Latest / Better Preaching Podcast / BP2 Season 1 Episode 9 – Don Wilson | Content & Connection
Transcript
- Frank Weller: Don Wilson. Welcome back to the better preaching podcast. Donald J Wilson: I'm honored to be here, Frank. Frank Weller: Thanks. I want to dive right in and understand your sermon preparation rhythm. Walk us through how you prepared and delivered sermons kind of from conception all the way through to delivery. Donald J Wilson: I was an avid reader, so I would try to read a book a week, and then I would read, like I say, ⁓ USA Today cover to cover and Wall Street Journal cover to cover. That was, I did not listen to hardly any podcasts, but I read a lot. I think one thing that ⁓ I probably tried to work in sermon series back then, ⁓ in the middle of my time at CCB that became a bigger issue of trying to do sermon series and if I think back, I think one reason we did sermon series, we got a research one time that said people come to church 1.6 times a month. And so we said, wow, if we do a three or four part series, we'll be able to captivate their attention and we'll be able to keep them all four weeks. ⁓ Well, everybody's still doing short sermon series, but I believe that no longer is true. they can watch online or anything. that doesn't hold true like it did when we started a sermon series. So anyway, so to prepare a sermon, I basically had a series or I knew where I was going and I could read ahead of time and drop articles, thoughts, something out of a commentary and drop it into slots literally three or four weeks ahead. ⁓ My sermon preparation normally was I would I would have my staff meetings earlier in the week and then I would start midweek, excuse me, of doing like blocking out a whole day, day and a half doing nothing but trying to craft a sermon. I tended to write them out in outline form. I mean in ⁓ full form, but I preached more from an outline, but I wrote it out word for word. And then on Saturday morning. So I would be through by, let's say Thursday night, or I might come back in Friday morning. So I would work part of Wednesday, all day Thursday and part of Friday. And then one thing I would always do, I would come in early on Saturday morning and go over my sermon out loud at least two times. And I found out that the way I wrote it versus the way I would speak it was different. And so if you'd look at my outline when I got to preach on Sunday, it would look like ⁓ an artist's rendition of ⁓ throwing paint everywhere because I had changed from the way it sounded in delivering it versus how I was writing it. So that was kind of what I did. So then when I got up to preach, let's say at one of my Saturday night services, I had already gone through it that day, two, sometimes three times. So I was very comfortable with the content. And even though it was written out almost word for word, as I delivered it, nobody really knew all of all those years that I had almost a manuscript in front of me. Okay. ⁓ so that was pretty much my preparation. Frank Weller: because you multiple services, did you sometimes make revisions between services where you'd say, hey, you know, that landed or didn't land. I want to do that less, do more of that. Did you make changes kind of throughout the weekend? Donald J Wilson: Only after the first. What I would do, which I found out I was doing that for years, I love critique. That's the only way I get better. I find most pastors are pretty insecure with their sermon. So if you critique them, they have a hard time with that. Literally, I would walk off the stage after the four o'clock Saturday night service and I'd have four or five people walk right in behind me and we would take 10 minutes and they could beat my sermon up. They could say, that joke didn't work. that illustration was good, why did you do this? Why did you say that that way? And so I would take all that input and it was up to me to determine what changes from their input that I wanted to make. But I'd only do that after the first ⁓ service. Now my wife who was sweet and listened to me preach all the time, many times multiple services in the same weekend, she would say, honey, I noticed that sometimes when you're telling a joke or a story, you catch more fish or the fish gets a little bigger on the fourth service than the first service. So she would always be after me because I found that sometimes if the congregation liked it, I had to watch myself because I'd add a little more to it because if the first service loved that, boy, I can make that a little better. And I was honest, I had to watch that. But she was really good of encouraging me, but keeping me accountable for that. But the critique really helped me. And then that next week when I would take that unchurched man out to play golf or buy us lunch. And what I would say to him, what did you get out of my message that related to what, what are some things that I could be more effective in relating to you? Okay. So, ⁓ and then I did something, I don't know whether you want this now or not, but I did something totally different. When we went into our bigger auditorium and started preaching online, I hired a professional speech coach to come in and be at my service and tape everything. And then I had to sit down with them afterwards and they said to me, do you realize what you're doing? You're still preaching as if you're looking people eye in the eye, you're not really effectively