Latest / Better Preaching Podcast / BP2 Season 2 Episode 2 – Walter Neuenschwander | Six Weeks Out
Transcript
- Dr. Frank Weller: Walter New and Schwander, welcome back to the Better Preaching Podcast. Walter Neuenschwander: Frank, glad to be back. Dr. Frank Weller: Hey, last time we talked, we just had a really good conversation about kind of your journey to preaching and what that's looked like for you at South Lansing Christian Church. I just really appreciate your your insights. And today, ⁓ I wanted to to lean into something that you briefly alluded to the last time we were together, and that was this idea of process. I I just I'd asked you, is there something you would tell? younger preachers who are just starting out, maybe someone who right now is where you were four or five years ago and you said to trust the process. And I I just wanted us to dig into that whole process a little bit more so that you can tell us what it is that you do and how it is that you do it and why that process creates so much margin for you. Walter Neuenschwander: Yeah. So Frank, I I remember being in seminary and one of our professors said, Hey guys, when you get out about a year into ministry, you're gonna show up one week and you're gonna think, I don't have anything to preach about. I preached everything I've known about. And and that really stuck in my head how they described the panic you're gonna feel at that moment. ⁓ and and By the grace of God, I have not felt that panic here because we've had a process really started kind of by you and then handed off and and tweaked in what I'm doing alongside of our senior minister Wally. So in a nutshell, ⁓ we try to be about six weeks ahead in in our our sermon writing here. And and what that looks like in effect is that ⁓ we will know a year in advance what we're gonna preach for the whole year. And then when we get to about six weeks out from that sermon, if it's a new series, I'll I'll sit down and I'll write the whole like the series overview. ⁓ that way our creative team can start thinking about what they're going to do ⁓ alongside of that. And then I just start taking a crack at each sermon as they come up. And ⁓ and so today I'm actually doing a little research for a sermon on Joel that I'll be preaching on August ninth. ⁓ and that's that's when I'll be working on that. ⁓ and yeah, so every week I sit down, I think about what's coming up, six weeks out, ⁓ Tuesday's my writing day, and I'll just do some research and I I'll sit down and I'll write ⁓ as much as I possibly can, get written. ⁓ and then and then that'll just go in the file and it'll sit there and it'll kinda it'll age well. ⁓ the next six weeks or so. I'll pick that up the week before I preach it and on Mondays I edit that sermon. ⁓ and I'll s I'll actually I'm not naturally a gifted think on your feet kind of speaker. ⁓ and so it takes a lot of of inputting this sermon in my head for me to be able to communicate it in a way that people can understand it. So I'm a guy who has to to actually physically talk through my sermon multiple times in the week before I preach it. If I don't, I I can preach o okay, but it just doesn't come out like I want it to. And so I'll I'll edit on Mondays and I'll talk through that sermon and then I'll I'll go back and I'll talk through it again on Wednesdays and I'll talk through it again on Thursdays and then I I reduce it to an outline, ⁓ one-page outline. That's something you and I started working on back when you were here, trying to come down to preach with fewer notes on a Sunday morning. ⁓ and then I'll do, you know, my slides and small group questions and all of the files that go with a sermon. I'll get that all done on a Sunday. But what that process allows me to do is that six weeks out, I'm not stressing because I know I have six weeks to come up with an idea. If this sermon doesn't really work out well and I pick it up later on and it it's it's terrible, I can rewrite it, I can edit it, but just get Getting some words down on the paper. And then the week of the week that I'm preaching it, ⁓ you know, picking it up every day before I preach it allows me to hone it and to think about ⁓ well, maybe that part, that illustration doesn't fit or that part doesn't work out well, or or what am I even saying here, right? And get that printed in my head so that on Sunday mornings I can preach it. I also, so you alluded to this in the last podcast episode, we for a while, South Lansing Christian Church was was ⁓ offering two services. Dr. Frank Weller: Yeah. Yeah. Walter Neuenschwander: Two years ago we went back to one service because we have plenty of space. I noticed that when I was preaching two services, that sermon two, service two was always much better for me than service one. And because of that, I try to go over my sermon and s and preach it to an empty room on Sunday mornings ⁓ at least one