Latest / Better Preaching Podcast / BP2 Season 1 Episode 11 – Tyler McKenzie | Preaching for Faith Transmission
Transcript
- Dr. Frank Weller: Tyler McKenzie, welcome to the Better Preaching Podcast. Tyler McKenzie: Hey Frank. Glad to be here. Thanks for inviting me. Dr. Frank Weller: I'm delighted you are, man. I've been looking forward to this. It's been circling on my calendar and ⁓ I I'm looking for I'm guessing the next half hour is gonna go really, really fast. So why don't you just jump in and tell us a little bit about you and about the congregation that you serve? Tyler McKenzie: Okay, well Tyler McKenzie, I'm in Louisville, Kentucky at Northeast Christian Church and I've been here since two thousand twelve. And this is crazy. So there's a couple of really wild parts of my story that I don't know, just make it unique, but ⁓ I came to Northeast, which is a pretty large church, in in twenty twelve as my first full time ministry job, like straight out of seminary. ⁓ so that's a unique part of the story. ⁓ I was the teaching pastor here until 2016 when Bob Cherry, my predecessor, who planted the church in an elementary school down the road in 1977, ⁓ handed the leadership baton off to me. And so I've been the lead pastor since 2016 and the primary preacher. Absolutely love it. Got three kids. 11-year-old boy who is my baseball player. Man, I love coaching little I love coaching little league and Yeah league baseball, youth basketball, maybe more than I love playing it. okay, so side hustle here. You wanna my side like missionary project right now is I I've actually run a travel baseball organization that's trying to do it the right way, not the wrong way. Dr. Frank Weller: Yeah, so I'm guessing that you don't ⁓ travel on Sundays like all the others. Tyler McKenzie: Well, that's not entirely accurate, but we can talk about that too. ⁓ you go okay, well I would be glad to talk about it. Okay, so so here is the issue. My son's in Little League. He's one of the better, more advanced players. Okay, and this is at the eight year old level, right? The f the first years where they're starting to do all stars and travel sports now. Which I couldn't have imagined doing travel sports when I was eight, but that's just the the culture ⁓ now. So he's eight years old, he's one of the more advanced players in the little league, and a lot of his friends are leaving the little league because they feel like little league is not going to give their kids the opportunity to advance. So my son's doing really well. We we play all stars that year. We have a really, really good time with a good group of families, and the families are all like, Hey, is there a healthier way to do this? I said, Well, let's try and figure it out. So we started a team. ⁓ w built on a couple of core values and I call ⁓ my my quietly Christian values. Right? 'Cause I'm not quiet about my faith. Everybody knows I'm a pastor, but ⁓ I'm not overtly Christian about ⁓ because we have people who are Christians and not Christians as a part of the program. ⁓ the first value First value is that we're not gonna travel like a hundred times every season all over the country to Florida for this national championship and to California for that national championship and then to Tennessee for that national championship. Which one's the national championship? We don't know, right? But but we're gonna stay local and we have that luxury in Louisville where we can always find tournaments within a twenty to thirty minute drive. ⁓ you know, maybe we'll do a hotel trip to like Lexington once a season, ⁓ 'cause the kids like that. Dr. Frank Weller: Right. Tyler McKenzie: But that's that's important to us 'cause that allows people to make it to church on Sunday mornings and not like just eat their entire weekends alive. The second big thing is that we're gonna stay engaged in the little league. I believe that when you move sport out of the community, which is what travel sports is, right? It's traveling out of the when you move sport out of the community, you remove one of the primary ways you connect people. How do you meet people as a missionary in your in your community. Well, one of the best ways when you have young kids is through kids stuff, right? And when you're moving sports out of the community, all those little connections you have to love people, to know people, to care, to be cared for, ⁓ just evaporate. So we're gonna keep sport in the community. We're all gonna volunteer at the little league. We're gonna make that a better place and make it known that that's what we're about. And then the last ⁓ piece of it was we're gonna have great developmental character first coaches. Now check this out. We started this three years ago. Dr. Frank Weller: Right. Tyler McKenzie: For the little league, for the mo for the more advanced kids in our little league, when we just had one age group. Three years later, we now have 13 teams, baseball and softball, across all age groups. People absolutely love it. It's advanced the little league. The little league had a couple hundred more kids sign up for it this year. So not only are the beginner