Preaching is a big part of ordained ministry. In their ordination, Anglican priests are instructed by a bishop to “preach the Word of God and to administer the Holy Sacraments.” In many parishes, it’s taken for granted that the rector will preach almost every Sunday.

But that’s not how it is at Church of the Savior, a C4SO parish in Wheaton, Illinois. Rev. Kevin Miller intentionally trains people at Church of the Savior to preach, and then gives them opportunities to do so during their Sunday worship services. In fact, when the church was in the process of calling Kevin as their new rector, he told them that he would never preach less than 51% of the time, and never more than 75% of the time, and that he would be training members of the parish to preach.

WHY BUILD A PREACHING TEAM?

When asked why he takes the approach of building a preaching team, rather than doing most of it himself, he mentioned that there are approximately 56 preaching opportunities per year in a typical Anglican parish: 52 Sundays, plus Christmas Eve, Ash Wednesday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and maybe even an Easter Vigil… “When I point this out,” Kevin said, “Most parish priests realize that they don’t actually want to have to prepare and preach 56 sermons every year. Plus you’ll want to go on a vacation.”

So the first reason to build a preaching team is that it helps the rector. In addition to the need for rest, there are other duties that a rector needs to give attention to: a study week, a major leadership project, a prayer retreat, a new parish initiative, or maybe just a backlog of unanswered emails! If the rector preaches every week, those other good things may not happen.

A second reason to build a preaching team is that it helps the people who become part of the preaching team. Kevin says the people on the preaching team should be people who are already in the parish. Learning to preach helps these people grow. Whether they’re a seminary student, church planter, small group leader, or vestry member, spending 10-20 hours in prayer and study helps them grow spiritually. “They’re going to be agonizing in prayer, I guarantee it!” Kevin said.

A third reason to build a preaching, Kevin says, is that it helps the church. Every preacher has certain “life-themes”: particular passions and emphases that come through their ministry over time. “That’s great,” Kevin said, “But the rector doesn’t have all the life themes people need. For example, it’s hard for me to impart evangelism into my church, because I’m not particularly gifted in that way. I’m more of a shepherd/teacher. I can preach on evangelism, but it will be richer coming from someone who has evangelism as a life theme.

“Also, in my particular parish, if I preach all the time, my parish never hears from the feminine voice. In our parish, women have liberty in the Gospel to lead and teach in the local assembly. That’s one of the reasons we’re in C4SO. If I’m not in the pulpit, I typically give it to the women leaders in my church. Which is a gift to the women in my church, because for one week at least they won’t have to to translate my sports metaphors into something that makes sense for them.

“For example, after Erin, our music minister, preached on her toddler driving her to exasperation and how God was meeting her in that place, a woman came up to me after the sermon with tears in her eyes. She said ‘I’ve never heard someone in the pulpit who has the same life I have. As Erin was preaching, my life was laid bare before God, and now I have hope. I’m not the worst mother in the world, and I can meet God in those hard places now.”

Another way building a preaching team helps the church is that it makes the parish less dependent on the ministry of one particular person. “I want to build up this parish so that she is stronger than when I leave her,” Kevin said, “If she’s utterly dependent on me, I haven’t left her stronger. In fact, I’ve potentially left her in a weak spot. I want the church to know she can live without the ministry of Kevin Miller. She’s bigger than me, bigger than my preaching, she has a call in God, and God will provide the leaders she needs. She’ll be less anxious and stronger if there are multiple people who can stand up and preach an exegetically sound, pastorally faithful, prayerfully anointed message from the Word of God.”

HOW TO BUILD A PREACHING TEAM FROM PEOPLE ALREADY IN YOUR CHURCH

If you want to build a preaching team at your church, the first step is to cast some vision for it in the congregation. As mentioned earlier, prior to Kevin’s call to Church of the Savior, he told the search committee that if they called him, he would be training a preaching team. “They were on board, of course, which is why they ended up calling me,” Kevin said, “But I do have to reinforce the vision. I put it in a blog post on our website and in our church newsletter. Also, in private conversations, I tell people that I’m not doing this to get a week of (although that is nice), but to make sure the church is hearing from other voices, and for the raising up of new leaders in our church.”

“I did have a fear that people would think I’m doing this because I’m lazy,” Kevin said, “But so far the response I mostly get is ‘Wow, you’re not a control freak! You’re willing to give up your pulpit to other people!’”

There is also internal work a rector needs to do to build a preaching team. A common fear for rectors or senior pastors is “What if someone else preaches and they knock it out of the park? Will people think less of me? Will they not want me to preach anymore?”

Kevin said that this has happened to him. “I asked one of our vestry members to preach, because I had intuited that she’d be a great preacher, even though she’d never preached before. I walked her through what I look for in a sermon, I coached her, and when it came time for her to preach, she crushed it! She did so well, and I was sitting there in the front row listening to her preach and I remember I actually felt envious, because I remember very well my first sermon and it was nowhere near as good as hers. Thankfully, I was able to recognize my envy in the moment and turn it over to the Lord, so I could return to listening to her message.

“Afterward I thanked her for her amazing sermon, and told her, ‘You have an unusual gift, and a responsibility to steward it.’ And do you know what she said to me? ‘I have no idea how you do this every week.’ I thought her awesome preaching would put me in a bad place, but actually there was a recognition that this is not as easy as it looks.”

