Delivering the Sermon

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Matt Smethurst
It’s the tension that we have to embrace and learn to live with, the tension of precision and connection, and we don’t want to sacrifice one on the altar of the other, right?

Ligon Duncan
It is the will of God that the Spirit of God used the word of God to make the people of God look like the Son of God. Now I don’t know how long it took HB to work that, but that sentence is really helpful to me.

Matt Smethurst
Welcome to the everyday pastor, a podcast from the gospel Coalition on the nuts and bolts of ministry. My name is Matt smitherst, and I’m LIG Duncan, lest you get us confused, that’s Ligon. That’s his voice. And we are here to continue a conversation about preaching. And we’ve thought about preparing sermons, but we want to talk for a few minutes about the art of delivering sermons like and you have a ton more preaching experience than me and You are the Lord has gifted you as a sermon deliver. The last time I saw you preach, I noticed that you actually were very loosely tied to your notes. I mean, you, you, you were making eye contact, you were engaging. There was a connection with the congregation the entire time. Has that always been the case for you to talk about how you’ve grown to deliver sermons.

Ligon Duncan
The better I I know and have in my heart the flow of argument of the sermon derived from the text, the more free I’m going to be. And I you and I were talking not long ago, and and I I used to have a lot more notes when I went into the pulpit than I tend to have now. A lot of that is my eyes have given me away. I just I hit 50, and I could not look down and see a lot of notes without just sort of burying myself in the text. And I didn’t want to do that. I wanted to talk to the congregation. I wanted them to know that I was speaking to them, that we were engaging with one another. And so I’ve had, I’ve had to take less notes into the pulpit and have a larger print and things of that nature. So I really have to work first to have the flow of argument of the passage in my mind, have the flow of argument of how I’m going to handle that in the message in my mind and and then usually I try to have a few anchor words in my mind to help outline the passage for the congregation, so that they know what to expect and where we are in the process of the argument. But that has taken a lot of years, I started out with a lot of notes. I always preach from outlines. But if you had turned my outlines often, it was an eight and a half by 14 sheet, sometimes with four point type under main points. If you had taken it and put it into 12 point type, it probably would have gone to six pages or so I’ve had less and less texts with me as I’ve gotten older, going into the pulpit, RC Sproul said to me a number of years ago at a conference, do you know how many times you broke eye contact with the congregant that it was a audience, audience there. What a congregation? And I said no, and he said 72 times, so he had and so okay, I thought, okay, yeah, I probably shouldn’t break eye contact that many times. And so I really made it a purpose. I like looking at people’s faces anyway, because I can tear I can tell whether they’re bored or they’re angry or they’re sad or they’re with me or whatever, you know?

Matt Smethurst
What am I thinking right now?

Ligon Duncan
You’re very kind, Matt. You’re letting me waffle on, and you’re not yawning. So I appreciate that. So I like to look at people’s faces anyway, but I want them to know that I know the material well enough that I can talk to them about it, and and again, that just takes time. I you. There’s not a shortcut to that. The better I know the passage, the better I’m going to be able to do that. And the the the more the illustrations have come home to me, the better I’m going to be able to remember them and and really I like to use illustration not to interest people, although it’s not going to be uninteresting. I hope I like to use illustration in order to apply. So I really like illustration to be an extension, not just the application. So the application is sort of announced to them. Yes, this is how the word applies. The illustration makes him go, whoa. I get that. Okay, he just said that. But now I Okay, I get that. I feel that. What he just said. So I I work from an outline. Now look. So I have friends that preach from full manuscripts, and they do it well. And I think, Matt, you just have to decide what works for you. I have friends who if, if they went into the pulpit without notes, it would be incoherent what their congregations get. And so they they have to work. Everybody has to find what works for them. I’ve had I’ve heard homiletics professors say it’s a sin to take notes into the pulpit, and then other homiletics for you need to write out a manuscript. I think it’s different for everybody. Now, how about you? How do you do it?

