What part of this passage would the person losing their job on Tuesday find hardest to believe?

• What part would they find most refreshing?

The “Site Survey”

In the construction world, before you build, you do a site survey. You check the soil and the wind. This week, I want to challenge you to do a site survey of your own community.

Go sit in a coffee shop for thirty minutes. Don’t bring your Bible. Don’t bring a commentary. Just bring your ears. Listen to what people are worried about. Listen to the “newspaper” of their actual lives.

Then, when you go back to the Text, ask the Chef how this meal is supposed to feed that specific hunger.

Because if the Gospel doesn’t work on Tuesday morning, it isn’t the Gospel.

Do me a favor, and share and subscribe. I create content to help preachers grow in their preaching. I’m no expert, I’ve just learned from a lot of failure!

I write for normal people who know that, like me, they are messy, somewhat confused, and really trying to do the best they can to get by and maybe grow a little bit along the way.

So here is the truth that I know many preachers can relate to: The Saturday night panic.

It’s real, isn’t it? You think you’ve done your work. But then you have a new thought. You wonder if that particular illustration you came up with is right. Are people going to hear it the wrong way? Some new thing hit the news yesterday that everyone is posting about—should you try to tie that in somehow? What if you don’t mention the newest crisis everyone is talking about? If you do mention it, is it too touchy? Will people be upset?

We have this Saturday night panic because we have misunderstood our job. Or maybe we just mistake what our job actually is.

We think of ourselves as the chef in the restaurant. We plan the menu, we direct the kitchen, and we highlight the seasonal specials. And let’s be honest—for the chef, the highest fear is the review!

Have you seen The Bear? Or maybe another TV show or movie showing the high-stakes life of a chef? Maybe you’ve worked in the food service industry (I have!).

That review is the overriding fear. Maybe it’s the food critic who stops by for a meal; maybe it’s just the couple out on their anniversary. You want to make sure it’s perfect. The plating, the portion size, the seasoning—everything has to be flawless. You have to leave them wanting more and feeling satisfied at the same time.

But what we need to realize is that we are not the chef. Pastor, preacher, please hear me: You are a waiter, not a chef.

The waiter has an important job, to be sure. We want to do our best to make the people feel welcome and taken care of. But at the end of the night, you can clock out, go home, and rest easy knowing it was the Chef’s meal that you served.

When you preach God’s word to God’s people, you are only carrying out the meal. The Text is what He has prepared for them. Maybe you toss on a garnish on the way out of the kitchen, but let’s be honest: even the best waiters run that garnish past the Chef for approval.

Speaking of the garnish, think about that part of your job for just a minute. This can be a huge failure for a waiter! He stops to drop a bit of parsley or drizzle some reduction sauce, and he worries it’s not quite right. He hesitates, he perfects, he doubts himself. All the while, the steak is getting cold.

Your garnish might be a personal story about yourself; it might be a Greek or Hebrew word study that helps bring something out. But when we spend too much time focusing on our garnish, we can actually detract from the meal the Master Chef has created.

A good waiter takes care of the table. He shows up when he is needed, and he answers questions. But if he is being faithful, his only goal is for the guests to enjoy what the Chef has prepared for them.

The next time you are feeling that Saturday night panic, do yourself a favor. Glance at your notes and ask yourself this question:

“Am I trying to prepare a five-course meal from my own strength? Or am I faithfully serving a meal that honors the Chef who created it?”

The meal is there already. Get a good night’s rest, get up, and carry it out to the table.

My deepest desire is to help preachers faithfully preach the gospel to people in ways that will help the Holy Spirit change their lives. If you are a preacher or know one, would you please share my work so I can offer what I keep learning about the art of preaching?

If we were to look at the landscape of modern American worship, we would see the great, silent rise of a new deity: The God of Ease.

This god is subtle. He is not demanding. He does not ask for sacrifice, only for minimum friction. His temples are the memory foam mattress, the one-click checkout, and the unlimited streaming queue. He whispers one gospel: Your highest good is to be comfortable, and your greatest enemy is inconvenience.

When you sit down to prepare your sermon, you are confronting this god. You have to combat this god.

This god asks only for our souls and offers us comfort.

If your sermon promises a blessing without a burden, it is missing the cross and has already bowed the knee to the god of Ease.

The Illusion of Cheap Grace

The modern Therapeutic Frame—the cultural lens that defines fulfillment as psychological well-being—tells your audience that life is about minimizing pain and maximizing comfort.

When you preach, listeners filter the Gospel through this frame, hearing: “Obey this rule, and you will feel better.”

