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Sunday Service Evaluation Questions

Yancey Arrington — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 16:57:52 +0000

Here are questions our teams in charge of putting together weekend worship services (e.g, teaching, music, sound, etc.) asks each week. These are intended to keep our services missionally-focused and intentionally-driven for our specific context. I’m sure over time we will add and delete questions as we get smarter, but for the moment, here is our current set of questions.

Was the service…

Gospel-centered: Did we show the glory and sufficiency of the Person & Work of Jesus?
High challenge: Did we call people to life under Christ?
Bible connected: Did we display the Bible as our final authority?
Authentic: Did we give the truth without spin?
Male-focused: Would this speak to a man?
Missional: Did we call people to live on mission for God?
Excellent: Did we do the best with what we have?
Next-step: Did we tell people where to go with their commitment?
Provocative/Risk: Did we keep the right tensions in the right places?
Story: Did we involve the story of others to point to the One Story?

For your context, you may have better/different questions to ask of the intentionality of your services. If so, what would be your questions on Monday about Sunday?

I Liked Some of It…

Yancey Arrington — Sun, 20 Feb 2011 20:51:00 +0000

I spoke with a young married couple after service today. I’m currently teaching on marriage and the selfless roles God calls us to in it, and they had a question. From the outset the husband, an affable gentleman, informed me he was not a Christian and that his wife was. He simply wanted to know if I believed they could still have a good marriage if he, as a non-believer, was still soundly committed to being selfless toward his wife. While we had a meaningful conversation I was struck by something he said pertaining to my message.

He agreed with some of what I said about marriage (e.g., being selfless and loving to your spouse) but disagreed with the why and how of marriage – Jesus and his grace. Basically, in his eyes, my message was good until I leveraged it in the gospel.

It was the best compliment of the day.

It reminded me that if you preach messages which only prop up the things we should do without standing those things upon the essential posts of Jesus and his work of grace, then you may actually be preaching something else than the gospel. If unbelievers can agree with everything you say because you only call them to a morality they either already have or likely could conclude by common sense, I would argue your message is far from being Christ-centered. The imperatives of Christianity (what we do) should never be divorced from the indicatives of the gospel (who Christ is and what he has done for us). It’s the indicatives that make the difference between a message rooted in Christ or merely in morality. The difference is not only huge, but eternal.

It also helps us see that sometimes the best people to evaluate how gospel-oriented our messages are, are the ones who’ve yet to receive that gospel.

So, how much of your sermon would a non-Christian have agreed with today?

Seeing Your Sermon Emotionally

Yancey Arrington — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 18:35:39 +0000

One of the ways to better understand your sermon is to think through the different emotions you intend your hearers to experience in response to the truths of God’s Word.

Every sermon has an emotional flow but likely few pastors think strategically about how the different elements of the message they’ve put together guides the feelings of the listener. Make no mistake, this isn’t about manipulating others or putting together a message on the foundation of emotion. Sermons should clearly explain the text in a way faithful to the text. However, preaching God’s Word will have an impact on the emotions of those who hear it. Period.

I’m simply suggesting pastors take a moment to think through their message ‘emotionally’ to see if the progression for the hearer in the sermon is coherent, helpful and thoughtful. Or does it have force the listener into emotional whiplashes, flat spots or dead ends.

Let me give you an example of the message I am preaching this weekend out of Hebrews 11:32-12:2. I was somewhat stuck on where I needed to go. Tons of ideas, truths, thoughts dotted my whiteboard. Then I decided to think through an emotional flow of the sermon. Here’s what came together. These are pics literally of what’s on my whiteboard in my office…

As you can see, I have phrases which denote sections of my message with emotional responses I intend for my hearers to generally exhibit. Will they actually feel these emotions? I’m not sure, but knowing what emotions I believe will arise helps me craft the message in a way that makes sense emotionally for those listening to God’s Word. In other words, I’m looking for the ‘emotional flow.’

I’m hoping that the person listening to my exposition of Hebrews 11:32-12:2 will move from excitement to discouragement to blossoming hope to an “Aha” moment to joy found only in the gospel. Again, will it work just like that? I don’t know. The Holy Spirit will have the final say. However, just thinking about the emotional flow of my message allowed moved me from being stuck in sermon prep process to actually getting down the road sermon-wise.

Sermons aren’t all about emotion but they can’t be anything less than emotional. Ask yourself, “What’s the emotional flow of this weekend’s message?” Remember, we preach to the entire person – head, hands…and heart. Seeing your sermon emotionally may be one more way for some to do that better.