Matt Smethurst
And well, let me just name it. Name the tension. I think you we could probably say it’s the tension that we have to embrace and learn to live with the tension of precision and connection, and we don’t want to sacrifice one on the altar of the other, right? I think if I’m in danger of elevating one, it would be precision over connection, because I do use a full manuscript, I think I’m growing and being less tied to it. People tell me that. They don’t. It doesn’t seem like I’m reading. They’re kind of, they seem surprised to find out I’m using manuscript. Frankly, the last time I saw you preach, I was challenged and a bit chagrined, because I was like, okay, that’s what it looks like to not need to look down every three or four sentences to know what comes next. And so that’s something, frankly, I’d like to grow in over the course of my ministry, maybe getting to the point where it’s like, okay, I can look down and just kind of say the next paragraph. And then, more than that, I don’t feel beholden to using a manuscript, but it does help me write my when I write myself clear, I feel like I’m able to not be bloated in what I say, I have taught extemporaneously before in a Sunday school context, and it’s actually pretty exhilarating. I love doing it. But I had it was a lower stakes environment. I had the freedom to be redundant and to and I didn’t, you know, go on rabbit trails, which, which I just don’t think serves people, at least at this stage in my, my preaching life. Yeah, so when we think about the the the art of delivering a sermon, what are we doing? Because this, it’s a fine line. We are not performers, and yet, when you don’t deliver a sermon, well you can actually become distracting. So of course, you can be distracting by being theatrical and ostentatious in the pulpit, but you can also be distracting by being stiff and rigid and boring. So how you know you’re training young pastors? How do you what? What are some things you see pastors often, young pastors often get wrong in delivery. How do you encourage them to grow in this area?

Ligon Duncan
Boy, that’s a huge that’s a huge area. One thing is, I think we have to, we have to be clear what we are. And I think you use the word messenger, I think that we are messengers. We are there to deliver a message from God. Sometimes that message is an exhortation, sometimes that message is a comfort, sometimes that message is a warning. There are all sorts of messages that God has for his people in the word, fundamentally, we’re messengers, and we want to do a good job both of conveying, you’re talking about precision, exactly what God said, and the importance of it, the meaning and the mood of the passage, yeah, because that’s going to vary. And so as a you’ve got to pay attention to both of those things. Yeah, I agree. And by the way, just listening to different really good preachers is a help to me. If you made me list my top five or 10 preachers, one of the things that you would say about them is, wow, they don’t all preach alike. And I’d say, Yeah, that’s right, but I learned something from all of them. You’re not trying to copy somebody else. You need to be yourself. But we are messengers, and so we want to be clear. We do want to reflect the mood of the text. If the mood is comfort. We don’t want to be angry, you know, yes, you know the Lord’s your Shepherd. Why aren’t you better sheep? You know you’d see. You know it needs to, it needs to reflect the message that you’re conveying from the passage.

Matt Smethurst
And younger preachers like me need to be especially careful, because I, because I’ve heard an older minister say that younger ministers tend to scold more, and he has learned that you you can accomplish 80% of what you want to through encouragement. Not scolding.

Ligon Duncan
Yep. I’ve heard the same statement, and it really has lodged in my mind that that older ministers will learn that they can get more out of their congregation from encouragement than they can from admonition or. Or even exhortation and again, but life experience plays into that, Matt and my message to guys is, be patient with yourself. There will be things that you can do when you’re 60 that you can’t do when you’re 30 because you have some life credibility because of the things that you’ve gone through, that allows you to gently say some things that when you’re 30, you may feel like you thump ’em more, you know, and yeah, you know. They know you’ve got the scars, and they know you’ve been through the wars. And you can lean over and say, I can attest to you that this is true, and you can believe this, and you can count on this, and this changes the way you live your life. And whereas when you’re 30, you think, Man, I need to, I need to make that point, that they need to do that. And you know the old guy, he’s, he’s been there, he’s been through the wars. He can, he can say that in a more consoling sort of way and still get across the the exhortation that’s underneath it.