This strips the Gospel of its power.

The problem is the unexamined assumption of the listener: that God’s primary goal is their personal happiness.

People can easily believe that the God of the Bible is a big Santa in the sky who wants to offer goodness and fulfill the promises offered by the god of ease.

The Call to Costly Obedience

The difference between therapeutic advice and transformative truth is cost. The Biblical call to discipleship—to take up the cross, to give up status, to forgive the seventy times seven—is always costly.

It demands sacrifice and inconvenience.

If your sermon sounds like something found in any of a million self-help books (”Manage your stress,” “Find balance”), then it is worship of a god, but not the one who revealed his word to us in the Bible.

The Contrast: Cheap vs. Costly Sermons

To ensure your sermon is demanding true discipleship (Costly) and not self-help (Cheap), analyze the application’s target:

If the Target is Identity, the god of ease tells people to affirm their inner worth. The God of Scripture calls people to die to self.

If Money, the god of ease, says “give to receive,” the God of Scripture says “where your money is is where your heart will be.”

Bonhoeffer called this “cheap grace.” He said grace is free, but it’s not cheap.

Have you noticed that the churches that are dying fastest in our country are the ones that demand nothing? The god of ease has trouble getting people out of bed. But that’s ok, that’s exactly where he wants them.

Don’t lead your people to worship at his altar.

What does that mean when we don’t even have newspapers anymore?

It means you need to know the deep questions of the age in which you live.

The thing is, the questions have rarely changed; they have just been given new words and a different vocabulary.

The Ancient Dialogue: Defining The Good Life

Ever since Plato first began to articulate it, humanity has been consumed with “The Good Life.”

The Good Life is best understood as the way to achieve whatever we think might be happiness or fulfillment.

In the Medieval world, they adapted this understanding: Meaning could be found by looking OUTWARD at God’s fixed reality. There was an objective truth that humanity was made to enjoy God and to live as stewards of the world he placed us in.

Many of our tools and our training still rely on this foundational belief.

The Transition to the Inward Self: The Source of Dread

As Charles Taylor points out, we have retreated inward. The source of meaning is no longer OUT THERE; it is now INSIDE EACH OF US.

This transition has changed everything. You know what happens when the source of meaning turns inside of us instead of a transcendent reality?

Existential dread happens.

If you ever wonder why we are the most anxious and depressed civilizations to ever live, take a hard, long look at the source of meaning we have established for ourselves!

We were not built to contain the source of our own meaning, and yet our culture teaches us that we must be the source of our own meaning.

The Cross-Pressure Paradox

This is the problem that creates the Cross-Pressure (Taylor’s phrase) in our pews.

Most of the people sitting there are dealing with some form of existential dread. On some level, everyone alive in our era feels a sense of “What is this all for?”

A huge part of the reason we feel this is that the buffered self (a concept I explore in detail in other places) is in rebellion against what we were made to experience. If your sermon stays only on the transcendent, external meaning, then it will fall on deaf ears.

The Gospel Validates the Dread

The Gospel doesn’t ignore or deny the inward dread we feel; it validates it.

What is the source of the good life? How can we experience what we were made for?

Our Identity as human creatures can finally be fulfilled and enjoyed when we sacrifice the self-created BS life we think we want.

Your sermon is way more than moral guidance or some sort of pathway to heaven; it is the ultimate answer to the burning questions inherent in the human heart.

It can be tempting in our sermons and certainly in our sermon preparation to rebel against this. We want to be angry. Some preachers like to shout that the system is against them, and they shame their people into putting down their phones.

Let’s not do that.

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When you preach, you need to think about the scarcity principle.

And yes, let me indulge in a little side note here because I am utilizing economics to address sermon prep. And I think preachers need to be able to consolidate all sorts of things to bring it all down and help people change their lives (or, rather, let Jesus change their lives).

The scarcity principle helps us understand a truly rare commodity: Attention

We preach as if it’s an infinite resource. And it just isn’t. It is one of the most precious resources we have, and it’s getting used up fast in the information age we live in.

That means, preachers, I am talking to you - you can’t waste it!

Some of us like long and winding illustrations, we like to deviate into side notes (like I just did!), and we want to tell our people about our Christmas plans.

And then, worse, we follow all of that up with some low pay out like tools for moral living.

Understand Marginal Utility

Marginal utility is another economic term that helps us understand diminishing returns. The first bite of pizza is needed and deeply appreciated, the 37th is not as tasty, and frankly, sometimes just hurts.