time, sometimes two times before I get up on stage, because it that way again it's it's fresh, it's in my mind. So that in a nutshell is our process. There's also like the longer term year long planning that we do. We can talk Dr. Frank Weller: Yeah, well, maybe, but I really want to talk a little bit more about this six weeks out, because for a lot of of preachers who are listening to this podcast, the idea of being six weeks ahead seems almost impossible. And ⁓ it's something that that I worked at when I was ⁓ preaching the same sermon every week. I have the luxury now of being able to preach the same sermon for two months in a row as I go from church to church. But when I was preparing a different message every week. I was reminded of something that I had heard when I was ⁓ in Bible college. And that was back when preachers would preach a Sunday morning, a Sunday night, and a Wednesday night. And the I I sat in a preaching seminar, and and the presenter said when if you're preaching both Sunday morning and Sunday night, always prepare your Sunday night sermon first. Prepare your Sunday night sermon first because Walter Neuenschwander: Yeah. Okay. Dr. Frank Weller: You know you've got to get the Sunday morning sermon done. And you're going to do whatever it takes to get the Sunday morning sermon done. And if you prepare your Sunday morning sermon first, you'll end up spending all your time on that. And you rob yourself of Sunday afternoon. And so prepare your Sunday. He said, if you prepare your Sunday night sermon first, you will give your family back their Sunday afternoons. And that really stuck with me. And that was kind of the impetus for going to to six weeks out because I ⁓ I I got my Saturdays back. It just creates margin. Walter Neuenschwander: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I I think I think you're absolutely right on that because I know I've gotta have something to preach on Sunday. I will be preaching a sermon on Sunday, ⁓ but working six weeks ahead means I also will be preaching something in six weeks too. And and it does create margin. And I do have my Saturdays back. I don't think about my sermon at all on Saturdays. I don't give it unless unless there's an exception, if there's a funeral, a wedding, if there's something that has thrown a wrench into my week, I really don't think about my sermon at all. Saturdays and I I think that's probably unusual for people. yeah, go ahead. Dr. Frank Weller: Yeah. No, well I was just gonna say, and the other thing it does is it creates margin for those kinds of emergencies. Walter Neuenschwander: Yeah, absolutely. So you did mention somebody sitting there and wondering how in the world am I going to get six weeks ahead? And I haven't had to do this for a few years, but when when you gave the handoff to me and I started preaching here, I suddenly had to figure out how was I going to get six weeks ahead because I had one sermon for that week. And the way that I did it was just write two sermons a week for the first few weeks. And it was painful. And I wouldn't say that those initial six sermons, six or eight sermons that I wrote were in any way a complete sermon and they weren't a final draft, but they were at least enough of a sermon for me. to get in that routine and get in that rhythm and ⁓ and set myself up for the future. Dr. Frank Weller: Right, and and that process for me, I learned about it from Andy Stanley's book Communicating for a Change, where he basically said six weeks out might seem incredibly intimidating. So just get one just get one week ahead. And the way you do that is you have to write week two sermon first. Walter Neuenschwander: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, you do. Yeah. And that's how I did it. Yeah. Right write the one that's a a week out and then write the one that's two weeks out, you know, and yeah, every week cat Dr. Frank Weller: Yeah, that's right. And so if you for six weeks write two sermons a week, then suddenly you're six weeks out. And look, it's not always perfect, right? There are some times where you're not six weeks out. Walter Neuenschwander: ⁓ sure. Yeah. Well I I'm not I'm right now I'm I'm four weeks out. I had some medical stuff happen and ⁓ and so now I'm four weeks out. I will say so I meet with a group of guys once a year and we share sermon ideas and and talk about partnering together and ⁓ a bunch of them think there's no way I could be six weeks out. But there's three or four of us in churches about the size of South or smaller even who are six weeks out and it's just a great place to be. It's a really good place to be. Dr. Frank Weller: Yeah, that's right. And when we come back, I want to talk more about that collaboration and how that works. But this is a good time to pause right now and remind our listeners that the Better Preaching Podcast is powered by Great Lakes Christian