Matt Smethurst
I’m reminded of First Thessalonians five, where Paul says near the end verse 12 and following, we ask you brothers to respect those who labor among you and are over you in the Lord and admonish you and to esteem them very highly in love because of their work. Be at peace among yourselves. And we urge you, brothers, admonish the idol, encourage the faint hearted, help the weak, be patient with them. All right, there are different medicines for different maladies, and I think as we grow as Christians, as we have more experience, not just in life, but with people and their struggles and joys, we learn which medicines to apply. John Newton said, my great aim in preaching is to break the hard heart and to heal the broken ones. And the hard thing is, you’re preaching to both. You’re preaching to hard hearts and broken hearts. You know, he also said, We, I think it was him who originally said, we want to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. The reason that’s so hard is because we have one sermon on a given Sunday to preach to people who are sleepy, slothful, comfortable in their sin, and those who are despondent and afflicted but the but the reason I didn’t just read verse 14 about, you know, the different categories there, how to talk to talk to idle people, faint hearted people, weak people. Is because I think our ability to do that well will largely be based on how much we’ve leaned into the previous verse. We ask you brothers. Now this is not writing. You know, he’s brothers. Here is not pastors. He’s writing to church members. We ask you church members, brothers and sisters, respect those who labor among you and are over you in the Lord, it’s easy as pastors to you know, get the over you part, yeah, but to the degree we’re not only over our people, but among them, we will be positioned to know how to address the faint hearted, the weak, the idol and so on. So of course, the the tagline of this podcast is on the nuts and bolts of ministry. So so let’s get even more kind of granular and practical on a couple of things. First of all, you’ve already alluded to a sermon structure, and having points is that something you you commend to all preachers to kind of tell people what you’re going to say, then say it, then tell them what you what you said?

Ligon Duncan
Yes. I mean, I think you need to be very clear. Now, let me tell on myself. I having analyzed my preaching, you know, X number of years into my ministry, at first prayers i i look back and sometimes I think my my main points were probably three different sermons. And one of the things that I loved about Derek Thomas is he would relentlessly worry one idea through an entire sermon. You never wondered what Derek was preaching about. He was always circling around this one idea.

Matt Smethurst
Even using the same phraseology?

Ligon Duncan
Yeah even though he had points, you weren’t dominated by points as if they were three different messages, they were all relentlessly going in one direction. And I thought about that when I had my first sabbatical in 2009 that’s one of the things I thought about a long time. What is he doing in preaching? And I realized that a lot of my preaching was pretty good teaching in the sense of teaching through a passage, but that I wasn’t as good at relentlessly focusing on one idea. And so when, when I came out of that sabbatical, I had a lot of people in the church say, your preaching has changed. And it had because I because I realized, again, I’m doing a pretty good job of teaching the Bible, but if I’m going to preach, I’ve got to be constantly aware throughout the sermon what the main message and the main application is, so that the points don’t become three separate sermons. So I do. I think outline in structure is a good thing that may sound not. Conversational in our day, and I think there’s a lot of emphasis on being conversational, um, sort of that you’re having a little chat with people. I still think you need structure and but, but don’t let the structure become three different messages or four different messages, or whatever the structure is. You’ve got to be really aware that this is what this message is about and everything in the structure helps me convey that main point. And, you know, I had a professor in seminary that made us. One of the assignments that we would do for him is we had to write a research paper in five pages. So he said, Don’t give me all the technicalia. You can stick that down in the footnotes. I want five pages on this, and he would say, you have to give me your thesis statement in seven words or less. Now that, in combination with the guy that taught me homiletics, the guy that taught me preaching, was relentless about making us have a proposition for every sermon. Every sermon had to have a propositional statement. What is this sermon about? What’s it after? What’s it? Trying to do those two things together were really helpful to me, because you can’t have too long of a statement like that. It’s got to be short enough that it’s memorable and digestible, understandable to your people, but But then the other thing that that that preaching professor did is he made me state my main points in applications so that it wasn’t just sort of an informational outline. It was an applicational outline, and that was really helpful to me. So the practice of having to be succinct, we’ve talked about that already a few times. You know, be succinct. It’s easier to talk for 40 minutes than it is for 20 minutes. It’s easier to talk for an hour than it is for 30 minutes to be succinct, to be able to say things briefly and let me say also memorably. You quoted HB. Charles earlier. HB says things that I cannot get out of my mind, like I can still remember him. Maybe it was at a T, 4g, he said it is the will of God that the Spirit of God used the word of God to make the people of God look like the Son of God. Now I don’t know how long it took HB to work that, but that sentence is really helpful to me, and I know it was helpful to his congregation. I know it was helpful to us who I can’t remember the environment in which he was preaching that, but I just thought, oh, I don’t know how long it took you to say that, but that is so helpful. I’ll remember that for a long time. And so it’s, it’s worth you spending time, yes, to come up with phrases like that that get in your people’s heads and hearts and help them along the way. Yeah.