Have you ever been sitting at the table, propped on one hand, trying to squeeze that last bite in? Maybe we could talk about gluttony in a future post.

Keep this concept in mind, because sometimes that first point, or the introduction, has high marginal utility, but then by the third or fourth point, your people feel like they’ve eaten too much pizza.

So What? What can you do about it?

Front-load the impact.

Let them know right away how this particular text, or the bottom line of the sermon, is going to mean something to them. Show them the value at the front. (or you will lose them in the middle).

The Value of Certainty

In our modern world, certainty is another deep need. Anxiety runs rampant because no one is certain of anything. The algorithm will update in 72 hours and highlight some other new outrage (see the series on that).

People are living with a scarcity mindset. But we hold the most certain thing there is as our foundation every Sunday when we climb into that pulpit.

We are going to tell them about the creator of all things and the one who redeems our lost hearts and our broken pieces.

Don’t ruin that by making it just another scarce commodity.

Prove every Sunday that what you have to say matters!

I want to help you do that.

Follow, subscribe, and get in touch.

No matter where you find your gift mix falling in that spectrum, I am certain that you love people and you want to see them change for their own good and, of course, for the kingdom as well.

And yet...

“And yet” are some serious words, aren’t they? I use them all the time in my sermons. You are broken and sinful beyond what you can imagine, AND YET, more deeply loved than you would ever dare to believe (credit goes out to Jack Miller for that one).

And yet, when we preach, we are usually preaching to people who are used to 30-second reels.

We all do it. We scroll reels and by the time we put our phones down, we don’t remember the first 5 we saw.

Have you heard that anecdote that the average American attention span is shorter than that of a goldfish? (There is some exaggeration in that, but only a little).

It is absolutely true that social media has reshaped the typical brain and altered our ability to stick in there with the average sermon.

Everyone is now a digital native, and preachers need to learn to speak their language.

Before I go on, I want to cut you off if you are thinking, “they need to get on board with me.” You are a missionary, a minister of the gospel to all nations. And digital natives are the people you are called to reach. So just cut it out, and let’s learn to speak their language, shall we?

Let me just ask, are you willing to compete for the attention and transformation of your people, or would you rather just keep doing what you’re doing?

I’m about to give you a process for how you can think about reaching digital natives.

A powerful problem

You need to get their attention. What is your core argument? What are you trying to show them from God’s word? It works best if you center it around some problem that we all know we share, and you tell them how this particular passage can solve it for them.

This problem needs to be relevant. It needs to be something they will feel in their bones. But by the way, and this is crucial, you need to feel it in your bones too. If you don’t feel the pain, how is the sermon going to shape you?

Start with a story, either from the ancient world in the context of the text, or something in our present day.

That story needs to lead to the tension Bryan Chappel called the Fallen Condition Focus. There is something in the passage that speaks to our mutual pain, living as people who are not quite right in a world that is not quite right.

Get to that early and get to it within the first three minutes of your sermon.

Memorable bite-sized chunks

Divide your sermon into three or four smaller points (I have done as many as seven points).

You might think seven points are way too many. But listen. You can scroll through reels for an hour and only remember 2 or 3 of the videos you saw. So break it down. If they can walk away with one way the gospel can solve that core issue you raised, then frankly, you’ve probably made a win that day.

Say something like “first, I want to tell you how (pt 1) can help us to live out this (related to the problem you mentioned.

Give them these hooks. Repeat that every time. “Next, I want to tell you how this other thing can solve that problem I mentioned.”

Powerful illustrations

Many of my illustrations come from the world of the text. If I am preaching an Old Testament narrative, I will usually create a story about the world it comes from that helps make it real.

I have heard preachers use 5 to seven illustrations in their messages. One might be about walking his dog, another might be about sitting by someone’s bedside as they die.

Listen.

Illustrations are great. But let me ask you, are your people remembering your illustrations or are they remembering the point you made about the gospel?

An illustration is useless if the main thing the congregation remembers is that you slipped on the ice while walking the dog. If they remember that even when we slip on the ice, Jesus loves us, well, that might be ok.

That brings me to the last bit

Move their hearts to Jesus

Nothing is more important than this. It is the central and most important part of any preaching ministry.

You can change behavior with shame.

You can alter attitudes with Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.

But only the gospel can move the human heart where it belongs.

Digital natives love the current drama of the moment. They need to immerse themselves in whatever is new. And before you start acting superior, we are all digital natives now.

Our hearts have a hard time focusing on any one singular thing for very long. Last week, it was some new TV show; next week, it will be a political hubbub of some form or another. This is our new attention span.