players getting developed, but the advanced players are getting developed. And I just baptized one of my players like a month ago. Dr. Frank Weller: ⁓ man, I love that. So ⁓ we're gonna be watching for a a a a Louisville based team in Williamsport here in a few years. Tyler McKenzie: That is like the secret goal. So he this is our eleven U All Star season, so next year, twelve U, I think we have a legit chance to win the state of Kentucky, but beyond that, puberty wins Little League Baseball, so Dr. Frank Weller: Seriously. You have a t a twelve year old who's six foot one. Tyler McKenzie: That's it. You wanna win the Little League World Series, that's what you need. Dr. Frank Weller: Well, look, baseball's in your blood, Tyler. You were serious about college baseball. ⁓ and I'm curious to know if there were any lessons that you learned as a college athlete that you've applied to the pulpit. Tyler McKenzie: Well, my entire calling into ministry, its genesis was in baseball and and basically sport ministry in college. So, ⁓ my s basically my calling story, I just g I'll kinda lean into that here. ⁓ I grew up in a preacher's home. So I saw ministry firsthand and I didn't have one of those horror stories. You know, some people who are PKs are like, ⁓ it was terrible. I was never going to ministry. I deconstructed or what that was not me. ⁓ I had faithful parents, had a good experience, had a great church that I was raised in. But I didn't want to do ministry coming out of high school. ⁓ I just wanted to do something else. So I went and played college baseball at a Catholic college in Charlotte, North Carolina called Belmont Abbey. very good baseball school. We we ended ⁓ it was division two, but we ended our my my time there in two thousand nine in the College World Series got knocked out ⁓ in the final four. But my freshman year there in college, I remember it was in the middle of our spring season. I was doing well in the classroom, I was excelling on the field, bat and leadoff, playing center field, like everything was going as hoped. But I was spiritually floundering. Like making bad decisions, just felt disconnected from God. You know how you when you get to college you experienced like the exhilaration of independence those first two weeks and then after that you start experiencing the punishments of independence because you throw all the restrictions out that your your parents put on you 'cause you thought they were the fun police, but then all of a you start realizing maybe they weren't the fun police, maybe like these restrictions they put on my life helped me. Well, this is where I'm at, right? I'm kinda I'm kinda crashing because of that. And ⁓ And so I remember I was sitting outside of a party at UNC Charlotte and I felt like God sort of spoke to me and he impressed upon me, like, this is not the way I want you to lead your life. So I tried to quit that night. I called my head coach and I told him that I needed to quit and go to Bible college and get my right my my life right with the Lord. And he said, Okay, well just wait just a second before, you know, I lose my leadoff hitter here. Why don't we think twice about this? And ⁓ he actually challenged me. He said, Your dad's a preacher, right? You know how to do church. Why don't you do church for us on Sunday mornings? Dr. Frank Weller: ⁓ man, I'm so glad. I love that he did that. Yeah. Tyler McKenzie: Isn't that crazy? He was not like a sold out Christian at the time, by the way. I think Kermit would tell you that he was just trying to keep his leadoff hitter. I s honestly, and so that's how we started. I ⁓ Dr. Frank Weller: Yeah. Tyler McKenzie: I did a church when we were on the road, I did it in hotel rooms. When we were at home, we did it in the locker room. There were three guys that showed up the first time we did it, a pitcher, my head coach, and me. But by the end of my freshman season, we had probably about half the team coming on Sunday mornings to that. When I got back my sophomore year, the girls on the girls' basketball team were like, Hey, will you do this for the whole athletic department? Like we want to help you build this out. And you know, the next thing you knew, we were serving about fifty percent of the athletes on campus by the time I graduated. So it was kind of like a college ministry I started for myself to save my own faith and in the midst of it I realized I think I have like a teaching and a leadership gift. ⁓ I got a knack for it 'cause I grew up in a church and it was probably midway through my sophomore year where I like, I think this is what God is telling me to do with my life and so that's what that's when I got a theology degree from a Catholic school. So Dr. Frank Weller: Were you teaching then or were you preaching at those at those church services? Tyler McKenzie: Well, you might call it teaching and preaching. I I've actually looked back at some of my notes from that time, and ⁓ there I remember distinctly I did a study on Hebrews and I read back through the notes and it was just wrong. It was wrong, Frank. I was like, This is bad theology, Holy Spirit, clear this up in