Matt Smethurst
And one practical takeaway is listen to great preaching and read great writing. Read writers who have a way of painting pictures with words, that’s right, yeah, when we talk about the importance of precision, something that helps me with this, and I’ve alluded to this in previous episodes, is I have some church members who regularly help me on the front end in preparing my sermons. So every Tuesday, I think I explained service review, but after that, we have a meeting called sermon preview, where we open our Bibles to the passage that I’ll be preaching five days later. And I’m not teaching, I’m typing. I have essentially a blank Word doc, and as people are voicing observations, applications, potential illustrations, I just am getting it all on paper, which really gives me a running start for sermon prep in the week. The way to switch metaphors, the way I kind of think of it, is those folks and it’s it’s men and women, it’s just anyone in the church is welcome to come, but those folks are helping me pull out of the cabinets the ingredients I’ll need to then cook the meal for the rest of the week in order to nourish God’s people. And they love it. They love it not only because they feel like they’re meaningfully involved in the in the with input and the ministry of the word, but also they’re really excited for Sunday to see because this is a passage they’ve studied. And so they want to, they want to, they want and of course, it’s gratifying when sometimes they hear themselves echoed or quoted. So that’s helpful for me. I also on Saturday night. I wish I could do it earlier in the week, but usually it’s, it’s it’s Saturday night, I will email my manuscript to five to seven. Uh, folks in the church, usually we’ll hear back from three to four. And that’s just helpful, because, you know, a even if someone gives you some course correction, some things that can be improved, it also helps you know you’re you’re on the right track. You can go to bed knowing, okay, this, this is good, this is edifying. Here are some ways to improve it. I’m just so grateful for some of my church members who helped make my sermons better. Help trim that fat and help me have the tip of the spear just a little sharper. That’s good. One other thing ligand that we should mention when we talk about application. When most pastors think about sermon application, I think they default to thinking about individual application. What does this passage mean for the individual Christian? It’s obviously not less than that, but I have seen modeled and have really tried to grow and also doing congregational application, corporate application, and it’s actually not very hard. You can just look at at any kind of New Testament or Old Testament, for that matter, text, and just think about what would it look like to obey or apply this as a congregation corporately. How can we help others to obey this? Have you? Is that something you feel like you excelled at in your preaching ministry.