Acts 29 Houston Quarterly: Preaching

Yancey Arrington — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 18:27:04 +0000

I’m excited to be a part of leading the Acts 29 Houston Quarterly on Tuesday, Feb. 15, 2011 (9AM-2PM). The topic will be the learning, burdens and challenges of preaching today. The sessions are as follows:

Crafting Gospel-Centered Sermons
Latest Learnings about Message/Series Preparation
Current Burdens & Challenges of Preaching

In Topic #1 I will be sharing my learnings about preaching with a Gospel-centric focus. Topics #2 and #3 will be interactive and discussion-oriented with Chuck Land, Lead Pastor of Crossbridge Church, and myself leading/facilitating.

While this is a Acts 29 Network Houston event, non-A29 pastors are welcome. Just contact me if you’d like to attend. The Quarterly will be hosted at Crossbridge in Sugar Land.

Want to know more about the Acts 29 Network?

Watch Yourself – A Note to Preachers

Yancey Arrington — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 18:15:01 +0000

Evaluation isn’t a bad word at my church. Indeed, we do it often. It helps us avoid repeating the same mistakes and raises the level of excellence in future ministry endeavors. One of the areas we evaluate with regularity is preaching. For example, after the first of three services I meet with a handful of our elders to hear from them about the good, the bad and the ugly in my sermon. Don’t worry. It’s not a firing squad but a bunch of brothers who are familiar with the demands and desires of preaching. There isn’t one thing said both to encourage or correct in me that they haven’t heard about their own sermons. Having that weekly evaluation is a good and healthy thing for any preacher.

Here’s another good and healthy thing: watch yourself preach.

It’s hard to do. It can be very painful because we tend to be harder on ourselves in self-evaluation. Frankly, I’ve found myself slipping into bits of depression (using that term mildly) after watching a few sermons on the tube. But make no mistake, there are fewer things I’ve found as helpful in becoming a better preacher than watching myself preach!

Most of the time the phrase ‘perception is reality’ holds true. In preachers this often isn’t the case. We tend to perceive ourselves and our preaching in ways that don’t hold to the reality that everyone else in the pews know. We don’t think we speak that fast. We do. We don’t believe our gestures are distracting. They are. We know our sermons generally flow well in thought and arrangement. They don’t. Sometimes the gap between the pulpit and the pew in what connects and what doesn’t is greater than we think. The truth is we can be fairly blind to it all. That’s why I would encourage every pastor to regularly watch himself preach.

You need you to see you.

Watching yourself preach helps you to witness what you can’t witness any other way. It will either confirm your thoughts about your preaching or (and for me is often the case) contradict them. It may reveal a different story about…

How fast or slow you speak.
Helpful or distracting gestures.
Good or poor posture.
The clarity of your messages.
The emotional flow of your sermons.

The list goes on and on. It’s also wise to remember a baseball maxim: don’t get too high in your highs or get too low in your lows. In other words, don’t turn in your two-weeks notice when you see things in the video that make you cringe or sick to your stomach. Remember that evaluation is the point of watching yourself. You do this to grow as a preacher. On the converse, don’t watch your video thinking, “Wow! I wonder why the top five megachurches in the country haven’t called me yet?” Don’t worry. Preach long enough and you’ll have your days when you feel like you didn’t get out of the batter’s box preaching-wise. Plus, we must always be mindful that the Holy Spirit is ultimately the arbiter and agency of a real sermon.

So take a chance. Video and watch yourself preaching. Do this with great regularity. Even after a couple decades of preaching I still believe it’s one of the best tools I have for my personal growth as a preacher. Do it! You and your church will be better because of it.

Two Questions a Preacher Should Ask

Yancey Arrington — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 17:34:12 +0000

John Calvin once wrote,

You will see a number of people who labor very hard indeed at reading the holy Scriptures — they do nothing else but turn over the leaves of it, and yet after ten years they have as much knowledge of it as if they had never read a single line. And why? Because they do not have any particular aim in view, they only wander about…. [they] do not know which is the point they ought to rest on, namely, the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. (Sermon on Ephesians 2:19-22, 1599)

Calvin was dead-on. Because the Bible is ultimately about the redemptive revelation of Jesus, all gospel-centered preaching (and reading for that matter) should take that truth into account; namely, preaching should recognize both our need for redemption and God’s provision of redemption in Christ. To not consider the redemptive context of the passage can cause the preacher to run perilously close to giving another “Do More, Try Harder” message where the people think their growth and merit before God rests utterly upon their shoulders instead of seeing Christ as their wondrous and gracious rescue.

Two questions that can help us steer clear of the morass of moralism in the pulpit are:

What does this text reveal about God’s nature or attributes which provide the work of Christ?
What does this text reveal about our nature or attributes which require the work of Christ?