people's minds. But but the beauty of that season was that I think God was blessing the passion that I had in my heart. Dr. Frank Weller: Yeah. Tyler McKenzie: and the passion that these other student athletes had, as much so as perhaps the you know, theology and in in his ways that only he knows how, you know, he showed grace to all of us, even though we didn't perfectly have our theology worked out. I wasn't intentionally teaching falsely, I was trying my best, but like it's just you look back at it and you're like, man, I I could have taught Hebrews better. you know what else I did? I have it up here on my shelf somewhere, but I had a I had a Max Lucato devotional Bible. And I remember my first sermons I preached for the baseball team, I just opened up my Max Lucato devotional bible, read the margins, you know, and then we prayed and took took to go communion. Before COVID turned us all into to go communions in church, it used to just go to the shut ins, right? Bang. I was way ahead. Two thousand six Dr. Frank Weller: Yeah. Yeah. You you've always been cutting edge, haven't you? Yeah. I love that. And and ⁓ the the monks or the priests or whoever, I don't know if it's Franciscan or Jesuit, I don't know what kind of school Belmont Abbey is. Okay, the Benedictines were cool with Protestants in the locker room. Yeah. Tyler McKenzie: Benedictine. Sorta sorta okay, so sh I should say this in case anybody from Belmont Abbey hears this, that they were incredibly charitable and loving to me when I moved into the theology department as really their first Protestant to ever come through their theology department. There were thirty Benedictine monks that lived on campus, Frank. So it was that's why it's called Belmont Abbey. Dr. Frank Weller: ⁓ come on, really? ⁓ wow. Tyler McKenzie: And s and all these monks served the campuses in different capacities. Some were professors, some did the lawn, right? ⁓ but these were they were beautiful, beautiful people, ⁓ good men. some of ⁓ were a little weird, you know, but hey, they love Jesus, so we're cool. ⁓ Father Chris was ⁓ one of the main theology teachers. He loved to whack me with a stick or kick me in the leg when I fell asleep in his theology classes. ⁓ so that was fun. But they were very charitable to me. ⁓ my senior thesis was on why believers baptism by immersion is the actual biblical way to do it. And so I had to defend that in front of a Notre Dame and a Boston College PhD. And again, they just they loved me through it all. but, you know, that being said, it when I was, you know, leading people to Christ on on campus and gathering lots of athletes together, it did make uncomfortable. But they chose the path of like ecumenism and and unity and support rather than just trying to shut me down. So I really appreciate that. Dr. Frank Weller: I love that. Listen, I want to pause and say a word from our sponsors at Great Lakes Christian College. Your week is full. You have sermons, staff meetings, visits with your people. Great Lakes Christian College gets it. That's why our new master's degree in practical theology offers convenience without sacrificing community, as well as real instructional support from professors with actual pastoral experience. There's more face-to-face and there's less busy work so you can grow without burning out. It's a new new degree for a new day in theological education built for bivocational leaders who want depth and not fluff. Keep serving where you are while earning a degree that serves you. More details are at glcc.edu. Tyler, you and I met ⁓ during my doctoral research. I was looking at the intersection of homiletics and the millennial generation. Basically, how could we make the sermon more useful for spiritual growth for millennials? Tyler McKenzie: I remember. Dr. Frank Weller: And there's a sense in which both our doctoral projects focus on some aspect of the intergenerational transmission of faith. Mine focused on the sermon as a way to accomplish that, specifically with millennials. I'm interested to hear more about your work. How's it different from what I did? Or what are you, what are you hoping to accomplish with it? Tyler McKenzie: ⁓ so I am super excited about this. I I'm in my last phase of my doctoral program where I've done the research. I'm just waiting to defend it. Done the research, written the paper, all that. Waiting to get with my my my two readers and and and get this defense done and be indoctrinated. Well no, whatever, doctorified, whatever you call it. Doctored? Okay. Graduate. Hooded. There we go. Hooded. so Dr. Frank Weller: Hooded. You're gonna get hooded. Yep. Tyler McKenzie: The reason why I chose studying the intergenerational transmission of faith is because of the unique church that I serve at. Northeast Christian Church is a church that is almost entirely parents and their kids still living in the home. And you know, when you're doing a doctorate of ministry, it's a little bit different than a PhD. ⁓ as you know, a PhD, the contribution you're trying to make is to the academy. A D men, the contribution you're trying to make is to the local church. And I'm a local