Ligon Duncan
I remember coming across Mark Devers application grid and thinking how helpful that was to me, which can be found online, yeah, just Google. That’s a very helpful thing to think through. I was helped in application by the Puritans as well. You’ve been quoting some Puritans. I’ll tell you one, and it’s not a book on preaching. Thomas Brooks, little book, precious remedies against Satan’s devices, really is trying to help Christians deal with the ways that Satan tempts you or the ways that Satan’s Satan discourages you and or keeps you from realizing the favor and grace that God has given you in Christ. But as I read that book, I realized, while there are a lot of different kinds of people under my nose every Sunday dealing with a lot of different kinds of issues. So that means, what’s one reason why Puritan sermons were longer than our sermons is not because their exposition was longer, but their application was more detailed. Now you don’t have to apply to every single person in the congregation, and I do agree. I want to Amen your point about congregational application, because so much of what the New Testament says about sanctification is congregational it cannot be done individually, because it’s one another stuff. So you actually can’t do it alone, which, by the way, and they use are y’all, yes, and it means you can’t live the Christian life as a lone ranger. You actually have to live the Christian life congregationally. You can’t even do sanctification without a congregation. So I Amen to what you say there. But even when we’re thinking about the congregation, the congregation is not all the same. They are not all struggling with the same sin. They’re not all struggling with the same discouragement. They’re not only in they’re not all enduring the same trials. I was having a conversation with a with a woman at a at an event at RTS, Orlando, probably a year ago, and I just said to her, casually, is this is a godly single woman in the church. I said to her, how’s your work? And before she answered, she said, You are the first pastor who has ever asked me, how is my work? And I thought to myself, This cannot be. This absolutely cannot be. But you know, just thinking about the different people in your congregation and applying the words so that you know that you are thinking about them, that’s huge. You know, your people, wow. My pastor is thinking about me. I heard Joel Beeke say a few months ago, your, your people, ought to leave the service thinking, You know what, my pastor cares more about my soul than I do. And your, your application ought to be one of the places where that comes through where they realize, you know, we’re we’re people in different stations of life, mothers, young people in school, single people, single people, businessmen. My pastor is actually thinking about the stuff that I have to deal with, 24/7, and he cares about me.

Matt Smethurst
Then you can go even further, he’s thinking about me. He may be perhaps he didn’t name me in the sermon, but like I said earlier, it may have been a previous episode. Sorry, everyone you know, your membership directory is the second most important book you own. Yeah, and we can look at those names and face. Is, think about what they’re going through, ask them how we can be praying for them, and that can inform sermon application in a really, really helpful way. In I’ve been reading through John Piper’s 27 servants of sovereign joy, his bio biographical lectures turned into a book on various figures from church history, reading through it with two students at Virginia Commonwealth University. It’s been it’s been great. And there’s in his chapter on George Whitfield. And of course, there would be some things about Whitfield that we’re absolutely not fans of. But Piper has a section when I think about sermon delivery. This is something that I just want to remember for my own preaching. I’ll tell you a story Whitfield said, the Archbishop of Canterbury in the year 1675 was acquainted with Mr. Butterton, the actor. One day the archbishop said to butterton, pray, inform me. Mr. Butterton, what is the reason you actors on stage can affect your congregations with speaking of things imaginary as if they were real, while we in church speak of things real, which our congregations only receive as if they were imaginary. Why? My Lord says butterton, the reason is very plain. We actors on stage speak of things imaginary as if they were real. And you in the pulpit speak of things real as if they were imaginary. Therefore added Whitfield i were i will ball, meaning, meaning, am I pronouncing that right? I lived in Louisville for 12 years. That really sounded like a Louisville pronunciation. I mean, shout loudly. Yeah. I will not be a velvet mouth preacher. And then here’s what Piper says. This means that there are three ways to speak. First, you can speak of an unreal, imaginary world as if it were real. That is what actors do in a play. Second, you can speak about a real world as if it were unreal. That is what half hearted pastors do when they preach about glorious things in a way that implies they’re not as terrifying or as wonderful as they are. And third, you can speak about a real spiritual world as if it were wonderfully terrifyingly magnificently real, because it is. Yeah, so I think that’s that’s a good reminder that as we step into that pulpit, standing between heaven and earth, representing God to His people. We we are stewarding the mysteries of God and some of the most glorious realities of the universe, and we ought to preach as if that’s the case. Now, different brothers are going to have different temperaments. That’s right, not everyone is going to be fiery, and yet we ought to preach with a passion that accords with the truth we believe.