Think of it this way. Any time we read the Scriptures we should wear the lenses which ask the same questions (restated for ease):

Answering these two questions helps point us to our only remedy – the grace of God. Indeed, revealing the necessity and provision of grace is what makes a sermon redemptive! You don’t have to squeeze Jesus in places where he doesn’t explicitly appear in a biblical text, but you can demonstrate the relation of the text to his person and work.

So, my fellow preacher (and reader of the Bible), make sure your sermon doesn’t devolve into one more message of self-help that your congregants can get anywhere outside the church, give them one that points them to the very reason God gave us the Bible in the first place…

…Jesus and the goodness of his Gospel.

May your messages “rest on the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

HT: Influenced and adapted from notes taken in Dr. Bryan Chapell’s doctoral class ‘Christ-Centered Preaching.’ Byran, if I messed this up don’t expel me. You can get Bryan’s foundational book here.

What The Bible Is Really About

Yancey Arrington — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 17:59:13 +0000

I caught this video post today at The Gospel Coalition (originally created by Heath McPherson) and wanted to share it here as well. This is an excerpted message from Tim Keller’s 2007 conference message (which is one of my all-time favorites) put together in video form. While there might be some liberties taken in a couple analogies to Christ in the Old Testament, on the whole, this is exactly how I feel about the ultimate, and preeminent, message of the Bible. And thus, how I feel the Bible should be preached, taught and read to all.

Four Reasons to Move to a Teaching Team

Yancey Arrington — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 16:55:15 +0000

For quite some time, my church has taken a “team teaching” approach to who stands behind the pulpit at our adult services. For example, in the last three weeks, three different pastors have preached on Sunday. Having multiple teachers isn’t just a summer-thing for CCCC, it’s a philosophy we hold. Let me give you some reasons to consider moving toward a teaching team instead of maintaining a “one pulpit, one pastor” practice.

Having multiple teachers/preachers…

Keeps your church from being dependent on one personality. How many established churches do you know that would all but close up shop if their pastor, God forbid, left the planet simply because they focused everything around that one individual? That’s anything but helpful…or even healthy. Having different people in the pulpit fights against personality-driven churches because you’re exposing the church to multiple personalities. Thus the church would have the best chance of moving positively forward facing even the harshest of realities. Think of investing in teaching teams as congregational life insurance. If you die, your church wont.
Allows your church to appreciate (and learn) from different styles. There are teachers who are more pastoral than others, some more prophetic; some are “preachers” while others are seen as classic “teachers” and instead of your congregation getting used to (and by default, appreciating) only one of them, team teaching helps them appreciate the differences God uses in other teachers to grow them spiritually. If you have a knife, you need a spoon, a fork, etc. This also argues for adding teachers who are different than the senior/lead pastor. Duplicate the task, not the style. (For the record: For those who understand the prophet, priest and king personality/style categories, we have a teacher for each at CCCC)
Gives the lead pastor time to actually…lead. It’s amazing how much I get accomplished in the weeks I don’t have to preach. Preaching prep takes time by necessity. Freeing that time up with someone else dedicated to preaching will absolutely make a huge dent in your capacity to lead well. No question! Want to be a better leader? Develop at least one more teacher to rotate with on Sunday and see if it doesn’t make a massively beneficial change in your leading of the church. You’ve simply got to decide if preaching by yourself to the church is more valuable than your leading of the church. Trust me, you will find yourself preaching less and leading more – and liking it (that is, if you’re a leader)!
Extends the endurance factor. Every preacher has a “magic number” of weeks he can preach until he’s good for nothing and needs a rest. Having a stable of pastor-teachers extends that number exponentially. I used to be running on fumes about 8-10 weeks straight of teaching. I have yet to find that number since rotating on a roughly 50-50 basis (give or take a few weeks with other teachers) on Sundays. It seems like my batteries don’t drain as much, thus they need less time to recharge. I’m able to give my sermon prep more energy and creativity than when I preached weekly. Not only has it positive for my sermons but on my family. I find myself having to work less to stay engaged as a husband and father simply because I don’t feel the pull of developing a weekly message.

Now, let me say that there is nothing wrong with “one pulpit, one pastor” churches. My assumption is that is how most churches have operated for centuries, if not millennia. But that doesn’t mean it has to be that way. Indeed, I wanted to give just a handful of reasons why having multiple teachers is something worth considering. Believe me, there are a lot more reasons out there. Think about it for you and the health of the church you lead.

Make Sure When You Preach, It’s You Preaching

Yancey Arrington — Wed, 05 May 2010 20:12:12 +0000

I share the pulpit with another pastor. Indeed, I should say a pastor shares the pulpit with me. Bruce Wesley, the founding and senior pastor of the church I serve, brought me on staff as the Teaching Pastor when I was 26 and the church only four-and-a-half years old. Gutsy move for a young church planter, right? Many would have been concerned with establishing themselves as the head honcho amongst the people which means, among other things, keeping the keys to the pulpit. Fortunately for me, Bruce was secure in both his leadership and preaching to let me drive from the moment I arrived in Houston.