But if we can move toward loving Jesus because the gospel solves that thing you raised in the beginning, then over time, we can begin to develop a ministry of watching lives change.

Are you with me? Will you subscribe and help me continue to put this stuff out there for you and others to think about how we can see Jesus change lives?

If there is something in this article I can help you flesh out and understand more, like the Fallen Condition Focus or anything else, please just comment, I want to help you preach God’s word as well as possible!

Do you know why they both made millions? It wasn’t because they were such masterpieces. If we’re honest, they weren't. Barbie was kinda cartoonish (I'd better duck before somebody throws a show at me for that), but let’s be real, it wasn’t a motion picture masterpiece!

They both rocked the box office because they were reflecting deep-seated anxieties and emotions that are currently stirring in the people who are sitting in your pews.

Do you want to preach the Gospel to the people who are being stirred by the things that are happening in the world right now?

Do you want to reach them and help them to understand how their insecurities, fears, and doubts can be soothed by the God/man who entered into humanity’s story and died for them?

Let’s take a Look at how Barbie’s answers to Identity and Oppenheimer’s answers to guilt find their way into the hearts of the people that hear our sermons.

We will look at this through two questions that are in all of our hearts: What was I made for? And what have I done?

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Have you ever wondered why that is?

Obviously, it’s because the world is different. I tried to watch Miami Vice not long ago, one of my favorite shows from the 80s. But it was dated, old, boring, and irrelevant.

But as preachers, we want our sermons to be relevant (at least I hope we do, relevance is key to being applied).

Why is it so different?

Charles Taylor is probably the most helpful writer in pointing us toward exactly what is so different now and what we can do about it.

In Our Secular Age, Taylor draws our attention to a few realities about the way the world works in the present “secular age.”

Primarily, he argues that this age is not as marked by people “rejecting God” as you might think; it’s merely that God is just one reasonable option among a plethora of others.

Here are some ways Taylor can help you to preach to audiences today.

1. The Problem - We are no longer porous, but buffered

If you’ve read Taylor, you know, but just in case you don’t, let me sum it up.

Once upon a time, people in Western Civilization felt as though they were close to the spiritual. Spirits, Ghosts, goblins, and ghouls were all hiding in the shadows. Some spirits were good, some were evil, but all of it was close to us, influencing us, touching our lives and influencing things in ways both good and evil.

But in the present age we live in what Taylor calls a buffered state. We have padding (buffering) between us and the spiritual. Whatever is true on the other side of the veil, the contemporary typical person does not feel as if it touches them or has any relevance in their lives.

Part of this is because we believe (falsely, I might add) that we have come to such a deep understanding of the world that the mystery has disappeared and the unknown is simply something left for science to discover. We see quantum physics as the next undiscovered area, but of course, science will find a way to explain and understand it.

Mystery is dead; what used to be interpreted as spiritual and mysterious is now just something science hasn’t figured out yet.

But something crucial has happened in the transition, the mysterious has now turned inside of us. Rather than that numinous, mysterious “other” being “out there” that mankind needed to seek, we have turned it inward. The Mysteries lie inside our souls. The mysteries now lie inside.

2. The Challenge to Understanding - The Immanent Frame

Part of the reason the mystery went internal is because the transcendant - that which is beyond us - no longer exists in the contemporary western imagination.

Taylor spends a great deal of time arguing for the phrase “Social Imaginary” as opposed to the old word “worldview” that I used to like to use. Because it’s the way we, as a society, imagine the world to be. And he suggests, with a great deal of evidence, that modern man’s social imaginary is immanent.

In other words, it feels completely natural and right to us that all of life takes place in the here and now. That we can live, move, and have our being (to use the words of Paul) in a world that never intersects with the beyond, where God, the spirit, Christ, and the angels live and invite us to participate.

Modern man believes we can experience human flourishing without ever interacting with anything transcendent.

Your audience every Sunday is not antagonistic toward the things of God (If they were, they wouldn’t be there in the first place). They simply live in a world where God is optional for morality, fulfillment, meaning, and purpose.

This means you don’t only need to explain the Bible, you need to make the case for why the Biblical view of life, the universe, and everything is crucial for humanity.

3. So what do we do - Preach to the cross pressure

Taylor argues that while we live as “buffered selves,” we also feel a cross-pressure (his phrase). We each feel this internal pull on our souls from something beyond ourselves, something outside of the immanent frame.