preaching and looking at the camera. And so they were able to give some feedback there that that preaching to a live audience versus a camera is different. And I would say my teaching team, they preferred speaking to the camera. I didn't like that. still would rather look people in the eye, even in a large audience, I can look out and see their ⁓ reaction. I intentionally, when I would preach, I would probably pick out a half a dozen men spotted in the congregation in different ways. Probably four were guys that had been in our church and I knew them. Probably two were totally unchurched. And as I'm preaching, I can literally look out and watch their reaction to what I'm doing. they, especially the Unchurch guys would let me know three or four minutes in, are they with me or have I lost them? And that helped me to try to connect better instead of here's my 30 minute sermon and hope you like it. Okay, that I give you more than you wanted there, but that's how I started preparing sermons and some of the things I did. Frank Weller: No, really. mean, what I hear you saying. Yeah, that's helpful. And what I hear you saying is something I heard recently, you know, we're taking this podcast while the NCAA tournament is taking place. heard I heard a commentator say this week that winners want to be coached. They're not afraid to be coached. They're not afraid of hard coaching. They welcome coaching. And it sounds like I mean, you're an old athlete. sounds like you're not afraid to be coached. In fact, you sought it out. Donald J Wilson: I grew up that way. I was in 4H and I got more critique in 4H than anything. Plus my father, I'm the youngest of four boys and a sister. After every sporting event, my brothers were great athletes. We'd come home and sit around the kitchen table and replay the game. And his idea was, ⁓ you made one mistake, that's okay. Just don't make it twice. I mean, at 75 years old when he'd come out from Kansas to visit my church. I knew riding home, he's going to critique me, whether anybody else did or not. So I've always valued that because that's the only way that I think you get better. And my experience in working with a lot of pastors, I worked with about 500 pastors after I left CCV. A lot of them say they want critique and help, but then when you ask them why they're doing things and critique them, most of them really don't like critique when you really get right down to it. So anyway, that's why I was raised. One thing, go ahead. Frank Weller: Yeah, we have that. We have that in common, right? The 4-H, mean, you grew up on a farm, I grew up on a farm. I like to say that the farm isn't always a great place to be, but it's a great place to be from because you just learn. I learned a lot that I was able to carry into ministry, hard work, perseverance, creativity, figuring it out when you don't have a solution. There's a lot there that I don't know. I feel like if we could send every intern for a three month visit to a dairy farm, they'd probably be better off for it. Donald J Wilson: Yeah, you know, I mean, I, it definitely, it definitely shaped me. mean, literally how many times I usually preached always at least 45 weeks a year. I never had a teaching team until the last four or five years. And, um, so I would preach 45 times. Uh, people would say, well, did you do one or two services live? Like I said, at one time when we were growing rapidly in a smaller facility, I preached three times on Saturday and three times on Sunday live. That's unheard of, you know? And so my work ethic was strong because of ⁓ my farming upbringing. I talked to a lot of people today and I think preachers would be surprised if they would get honest feedback and they won't if they ask people, so they got to ask somebody else. But I today will visit churches and I will even ask elders of the teaching team, which one do you like better? and it's always divided. And that to me, because most of the young guys I know, they don't preach over 30 weeks and they take a study break every year and do all that. I never had that stuff. So to me, the danger of a teaching team, you as the senior pastor might think you're the favorite communicator, but if you would really pull your people, you might find out that you might be perceived as a leader, but somebody else is perceived as a better communicator. Which that, or that you say, what's wrong with that? Well, what's wrong with that is if one is a know communicator, one's a do communicator, and one's a feel communicator, over time, you're going to divide your congregation, whether you realize it or not, I believe you got, you have to really watch that. So we had critique for our teaching team as well. So when I wasn't preaching, and I was there, the same people would walk in and critique the teaching team so that we would be more consistent in how we're trying to relate to the community of people we're speaking to. Frank Weller: You were preaching to 25,000 people a week when you retired. Now Ashley is preaching to 50,000. know, interesting in our last podcast, we talked about Christmas Eve. was at CCV on the 23rd, December 23rd last Christmas for one of their first services. And Ashley said they were going to have a hundred thousand people there that week, which is just extraordinary. I mean, I just mentioned this because One of the stereotypes of the megachurch, I think is sometimes fairly applied, but oftentimes unfairly applied is