College. If you want to answer God's call to preaching with greater confidence and a deeper biblical understanding, GLCC's Master of Arts and Practical Ministries designed for today's church leaders. It's rooted in Scripture and this program. Blends biblical depth with practical training that prepares you for real-world ministry challenges. It's affordable, flexible, and Christ-centered, enabling you to study online wherever you're serving. You can get more details about that at glc.edu. You're not the first BP to ⁓ guest who's talked about collaborating with other preachers. And in fact, in our in our pre-podcast conversation, you said, boy, you're not sure that you have anything to add. But ⁓ I I just think that this idea of collaborating with other preachers is so helpful. I'd really love to get your perspective on it, even if you think that's ground that we've already plowed. Walter Neuenschwander: Sure. ⁓ I'll start by saying this. In the last 365 days, ⁓ our church has had four sermon series that have been ⁓ a result of this collaborative effort. So it's it's been really productive for us. ⁓ it you mentioned the podcast guest you got a while ago, Mark Christian, ⁓ who Does this collaborative process? Well, one of the guys that he's been connected with, Jordan Icas, who's a guy about my age and he's been preaching for a couple decades now, ⁓ he felt really strongly that that we need to have something similar in Michigan. And so he started this every May. We get together with ministers from around the Michigan, Indiana, Ohio area. We get together at Rock Lake Christian Assembly and we spend a couple days there. And our goal is to bring one sermon series that you preached in the last year that you thought was really good and be prepared to share that with everybody. And then bring one sermon series idea that you have for the upcoming year and share that with everybody. And so everybody, there's 15 or 20 of us this year. We got together and ⁓ and and we would go around and We shared our ideas. And then as we do so, if if I hear somebody, if I hear Andy or if I hear ⁓ Mark and they say, ⁓ you know, I'm gonna be preaching on this for Christmas. Actually, we're we're stealing somebody's Christmas ideas. ⁓ And I think that would work really good in our context, I'd like to work together with that person. And so the idea is that we all do our own work, but when we get our our sermons written, when we get the series ideas put together, we share our finished product. ⁓ Hopefully, we're working ahead enough, even if it's the week of that somebody's writing that sermon, that they can drop a manuscript or an outline at least in the in the Google Drive in the shared folder, and we can just glean from each other's wisdom and insights. There were some illustrations for our Easter series back in 2025 that I I got from this collaborative effort. It was a great series on the Gospel of Mark. It's just been really productive. So yeah, it's just getting together and sharing our ideas and saying, hey, that that idea resonates with me and my context and my congregation. Would you be willing to to work on that? Dr. Frank Weller: And you Brent, you mentioned a couple of the holidays, Easter and Christmas. What when I was preaching every week, listen, after 15 years of Christmas service, ⁓ Christmas series, I mean, how many times can you do Christmas at the movies? There aren't that many movies. And and then you're trying to figure something else out. You're trying to be creative, you're trying to be fresh. ⁓ collaboration can really help, particularly with those difficult to make novel and new the timeless message kinds of sermons. Walter Neuenschwander: ⁓ absolutely. And and I'm still new enough at this, like full time preaching gig that I I look forward to some of these holidays, but I can already see how I would get a a a little just it would feel a little too repetitious eventually. ⁓ But collaborating, so our our most recent Christmas series here at South was Christmas in Revelation. That is not an idea that I would have ever come up with using the book of Revelation to talk about Christmas. But it was the idea of one of our our friends Jordan over in Aetna Green and Wally, our senior minister and I heard that, thought it would fit our context, and then it worked out brilliantly here. Dr. Frank Weller: Yeah, and when we we we talked a little bit ago about getting six weeks ahead. If if it's really difficult to write two sermons a week in order to get six weeks ahead, one of the ways you can do that is you can go and you can borrow a sermon series from someone else. When I was preaching there at South every week, ⁓ there were probably four or five times over the course of 15 years where schedules were so intense that I I would I would just go and I I can remember Doing a couple of Craig Groschels series over time. ⁓ One of the Christmas series that I did