Ligon Duncan
And I think, you know, I often say, you know, if I’ve, if I’ve been with John Piper at a conference, I come back, and I actually have to make sure that I’m not talking like John, because he so affects me. When John preaches, John is deadly earnest that you never come away thinking, well, John’s kind of flipping about that. No, John is earnest about what, what he’s preaching about, and I can even pick up the cadence of his voice and delivery, you know, after I’ve been with him for a little while and have to come back. Nope, I’m LIG I’m not John. I’m not going to preach John to them today, but we do want to be affected by that ourselves. And then we do want our people to know this is real. This is not a game. You know, Matt really believes what he’s up there saying, and, and and it. There isn’t just one way to convey that, but the delivery will reflect the way that you have been affected by it. I tell people, you need to listen to a sermon. Life you’re like. Your life depends upon it, because it does, and your delivery needs to convey that kind of even when it’s a joyful happy thing, it’s real joy. It’s not superficial, happy fluff that the world’s offering. It’s real, deep, satisfying joy that that is there and is that that cannot be taken away, even when the world is falling apart around your ears and your deliveries got to it’s got to convey, I’m not, I’m not up here playing, yes, you know, if I were, there’s other things to do in life. If this is just playing, this is real. I’m here to talk to you about things that are eternally real.

Matt Smethurst
And the reality, pastor, you know this, you’re not always going to feel it. You’re not always going to be in the in the right mindset, the right mood, but one thing I often will be praying in that kind of time of silence right before I walk up to preaches. Lord help me to worship my way through this sermon. Here’s how I want to end with a lightning round. So we have a Sunday evening prayer service where there’s a brief 15 minute devotional preached by another brother in the church, other than me, and it’s a way to. Raise up other preachers, future elders. It’s good. The rest and a lot of these guys, they’ve never preached publicly before, so I try to give them just some basic delivery tips for getting started. I’m gonna It’s just some quick bullet points, good. So first one smile, especially if it’s a happy text, look happy. Let the mood of the text shape the mood of your message.

Ligon Duncan
Yeah, show them that you don’t have to say everything about each other, that you love them when you deliver it. Yeah. And

Matt Smethurst
of course, if it’s about hell you there ought to be a gravitas, yeah, be yourself, avoid disingenuous, distracting affect. So you said earlier, like, if you’re trying to be John Piper, it’s not going to be natural.

Ligon Duncan
And we’ve all heard other preachers, and we’ve known immediately who they’re imitating.

Matt Smethurst
I do go on to try to tell these guys that said public speaking is a different thing than private conversation. It’s okay if you click into a quote, bigger persona, though you’re preaching, not acting. One pastor has noted that the manner of your annunciation, your projection, should be similar to an actor on a stage. It’s not that you’re performing, but you’re projecting. You’re not in a coffee shop.

Ligon Duncan
And let me say that’s a ministry, especially when you have a multi generational congregation. Older saints have a harder time hearing and you can’t talk at a soft conversational whisper. You’ve got to speak up, and so that actually comes through in the delivery. You’ve got to speak loudly enough that the older saints can hear you.

Matt Smethurst
I’m not going to let you comment on the next one, because all you’re going to say is sorry everyone else, you’re not me. But project speak from your chest, not just your throat, right? Pretend you’re un amplified and need to be easily heard by those in the back of the room. Vary your pacing. So sometimes I feel like a guy can preach as if he’s on the highway going 55 miles an hour the whole time, or as if he is in a residential neighborhood going 22 miles an hour the whole time. There are on ramps and off ramps. There are freeways, there are residential areas good, vary the pacing. That’s good, and don’t get stuck in one. Vary your volume. Don’t shout your way through. Don’t whisper your way through. I can actually do this as a preacher, but I find a lot of guys, they click into what I call the earnest whisper, yeah, the whole message is this earnest, heartfelt whisper, yeah, learn to kind of vary.