Twelve years later and I’m still greatly blessed by his sharing of the pulpit.

I could spend the next few moments sharing the benefits of team teaching, but I’ll leave that for another post. I wanted to simply share something I’ve learned about myself and preaching.

Get comfortable with yourself because you can’t be anyone else. When I began, I regularly found myself being blown away by Bruce’s messages. He truly is a master preacher. His sermons were always well thought out, insightful and the language he used was crafted to perfection. Many times I would find myself saying, “Man, I need to preach more like Bruce preaches.” But, in trying to preach the way Bruce preached, I implemented practices, approaches and styles that not only were hard for me to do, they actually worked against the strengths of who I was in the pulpit. After finding enough frustration down this road, I finally came to grips with the fact that I wasn’t Bruce. I was me. Better yet, God wired me the way I was. I either needed to accept that fact or get used to walking the road of disappointment and disillusionment in preaching.

Now I’m greatly at peace with that fact. Honestly, it’s taken me much longer to get that into my head than I’d like to admit. I can say though, not only am I more content with who I am as a preacher, it has actually freed me up to enjoy God’s work through preaching. It’s even allowed me to acknowledge and embrace my strengths homiletically. And that itself has truly been a grace from God.

Make no mistake. I haven’t “arrived” preaching-wise. There’s still more to learn, grow and do. But thanks to serving in a multiple-teacher church, I realize that in trying to be someone else in the pulpit you are ultimately robbing God, the church and yourself. God made you to be you with all your strengths and weaknesses. That’s good to remember whether you preach with a team or you are the lone ranger at your church. I know in the world of podcasts, downloads and online messages, many a young preacher is exposed to different styles of preachers he admires. However, if he isn’t careful, that healthy admiration in front of the computer can turn into an unhealthy imitation behind the pulpit. This doesn’t mean you can’t learn from other preachers. On the contrary, I think was can and should! Just be careful that you are learning from other preachers to be a better you, not a poorer version of them.

So, when you alight upon the pulpit this Sunday to open up the oracles of God, make sure it’s you who’s preaching.

Converting the Converted

Yancey Arrington — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 02:25:36 +0000

One of the truths in ministry I’ve been reminding myself lately is that I need to be about the business of converting the converted. Granted, I can’t give life to anyone’s heart and enable them to turn to the living Christ. Only God’s Spirit can accomplish that endeavor. But when I speak of converting of the converted, I mean I am to help those who only think they belong to Christ, realize their need for the gospel.

Initially this might appear to be an arrogant assumption. It is true, I cannot see into the heart. I can’t make guarantees for who has or hasn’t genuinely received Christ as God and King. But I am reminded of Christ’s sobering words in Matthew 7:21, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven…” There will be those who think themselves converted by God in Christ only to find out in the end that they were alienated from God and his grace. Dare I say I encounter some of those individuals every week at my church – the ones who see Jesus as another accoutrement to their life, not wanting him but only the gift he gives, ready to abandon him at any moment of discomfort or inconvenience. In the West, it’s hard to pastor churches full of rich young rulers (cf., Lk. 18:18-23).

I’m further reminded of this sad reality when I hear parishioners talk about their confidence in morality as justification for their right standing with God, or how he loves them less when they drop the ball spiritually, or why their religious activity is an indication of their favor with him– and all this while holding big, thick Bibles faded and tattered not from neglect but consistent use. All of it grows my conviction that, especially in the South (i.e., Bible Belt), part of my calling is to convert the converted. What does this mean for a pastor?

Chiefly, I believe it means he should be tireless in the proclamation of the gospel from the pulpit. Like many of my Reformed forebears, I am persuaded that the gospel isn’t just a door we walk through but the room where we live. In other words, Christ crucified doesn’t only show me where eternal life begins but from where (and whom) it continues to flow. Thus, the gospel is for both the unbeliever and believer and should proceed from the pulpit with great regularity. However, I sense neglect from some preachers of gospel-oriented preaching because it may feel remedial for the older believers in the congregation. They’ve heard this before and need something different, something more. My earlier comments notwithstanding, let me encourage you to keep faithfully and consistently reminding your congregants of the gospel from the pulpit if only for the fact that the continual ringing of the grace bell will, over time, be a clarion call finally heard by many of those who already think they’ve received the gospel…but haven’t.

In a world given to a consumer, pseudo-faith called Christianity, Inc., my dear pastor, make it your mission to convert the converted.