that the preaching gets watered down in order to draw a crowd. But that wasn't the case at CCV, was it? Donald J Wilson: No, I mean, I think after they would come, not unchurched people, but many church people would say, wow, we've been told you guys are small on the gospel weak but you, because I was very, I say confrontive. I'm not afraid to challenge people to move from a consumer to contributor. And I think ⁓ the danger of the mega church today is We've got to be careful. I hear a lot of talk about baptism. I hear almost no talk on repentance. And so if we're not careful, we're not really getting conversions. We're just baptizing people that used to go to the Lutheran Church or another assembly of God or whatever. And we're really not having ⁓ conversion growth. We're having transfer growth because we're not preaching ⁓ repentance. And if you don't repent to me, there's not transformation cannot take place. Wilson for to my opinion okay. ⁓ One thing that really probably change for me the last few years is like I said I I'm I'm more of a coach I get energized more by ⁓ delivering the sermon but working with my team than I do sermon preparation sermon preparation was tough for me I mean I put a lot of reading a lot of time of how can I make this ⁓ word Smith right. And so I would have my staff meeting usually Tuesday or Wednesday morning. Well, I didn't start working on my sermon to put it all together. I mean, I'd read and everything until after my staff meeting. So while I'm in my staff meeting or while I'm working with my team, I'm worried about my sermon. My excuse me, my son-in-law came to me and he said, well, why don't you do your sermon preparation at the beginning of the week? Then when you do your staff meeting, you're basically done. And I go, I'm not sure after preaching six times on Saturday and Sunday I want to come right back early Monday morning and start cranking on another sermon but I said I'm gonna try it and I want you to know that was a home run for me because then I had that sermon started Monday morning blocked out the whole day and most of Tuesday well and so my outline because I used outlines in that we printed and people filled in the blanks and so literally what happened when i got ready to have my staff meeting wednesday morning i was relaxed because i knew my sermon was almost done and then i could take thursday after staff and if i had to come back and work on my sermon i could or i could have that as a free day to kind of do whatever i want so that i wish i would have done that earlier in my ministry was what he shared with me so getting my sermon out of the way earlier in the week and then do my leadership and and working with the staff because i was an outlier. I did not have an executive team or an executive pastor until we were 10,000 because I loved working with a team leadership. Frank Weller: Yeah. And what, and what I've discovered is if you, if you, if you put your sermon off past Wednesday, all you're doing is inviting your margin to be squeezed because there's something that's going to come up on Wednesday. There's someone who's going to pass away and you're to have a funeral on Thursday or Friday. And then you end up cheating your family out of Saturday because you know, you've pushed it off down the road, down the road, down the road. And so I'd I discovered the same thing that you did, which is get it done early so that you've built some margin into your schedule to accommodate those unexpected things that come up and you make sure you're not cheating your family out of the time that they rightly deserve later in the week. Donald J Wilson: Yeah, boy, I agree with you, Frank. Now, I coached my son in soccer and sports, so youth sports today is unreal, but it wasn't quite as bad then, but we still had soccer games on Saturday, so I was involved in that. ⁓ Probably one of my blessings is my wife, because being a farm boy, I've never worked 40 hours a week in ministry in 35, 50 years. I would be closer to 60 hours a week. but she never complained. She supported me. She was involved in ministry. If I would have had a wife that would have said, no, you can only work 40 hours a week, I would have been in trouble. Now, I tried to prioritize time with her and we sat down and talked about my schedule. And if I got out of whack, she would tell me and I'd have to make some adjustments. But I never worked just 40 hours. I always worked. Well, when you preach six times and you add that into your week and you don't have an executive pastor, yeah, you can see I put in a lot of hours, but it's because I had a great wife, great wife. Frank Weller: Let me pause for just a moment here. I want to recognize our sponsor, Great Lakes Christian College. GLCC provides authentic Christianity, excellent academics and affordability. Students are spiritually formed by world-class professors who care more about, who care rather about more than just their performance in the classroom. As one of the most affordable private Christian colleges in America, students can graduate without crushing student loans. And that enables them to follow God's calling on their lives without being financially hobbled. If you're ready to become the best version of who God created you to be, go to www.glcc.edu for more details. Don, two of the goals of the Better Preaching podcast are to elevate preaching and inspire the next generation of preachers. What are some of the