church leader. And so I'm like, how what can I study that will contribute to my church? And it was I thought I had to have to study parents and how to pass down their faith to their kids. Up approximately eighty percent of my church is parents and their kids still living in the home. our largest age demographic is four to eleven year olds. We l like, yeah, exactly. Our sec our second largest is twelve to eighteen year olds. Dr. Frank Weller: Wow. That's fantastic. Tyler McKenzie: Our third largest is like thirty-six to forty-five year olds, which is their parents. So, ⁓ I I'd just like I've I've got to do this. Like, this is the mission field that our church has been uniquely stewarded. ⁓ and so when I started digging into the literature on it, what I found was that there was a lot of research that had been done talking to young people about their faith communities that they were raised in and how their parents raised them in the faith. But there were far less studies done. talking to parents about their perspective on the intergenerational transmission of faith. Now, I know you've done pastoral work, Frank. ⁓ you know that when you're mediating something between two parties, until you've heard both sides of the story, you have not heard the whole story. So I was like, well, you know what? I'm gonna take up the mantle of understanding the perspective of parents on the intergenerational transmission of faith. And I'm gonna do it by studying parents in our church. So that was my research study. We had several focus groups with parents in our church. We asked them questions specifically about passing down the faith, how they thought about it, how they prioritized it, what they were doing, what the church had done to help, and ⁓ we learned a lot about it. And ⁓ I think that it's gonna help a lot of other churches out. And ⁓ I also know that it's already helping our church refine what we're doing for parents. I can share more about all that. That's the that's the thirty thousand foot. Dr. Frank Weller: Well yeah, and I mean the reason I chose ⁓ millennials as part of my project several years ago is because I had three millennials in my home and it was critically important to me. I want my preaching to really impact the lives of my children and and others like them. But I mean you've got you've that this idea of passing your faith down to the next generation is deeply personal for you because of your family. Tyler McKenzie: That's right, I have three children and that's my mission field, ⁓ primary mission field right now. I mean I t well I tell parents this from our church all the time. I say, if over the next ten years the only two people you lead to Christ are the two little ones living in your home, then you've done all right. you've done all right. Because when kids are born, they don't come out knowing Jesus, right? They come out selfish, mind, mind, mind. You know, they come out in need of discipleship and formation. And they're one of the unique relationship opportunities where you're gonna get at least eighteen to twenty years right there, cheek to cheek, shoulder to shoulder, loving on them, pouring into them with an opportunity to to raise them up in the faith. So It seems like a a pretty ideal opportunity. ⁓ now here's what I learned from the research, which is incredible. ⁓ and I think the pioneer sort of ⁓ you know, most respected sociologist in the field right now is on this is Christian Smith. He's the dude who did moralistic therapeutic deism like twenty years ago. Dr. Frank Weller: Uh-huh. Right, yeah, I I looked at I looked at Smith's work extensively when I did my work on millennials. Tyler McKenzie: Hundred percent he's still leading thought leader in the academic world on the religious lives of young people. ⁓ and so what he found in one of his most recent studies is that, and this won't surprise you, but parents are by far the number one influencer on the spiritual lives of their kids. He found that the best way to predict what a young person's faith will look like ten years from now is what their parents' faith looked like while they're raising them. And I found the same thing. ⁓ he also found that the number one most powerful influence multiplier for parents in the home is daily conversations with their kids about faith. And there was a little bit of a nuance to that. The daily conversations were supposed to be parent initiated but kid led. That's important. Because see a lot of parents think, ⁓ daily conversations, I'm just gonna read a devotional and then preach to them. Nothing wrong with that, okay? But the more powerful ones are when parents initiate, they create a sense of regularity, rhythm to the fact that we're gonna talk about faith. When we're in the car in the morning, we might do a devotional time. Or when you get home at the end of the I'm gonna ask you how your how your day went, right? But then they allow the kids' curiosity and the kids' life experiences to guide the faith discussion. So what questions are they asking? You know, what what things are going on, what challenges are they facing. And how might I use my spiritual wisdom and