Certain words will call to this longing in your listeners’ hearts. Words like beauty, justice, meaning, and yes, the word grace will draw out that cross pressure in ways sometimes our minds fail to comprehend.

We don’t have to force faith, or shame those who struggle in this world under the cross pressure. We just need to validate that deep longing that nothing inside the Western world can answer.

That deep need for beauty and grace draws the human heart toward it like a worm on a hook draws a fish.

All we need to do is validate that hunger and show the people where the best wine and bread are to meet that deeply human need.

4. The Use of Narrative

This is why Narrative is so essential. The human heart longs for story. It aches for those deeper truths that cannot be found in the simple true/false binaries. We want to see meaning in the story.

I would never in a million years sacrifice the truth of God’s word for some watered-down story with fancy titles like ZIMZUM or something that makes us feel good. (IYKYK)

But there is a way for us to bring truth, God’s truth, genuine expository truth, out of the narratives we find. We can point to God the Father, the work of Christ, and the human condition.

I have developed a simple framework for doing that, and mostly because of everything you just read! It won’t work for every sermon, but it will work for most.

If you subscribe, I will send you a PDF that explains it, and if you reach out, I will help you understand it and apply it in your context.

I have been preaching for a long time and learned a lot. I have often said it’s about all I am good at. But I believe with my whole heart that the word of God can change lives. I have seen it.

And it’s incredibly exciting when it happens. But there are so many challenges around how to do it. All kinds of templates and strategies, and styles, and on and on until you feel like it will make your head spin.

But it’s what I love.

It’s what I study.

It’s what I kinda geek out about.

So I want to help.

At this page, I will be posting regular resources, tips, and ideas for crafting sermons that will hopefully engage people and open up a way for the Holy Spirit to transform their lives.

I want to build a community here of preachers and pastors who will help one another and work together for the kingdom.

To motivate you to join me, I have created an UNcopyrighted format for a narrative and expository crossover style. I call it the flashpoint method. I like it, and I am sharing it with you just for signing up for my sermon prep group.

(Just subscribe below, and you will get it in your inbox)

I also want to engage with your thoughts and messy ministries. So if you email me, I may be able to offer thoughts, and I might also be able to create posts and content that will help others who are probably navigating the same thing.

All I’m asking is your email and a few minutes a week to see if you can help me to help you with your sermon prep. My goal is to make your life easier and your congregation more excited about your sermons.

Just hit subscribe, check Sermon Prep, and I’ll be in touch.

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This was always my problem. Narrative sermons seem to keep people hanging on, so they lean in and eat up what you’re saying.

But my problem has always been that I don’t want them to eat up what I have to say! I want them to eat up what God has to say!

That’s what has motivated me to create this new model for Sermon Preparation that I want to share with you. Let me ask you an important question.

Is Your Sermon Prep Hitting a Wall?

• The “Dry Lecture” Trap: You spend hours on exegesis, but your message feels academic, lacking heart and punch.

• The “Storyteller” Swerve: You focus on narrative flow, but feel insecure about whether you truly honored the text’s original meaning.

• The Blank Page Paralysis: You struggle to bridge the gap between “what the text means” and “how it applies today.”

• Unmemorable Messages: Your sermons are forgotten by Monday morning because they lack a clear, vivid anchor.

I want to offer you something free in exchange for your email so we can stay in touch the answer that I am working on.

Expository Preaching Designed for the Modern Ear.

The Flashpoint Method solves the fundamental preaching tension by anchoring your entire message on a single, powerful moment of crisis from the text—the “Flashpoint.”

It successfully blends the narrative and expository styles.

You get to tell them what God’s word teaches, but you get to share it in a way that keeps the main thing the main thing and engages your listeners every step of the way.

Why Am I Even Doing This?

I hate flashy sales language that makes me feel like some kind of know-it-all, or worse scammy marketer.

But I truly do want to help preachers effectively reach people with the gospel. After a lot of reading, research, and thinking. I have found a couple of ways to do that.

The flashpoint method is one way to do that.

And I want to get this in your hands. More importantly, I want to be a resource to you as you grow in your preaching.

After all my years of ministry, I am ready to start giving back. I want more than anything to help younger, newer, growing pastors have a thriving and successful ministry.

This is one of the ways I can do that. All I ask is your email address so we can keep in touch, and I can help you along the way.

You can grab the flashpoint method free right now at my website.

Also, to get everything I write about preaching, hit “Subscribe now” below, and make sure you choose Sermon Prep.

You will get weekly emails with sermon preparation and delivery ideas, and regular access to a guy who has tried to be faithful in the pulpit for a long time now.

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