early habits? You already mentioned that you made a shift at some point in your ministry where you moved from focusing on sermon preparation in the middle of the week to focusing on it earlier in the week. But what are some of the early habits that you developed as a young preacher that you think were key to your success? And maybe you would encourage younger preachers to focus on as they build the disciplines that are necessary for their success. Donald J Wilson: Wow, that's an interesting question. I'm so old, I'd have to think back a long time to figure that out. ⁓ I think, yeah, okay. Frank Weller: Let me ask it another way. So let me ask it another way. We say that those early trails that we follow lead to ruts. And so we're developing habits, good or bad, whether we intend to or not, just because we typically follow the same well-worn path. Are there disciplines that you developed early on that you think served you well as you grew into preaching? Donald J Wilson: Wow, okay, a lot of it was my reading that I mentioned, okay? ⁓ The danger of that, when you read sermons through books and everything, you're right. You have to be careful of the plagiarism because if you don't do your preparation enough ahead of time, ⁓ it's really not coming through the Holy Spirit working through you. You're working on what somebody else ⁓ taught. So I would say ⁓ I didn't. Had served I had few years of Greek, but I never used Greek hardly at all in my sermon I'm amazed today the number of pastors that say the Greek word says and they don't have a clue They haven't had one hardly but one course in Greek, you know, in other words, they're just reading the commentary or whatever I read a lot of commentaries a lot of books. So I would say During the week there was a lot of prep time but it wasn't probably in. ⁓ I didn't see that. Frank Weller: You know, I love what you're saying there because I, ⁓ I, I would have people ask me how much time to use, how much time do you spend preparing for your sermon? And my answer was always all of it. Everything is sermon preparation, right? Because, know, something you read and experience you had a conversation in which you engaged. I just felt like all of it was sermon preparation. And, because at some point I would find Donald J Wilson: Okay, that's Frank Weller: God was using an experience that would end up finding its way into a sermon or at least provided some of the background that even if it wasn't expressly referred to in a message, you know, provided some substantial background for whatever it was I happened to be preaching. Donald J Wilson: That boy that is I agree with you 100 % Frank and that's why like you say I read incessantly. I was always looking reading and then I would try to have conversations with as many men in our church elders key key businessmen or an unchurched man. I'm trying to interact with him during the week and a lot of times that conversation would give me insights into what I was getting ready to preach that I probably. wasn't planning on, but if I can get one or two little nuggets from a businessman or a man that I'm talking to, I found out that that could be one of my greatest connections that I couldn't find in a book or I couldn't find in stories like that. Another thing that I would like to throw out, maybe this is different, I think what preachers are missing today when I visit a lot of churches, to my experience, most pastors are introverted. You would think they're extroverted because they walk out on stage and they really got energy and connection, but the idea of having a, you know, the room that you go to after walk off stage and be there and sit there, that was unheard of in all of my life growing up. I am unusual. Yeah, I'm unusual that I'm energized by people. So people would say, I can't believe Frank Weller: Mm-hmm. Yeah, the green room. Donald J Wilson: that I came to church of 25,000, six services, four services, and I met you. That blows me away. And so I think the danger today is you might think you're the pastor, but you're just a public speaker. Because I did weddings, I did funerals, I went to high school sporting events to meet them. And I found out where I connected with people is through those life events. And I think today where a lot of preachers miss it, and they're just a talking head is because if all you do is preach and you go home and you study and you don't make hospital calls, you don't do funerals, you don't do those events, ⁓ you're not connecting with the people. They don't see you as their pastor, even though they call you pastor, they see you as their ⁓ communicator, so to speak. so I would encourage pastors in preaching What makes your preaching, what gives my preaching life was the interaction I had in between services, that sort of thing, because they would say things off the cuff. My men would give me a hard time when I preached. And so I knew that they would be honest with me. And sometimes that off the cuff comment would be incredibly helpful for me to be a better communicator moving forward. Okay. And I would never get that. if I just preach and went to my green room and went back to preaching again. Frank Weller: And that culture still exists at CCV. When I was there last Christmas, ⁓ I left the auditorium and headed back out to the parking lot and Ashley was standing there just visiting with folks out in the patio or what you call that courtyard, I guess. So that