Ligon Duncan
And again, when you’re varying, if you drop your volume so low that they can’t hear it, they miss, you know, that may be, for you, a point of real emphasis, which you know they’re going, what do you say? What do you say?

Matt Smethurst
Yeah, and the next one has to do ligand with eye contact. I’m just saying basically, vary it and try to make sure you’re making eye contact when you’re doing applications in your illustrations. Anything else you want to say about that? Because I think you really excel at that.

Ligon Duncan
Well, I mean, again, I like it. Now for some people, Look, my pastor is a boy who was a really good preacher and a really good illustrator. I I asked him, because he he always seemed to be making eye contact with everybody in the congregation. He told me later on in life that eye contact really threw him off, and so he looked right over the top of the heads of the people, but they thought that he was looking at them. So again, what different people listening to us may be built different ways. I think you want to make sure that the people know that you are preaching to them. Now I’ve seen I’ve seen exceptions to this. I remember Jeff Thomas talking about a Scottish preacher, and he said this. He said he mesmerizes the congregation by ignoring them, and, and I knew who he was talking about, and, and it was like when, when you listen to a sermon that he preached, it was like he and God were having a conversation, and you were just along for the ride, but it was an amazing thing, but I can’t pull that off. From that kind of I can’t pull that off. I wouldn’t commend that other people. It worked for him, but it wouldn’t have worked for me.

Matt Smethurst
It won’t work in your marriage.

Ligon Duncan
I do think, well said, so I do like to look at people, but if you’re a person who gets distracted by you know, you look back and Aunt Sally is balancing her checkbook and Bob is asleep on the third row from the but if that throws you off right over the tops of their heads, right? So that you’re you know you’re paying attention to the congregation, but you’re not being distracted.

Matt Smethurst
Better, better to look over their heads than preach over their heads. Essentially avoid distracting hand gestures. So don’t lean all your weight on the pulpit. You’ve seen, we’ve seen that you. If that pulpit gives gives out. You know,

Ligon Duncan
there was a lady who used to teach speech at Belhaven University who called that driving the pulpit like a bus. Yes, that’s a good image, exactly.

Matt Smethurst
Well, speaking of Whitfield, he called the pulpit his throne. You know, you don’t want to just love it too much. But, yeah, stand up straight. Of course. You don’t want to puff out your chest, but stick out your chest, as in, don’t just sort of slouch as if you don’t belong there. Stand up. Don’t rock back and forth. And the more you kind of chill out and look confident, the more it’s going to put other people’s trees. Another thing, don’t worry, I’m landing the plane. If you if you don’t feel and this, this would go especially just for brand new pastors, right? I can’t imagine a seasoned pastor would struggle with this as much. But if you don’t feel confident, act confident, kind of look the part. That might sound unspiritual, but again, if you appear nervous, it’ll make the congregation uneasy, which is only going to make you more and then worship your way through your message. A radiant countenance isn’t something you can manufacture. So just try to remain mindful of the immense privilege you’ve been given. And then finally, the thing I say is just let it rip and have some fun, like, it’s okay to enjoy being a Christian. It’s okay to radiate the joy of the Lord and let people see that, because this is, you know, as it’s been said, God made me a preacher. I wouldn’t stoop to be a king. And all vocations it’s good, are honorable in the sight of God, assuming they’re lawful. But man, there is something about being called to the ministry of the pulpit that is something to treasure. Well, I hope this conversation with a lot of inside baseball has been helpful to you. This is the everyday pastor a podcast with the gospel coalition. Feel free to share it with someone that might be in the trenches of doing sermon prep and sermon delivery so that they can grow and find fresh joy in the work of ministry.