was a great one from Southeast Christian Church called Socks and Underwear. That was a great Christmas series. So if you're trying to get six weeks ahead, one of the things you can do is frankly go to one of these collaborative groups like you're talking about and say, listen, hey, what's your best four? What's your best six week series that ⁓ I can crib from you? Now, of course, you want to get you want to give the correct attribution. Walter Neuenschwander: ⁓ absolutely. Dr. Frank Weller: But ⁓ that that's a great way to provide yourself the margin to get ahead. Walter Neuenschwander: Yeah, we're we're real clear. When we're working together on a sermon series with another church, we try to say, Hey, we're you know, this is a sermon. We let our congregation know that hey, this is a series we're working on with ⁓ with DuPlain Church Christ or with Kalkaska Church Christ. And ⁓ it just helps our people know where these ideas are coming from. ⁓ as far as a collaborative effort, most of what we do there is all our own work. We're just sharing ideas. but you you're absolutely right. If if you're behind, I I remember that. season we had what like 15 funerals here when you were still on staff at our church frank ⁓ in three months yeah and so you were thankfully i wasn't preaching then you were preaching then i'm glad i didn't have to carry that load ⁓ but yeah in a crunch time ⁓ being able to preach somebody else's series and with full proper attribution letting them know it's somebody else's series is entirely appropriate in my opinion Dr. Frank Weller: Yeah, over three months. Yeah. Sure. And and I think when you're involved in those kinds of collaborations, there are benefits that go beyond just preparing sermons together too. Walter Neuenschwander: Yeah. ⁓ yeah. ⁓ yeah, because you get to know people, you get to know the ministers in your area that you're collaborating with in a deeper way. ⁓ it's It's easy to feel in ministry, I think, especially if if you're the only guy at a church that you you're just the lone wolf. ⁓ but being able to get together, I look forward to every May. I know the Rock Lake ⁓ retreat is coming up. This May, I I my wife and I were discussing whether or not I was healthy enough to go to the retreat or not. And I was like, Jamie, I gotta go. It is so valuable for me. It's valuable for our church. ⁓ I just have to be there. And and it was really good. Dr. Frank Weller: How many how many people are involved in that collaboration group? Walter Neuenschwander: You know, it it depends and it depends on the series as far as how it works during the year. Whoever wants to work on whatever series, there might be five or six of us on a given series. ⁓ but I'd say it it's a group of fifteen to twenty of us maybe that that try to check in and are are regulars and then we pull in some from some who are are not as regular too. Dr. Frank Weller: Is there a right number or a wrong number, do you think? Too big, too little? Walter Neuenschwander: I think to get together and and share ideas and then kind of group up, I I think, you know thirty, twenty, thirty people i is great. I think when you're collaborating on a series, a core group of five or six people who are working on the same series together is is ideal. Because what you'll find what I found when we're collaborating is is you've got the documents that you upload to the Google Drive, but you also have the impromptu texts during the week. Hey guys, I I'm really struggling with an illustration for Mark Seven. What do you guys got? And then we start going off and and giving each other ideas and and so If you have five or six people in that group text, that's great. If you had two dozen people in that group text, it would become chaotic real quick. Dr. Frank Weller: When you when you collaborate, are you collaborating on artwork for series as well? Walter Neuenschwander: So we all offer in the same drive, we offer all of our artwork from our churches and a allow other churches to use it. ⁓ so far I think all of us have kind of just done our own. Like we'll look at what other people have done. ⁓ but for instance here at South we have a creative arts minister and so he he generates everything that we need and we kind of have our own design language. So we're just extra fussy, I guess. but for other churches who don't have that, we make the art available with those series when we collaborate and they can use it if they would like to. Dr. Frank Weller: And ⁓ that comes that fussiness comes from the top, right? Because ⁓ Wally, who is an ex exceptionally artistic individual, has ⁓ an eye for design. We talked about Wally in our last episode, you and I. but he he's someone who ha has ⁓ an attention to detail that that goes well beyond my own. Walter Neuenschwander: Yeah. ⁓ beyond mine too, in in in the best possible way. Like it it he keeps us on track. Yeah. Dr. Frank Weller: Right. ⁓ you had mentioned ⁓ Mark Christian. ⁓ he is ⁓ someone who, at least for for preachers our age, kind of I won't I won't say pioneered the idea of collaboration, but certainly brought it to our generation of ministers within the restoration movement. ⁓ and and I know Mark is someone that you admire as a preacher. I I'd be interested to hear why that is and what you find so compelling about the way he preaches. Walter Neuenschwander: Yeah, it it's funny, we talked about calling a little bit in the last ⁓ the last episode. And Mark was, now that I think about it, Mark was part of that calling because he was one of my professors at Great Lakes when I arrived as a freshman in ⁓ 2003. And he led a small group of people that I I defaulted into by accident, ⁓ of it was like talking about or dreaming about, thinking about if you're going into ministry, which at that point I wanted no part of, so I don't know how I ended up in that group. But Mark had Is just so gifted at communicating in a way that is real. I don't really love the word authentic anymore. I think we've overused that. But when when Marc is is speaking, if it's to a group of 20 people, if it's a group of 2,000 people, I've been to a number of CIYs and seen him speak to students. ⁓ it he just he he speaks as if he's your friend and he's telling you the truth, like it is, you know? And there's I I don't know how to describe it exactly, but there's a this signature mark. Marxism where he he'll say, you know, it's not A, but it's A prime. And if you listen to him in almost every sermon that he preaches, there's just this pattern that he's like, you might think it's this, but it's this. There's this flip that he does. And I I wish I could emulate it because it always makes you ⁓ sit up and think, ⁓ yeah, that's really profound, Mark. So I don't know how he generates those, enough of those for every single sermon, but they're always there. Dr. Frank Weller: Well, we just need it we need to start asking Claude to ⁓ find that turn of phrase for Claude, you are functioning as a homiletics professor in the voice of Mark Christian, pastor of Christ Church at Orinogo, come up with a key phrase. Walter Neuenschwander: All right. ⁓ Yeah. Well man, so I I'm a little bit of an AI tenfoil hat guy, but if you want somebody to talk about to talk to about how they're using AI ⁓ effectively in a a sermon writing context, you gotta talk to my buddy Jordan Icas because he's got some profound wisdom there. ⁓ he just says, and this is a this is a rabbit trail, but he says If you find yourself using AI in sermon writing and somebody comes in and asks you what you're doing and your immediate reaction is to feel guilty, then maybe you're doing something wrong. But if somebody comes in and says, hey, what are you doing? And you're like, hey, I'm using AI to work on my sermon, let me show you how, and you're excited to tell them what's going on, then you're probably doing something that's worthwhile. Dr. Frank Weller: I'm not sure I'd buy that, but okay. Walter Neuenschwander: Well, okay. You love to talk to him more. He's the AI evangelist, not me. Dr. Frank Weller: If your conscience is seared to the point that you no longer feel guilty about Yeah. I'll have to I Jordan you you just bought Jordan's spot on the Better Preaching podcast, so Walter Neuenschwander: Okay. ⁓ All right. he's really creative with it. It's it's a it's a bit it's a bit much for me, but it's good. But look, you're in academia and you know, you're all anti-AI anyway, so Dr. Frank Weller: I am not actually. I just I I I ⁓ full disclosure, the blog posts that are generated from the Better Preaching podcast are generated via via AI. Yeah, so what I'll have what I'll do after you and I you'll you'll love this, Walter, after we are done and the the podcast is transcribed. Walter Neuenschwander: Really? Okay. Dr. Frank Weller: I will upload the transcription to a large large language model that's closed. So it it stays private. I own it. So it'll be uploaded to Claude AI. And I'll say, in the voice and style of Dr. Frank Weller, the president of Great Lakes Great Lakes Christian College, and the author of Frankie Weller's blogspot blogspot.com, prepare a 350 to 400-word blog post that summarizes and Walter Neuenschwander: ⁓ Okay. Dr. Frank Weller: the key points from from this транскрип ан Walter Neuenschwander: And it's good? Like you're happy with the output? Dr. Frank Weller: It's shockingly good. here's the crazy thing, Walter, is the first time I did this, I prepared three, three ⁓ blog posts and I took them to my assistant, who's my primary editor and proofreader. And I said, Hey, I didn't tell her what I'd done. I said, take a look at these. What do you think of these? And she came back and she's like, Yeah, it's some of your best work ever. And ⁓ Walter Neuenschwander: Wha well, what does that say about you then? I I