still happens today. Don, let me ask you this. Let's say we've gathered every preaching graduate from all of our independent Christian church, Church of Christ colleges in one room. You know, they graduated in May and we're going to pull them all together in one room in June and Don Wilson is going to talk to them and give them sage advice from his 45 plus years of preaching. You know, what's that advice that you give those young guys? Donald J Wilson: Well, the first one would be, believe COVID changed everything. I believe before COVID, you pretty much went to the church for content, the preacher. But after COVID, during COVID, you could stay home and watch it online. Now so many watch sermons online with your church or with others, because with youth club sports now, that's almost a demonic to me. ⁓ people are gone every weekend with their kids for months and they don't come to your church except when they're not having other conflicts. So I would say today content is still important, but I believe connection. I feel that because of ⁓ video, I'm finding two groups of people are starving for connection. It's the twenties and thirties, but also it's the retirement age. They are likewise. So So you've got to figure out in your preaching, how are your content is good, but what about your connection? The second thing that I've noticed today, I would say, and I'll throw this number out and I could be out to lunch, so forgive me. I would say three fourths of the Christian church, Church of Christ preachers do not have restoration theology in their preaching. And so I would probably, if I was meeting with them, I would have a few, several minutes sitting down to say, what do you believe about it, the inerrancy of scripture? What do you believe about baptism as a part of salvation? Are you a Calvinist? you an artist? Tell me your theological background, because I think most people, because I think most churches, preachers aren't confident in their theology and they're listening to people. that are Calvinists and everything else and buying into their sermons and their ideas. I think that most of the people sitting in our pews today do not have a clue what the restoration movement is, which was a lot different when I grew up and when I started in ministry. In fact, my staff every year, I would take them through the basic founders of the restoration movement. Here's who we are. Here's how we're different. for all of my staff because all of my, most of my staff as we became a mega church was not from Bible college. They were hired from within. So ⁓ that scares me moving forward with the restoration movement. I think most of our people in our restoration churches do not know what the restoration movement is at all. So I talk about that. would talk about, I would talk about, I would talk about connection, but I would also say, who do you have that's given you critique? Frank Weller: I agree. Yep. Donald J Wilson: Are you bringing in somebody that person that I talked to you even after I use the video person? I had a person come in and talk to all our teaching team about being better speakers. And one thing she said I had never heard in my life. She said most people they move their arms too much. What is your go to place with your arms? Do you put it in your pocket? Do you hold on to the Bible? Do you move your arms all the time? What are you doing? I had never heard that. I would say again, theology, are you guys solid in what you believe? Secondly, how are you connecting with your people? Thirdly, what critique are you getting? Because the young guys that come out of Bible college and become on a teaching team and then immediately get hired to a mega church to be the teaching or the main preacher. Don't think that just because you've been hired, at that large church, you are that great a communicator. Get some critique so you can continually, who is pouring into you to make you better all the time? Those would be two or three of the things that I'd probably want to talk to them about. I'd also want them to say, how honest is your wife? My wife loves me, but she's also honest with me. I ⁓ think too many pastors' wives worship their husbands. Frank Weller: Mmm. Donald J Wilson: I don't need a wife that worships me. I need a wife that loves me so that when I get critique from others and I bounce it off of her, if she really worships me, she's gonna say, no, honey, you're awesome. Don't worry about that. But if I have a wife that loves me and knows I want critique, when I tell her, well, somebody criticized my sermon today. What about that? She feels free because I've given her that space to speak in and say, I think that story was a little long. I'm not sure that connected. I think you came across a little judgmental because I live with her and she hears me and knows me. I really need her critique almost as much as anybody. And it's got to be honest, not that she's afraid to give me honest feedback. Frank Weller: That's so good. That is so good, Don. Thank you. It's hard to believe, but that 30 minutes went really fast and we're out of time. I want to thank Dr. Don Wilson and our sponsor, Great Lakes Christian College. And I want to thank you for listening to and supporting the Better Preaching podcast. You can find previous episodes of the BP2 podcast, read our blog and explore resources at betterpreaching.org. Until next time, remember, better preaching makes a bigger impact.