“Plus, any week I’m not preaching, it’s not that I’m really ‘taking the week off,’ anyway. I’m actually spending part of that week coaching the person who’s going to preach, helping them clarify what’s the big idea of their sermon, what’s the practical application, where are you taking this, what’s your lead, how are you creating urgency… I have a coaching session with them before their sermon, and then afterward I talk with them and give them lots of positive feedback, these are the things I thought were great, and here are the areas I think you could grow.”

*DEFINE WHAT YOU WANT IN A SERMON*

After casting vision and paying attention to any insecurities you need to work through, the next step is to define what you want and expect in a sermon. You’ll be a better coach if you define the essential elements of a sermon, and then let people have wide space and latitude within that framework to find their own voice.

“With that in mind,” Kevin said, “I developed five qualities I want to see in a sermon. I communicate these in a training seminar that I offer. It’s open to everyone in the church (but attending doesn’t mean you’ll necessarily get to preach). This seminar is my training ground for future preachers. In it, I teach through the five qualities I look for in a sermon: biblical, clear, prayerful, applied, and passionate. I tell our preachers, “If you bring a message that’s those five things, I don’t care who you sound like, but you have to have these five things if you want me to be excited about your sermon.

“I do the training seminar, give them some resources, and do a coaching call with them before their sermon. During that call, the first thing I want to do is clarify the ‘big idea’ of the sermon. What is your one core animating idea that will drive everything. Most people want to put in 3-4 ideas in their sermon. I’m always bringing people back to the one idea. Then I work with them on pastoral application. Again, I’m typically trying to bring people back to just one thing, and that one application is typically rooted in what you are doing in response to this message. Invite people to do the thing you’re doing to apply it.

“The last thing I work on in the coaching session is their opening. How do you create urgency in your hearers? Are you giving them a good reason to listen? What’s at stake for them in this message? Really, a lot of what I do on the coaching call is give encouragement, because by that time they’re usually thinking, ‘OMG what did I sign up for? I’m going to bomb this sermon and I’ll never be asked to do this again!’ I can’t promise they’ll be asked to preach again if it’s their first time, but I tell them ‘You have a teaching gift, that’s why I’ve asked you to do this. You’re going to be a blessing to our church by doing this, and I’m going to be your supporter, and your pastor, and your friend, no matter how this goes. You’re going to be fine. God’s still going to love you and you’ll be fine.’

“Then I do a coaching call afterward. Before they do their sermon, I send them a document with ‘Post-Sermon Questions’ on it so they know how I’m thinking about investing in them. I don’t have the follow-up coaching call right after the service or even on Monday when they’re still adrenaline-dropped and wondering why they did this, and all the demons of hell are telling them they messed up. I talk to them Tuesday or Wednesday, and again the call is mostly positive: Here’s what was good, etc. Then a little bit of constructive feedback, where I say, ‘Let me invest in your future effectiveness as a preacher…’”

*WHAT TO LOOK FOR IN PEOPLE WHO MIGHT BE GIFTED TO PREACH?*

When asked how he identifies people who might be gifted to preach, Kevin said, “I look for a teaching gift. In our context if we’re doing a meeting of some kind, and someone does a devotional beforehand, for example, I look for fruitfulness there: Does the Word of God become present to people when they lead a devotional? That’s a sign of a preaching gift.

“Another way I find them is through a Preaching Lab, which we do one month after the training seminar. In the Preaching Lab, every participant preaches a five-minute sermon from a lectionary Gospel text, and every other participant gives positive feedback. Then I give some constructive feedback to help them grow. At the end of a Preaching Lab, I have a pretty good idea of who’s gifted to do this. I also try to schedule people to preach that I want to be seen visibly as leaders in our church: new staff members or vestry members, etc.”

*GIVE PEOPLE SAFE SPACES TO TRY IT OUT*

Kevin also noted that you need to offer new preachers safe spaces to try out their gift, where failure is OK and they don’t have to hit a home run on their first try. For Church of the Savior, these spaces are meetings like staff meetings, vestry meetings, morning prayer, and the Preaching Lab. And because their church is smaller, there isn’t a tremendous amount of pressure associated with preaching on a Sunday morning.

“One factor to think about is church size,” Kevin said. “If you have a large church, it’s much harder to put someone up there in rector’s place. There are probably a very small number of people in a church of 700 who have a preaching gift that has matured to the point that is works well for 700 people. In a smaller sized church, say 90-100 people, a larger percentage of the people will have a preaching gift that has matured to the point that it can work well for that size community.

“So the challenge in a larger church is that it’s harder to get people to the point where they can replace you on Sunday morning, but the opportunity of a larger church is that it typically has many more spaces to develop people, to give them a chance to try out a preaching gift on a smaller scale. There’s a much larger ‘farm system,’ in other words. So by the time you do put them up on a Sunday morning, you’ll have already heard them in front of 70 people and 170 people.”

THE SERMON ISN’T EVERYTHING

Thankfully in an Anglican church, everything isn’t riding on the quality of the sermon. Kevin gave a final word of encouragement: “Having the liturgy means that even if the sermon isn’t that great, the Gospel is preached in the Eucharistic canon, there’s a confession of sin, there’s a Gloria, etc. People are going to meet the Lord and it’s going to be OK.”

RESOURCES

Click the links below to download some free resources on building a preaching team:

Church of the Savior resources:

Other resources:

The Rev. Kevin Miller is the rector at Church of the Savior in Wheaton, IL and co-founder of PreachingToday.com and CTPastors.com.