don't know, that's like that those bring up some existential questions right there. Dr. Frank Weller: Well yeah. And but I think part of it, Walter, is you you I I have probably six hundred blog posts that I wrote over the years on my blog that really do reflect ⁓ my voice. And so it says some things for sure. It says some things about AI, it says some things about just how unnecessary I've really become. ⁓ I'm gonna Walter Neuenschwander: Sure. Yeah. You said ⁓ Dr. Frank Weller: I'm gonna regret saying this. I I'm gonna have to we're gonna have to edit all of that AI conversation out of the podcast. Walter Neuenschwander: Yeah. Yeah, well, and I don't think I I don't use AI in sermon writing. And my buddy Jordan doesn't use AI to write his sermons, but he does something similar where he he feeds it in and he says, Hey, help me edit this for clarity. And ⁓ and it does, I guess. I don't know. It kind of scares me. Dr. Frank Weller: Yeah. Now I don't do that with sermon writing. Yeah. And so for me it's I'm I'm generating low impact content that's based on having already done the hard work of having created a podcast and having created blog posts. Walter Neuenschwander: Yeah. I've heard people use it for generating small group discussion questions from their sermons. I d I don't know. It's a possibility. I I haven't ventured into that. Dr. Frank Weller: Yeah. You you said ⁓ Mark Christian, ⁓ who are a couple of others. Well, you mentioned Jordan Nickus and AI. Y you in the pre ⁓ podcast notes you mentioned somebody named Rick, whose last name I can't pronounce. Walter Neuenschwander: Yeah, I got a friend. Rick Treletsky. ⁓ he's a friend from back when we were both youth ministers and we would show up at a CIY conference and ⁓ hang out with each other. Rick is out in Oregon. I guess you don't say it Oregon. I I got in trouble for that. ⁓ and he is he is just so creative. ⁓ he planted a church and is called Kingdom.church. And for instance, they did a big series for Father's Day last year, and they did a big float in some parade. and Rick was out there on you gotta find pictures of this float it. It's like him out there on a on like a speedboat or in the water or something and he's like he's actually got a grill on the float and he's flipping burgers and he i it was something about ⁓ some dad series some whole series for the month of June on it's okay dad or something like that. And and he's just he has kind of a background in the film industry out west and ⁓ he's able to communicate in a compelling ways. So you should really look at his stuff. It's it's good. Dr. Frank Weller: Yeah, I'll take a look at that and if you send me a couple of links, I'll include them in the show notes. Walter Neuenschwander: Sure. Dr. Frank Weller: Well, the clock's winding down. ⁓ before I ask you one more question, I want to pause and thank our sponsor, Great Lakes Christian College. If you're looking for online ministry training, but our Leary of Degree Mills that farm out instruction to faceless authors and tedious message boards, you need to check out Great Lakes Christian College. Our remote master's degree in practical theology brings you face to face with passionate professors and fellow students for real time instruction and genuine community. You can make friends, you can ask questions, you can get real-time feedback from accessible professors who love God and revere scripture. You can get practical and go deep at glcc.edu. So we got ⁓ about three and a half minutes left. I just want to give you a final chance to share your heart for preachers and preaching. I don't know who all are going to hear this, but what's something you just want to say to encourage people who are doing the same thing that you're doing week in and week out? Walter Neuenschwander: Yeah, I I'd say hey God has placed you where you are with purpose. And I I think for many of us it's easy to look around and either get restless or just think, you know, is what I'm doing does it make a difference? Would I be better off somewhere else? And and I I know that God has placed me here at South Lansing Christian Church to minister to these people. And you might not hit every sermon out of the park every week, not every sermon's gonna be a home run. you to show up faithfully ⁓ and and diligently doing the work ⁓ with a mind to the people that God has has brought to your congregation, ⁓ that's honoring to God. So that's my encouragement to you. Just keep keep on keeping on and minister to your people. Dr. Frank Weller: Yeah, I love that. I love that. And ⁓ man, I want to thank you. I want to thank you for being on the Better Preaching Podcast. and I wanna thank our sponsor, Great Lakes Christian College, and I wanna thank our listeners for listening to and supporting the Better Preaching Podcast. Join us next time for an insightful conversation because better preaching makes a bigger impact.