experience to just listen or to speak or to turn my phone off before I get on a a podcast, you know? It's my wife actually. You wanna talk about, you know, good preachers. She just actually spoke for our church a couple ⁓ a couple weeks ago and she crushed it. But anyways, more of the story is that these these faith conversations are catalytic if parents can can sort of build them into their lives. So Dr. Frank Weller: So with with your demographics at Northeast being what they are, a huge number from four to eleven, another huge number from eleven to eighteen, and then basically their parents, that have has to impact the the way you approach preaching. Tyler McKenzie: ⁓ yeah. Well we pr ⁓ we preach so one of the philosophies of our family ministries is that we're not just raising up young people, we're equipping parents to be the primary pastors in their home. Right? So when I preach, I preach to my audience. Parents. Like and it's just unapologetic. Like we're gonna do a sermon series on parenting every year. Or even in on a ⁓ you know, a random sermon on you know, humility, I might talk about how you reflect humility as a father or humility as a mother, because these are preaching priorities for us because of our unique context. You know this as a as a preacher. ⁓ there are two key ingredients to great preaching. one is faithfulness to the truth, faithfulness to the unchanging word of God. And two is relevance. Not relevance in the sense that I'm trying to be cool, but relevance in the sense that I'm gonna contextualize the unchanging truth to whatever the changing environment is that I am in. And so like I've lived here long enough in Louisville to know Louisville and to preach to Louisvilleans. I've been here long enough at Northeast to know that our church is full of parents. And so the more time I spend here and the more acquainted I come with this context, the more I can sharpen what's already, you know, the double edged sword, which is God's word and and land it. So yeah, preaching is I'm preaching to parents. I know it. They know it. And you know what's funny is that we have other demographics in our church, ⁓ but they have come to embrace it and and love it too. And you it's not just about the parents. We do have other people in the church, but but they love the fact that we are preaching and trying to equip parents. Dr. Frank Weller: So I was gonna ask you about that then. Are your eleven to eighteen year olds in the service with mom and dad, or are they doing their own thing? Tyler McKenzie: ⁓ high schoolers are in with us. We bring high schoolers in. ⁓ we think that we're at a and and again, I don't actually have a very strong opinion on this. I think churches need to look at their own churches and decide whether you're not whether or not they should, you know, kind of segregate age groups or bring them together and when they should bring ⁓ together. ⁓ for us, all the way up to middle schools and doesn't come into the main service, but high schoolers do, and that's because we thought we were at a unique time in the life of our church where a lot of our stage leaders are young enough to still speak and and really connect with high schoolers. ⁓ you know, and maybe I don't maybe it's not an age thing, maybe it's just a personality thing, but we do feel like our services are good for that age. Dr. Frank Weller: Even when when you're preaching to empty nesters, you can still equip parents to parent their children because the topics that you're talking about, the scriptures that you're unpacking, the 50-year-old mom and dad who have a twenty-five-year-old ⁓ son and daughter and a five-year-old grandchild. I mean, those are generationally applicable from one generation to the next. Tyler McKenzie: Hundred percent and the parenting task never ends. Like it is never too early, it's never too late to be an intentional parent. That's what I say to our people all the time. ⁓ so back to the data. ⁓ data found that the data found that ⁓ that fathers matter a lot when it comes to passing down the faith to the next generation. It's not that mothers don't matter. It's that far more often fathers play a passive role in the transmission of faith to their kids than mothers do. Mothers are better at this and more consistent at this. So when fathers match the level of intensity that mothers do, you see the faith get passed down better. Now here's the next thing. Is not only that the they didn't just show that fathers matter a lot, it showed that grandparents matter a lot too. Vern Bingston's work is is critical here. He actually tracked faith transmission generationally. It was like a longitudinal study. And he just it it it was just undeniable that grandparents not only can really impact the faith temperature of their of their grandchildren, but they can serve as like a substitution or a replacement for the missing faith of a parent if they're very invested. So we remind them of that all the time. We also remind them of Cara Powell's work ⁓ out there with Sticky Faith and the Fuller Institute. ⁓ one thing that she talks about a lot is the five to one ratio. You've probably heard that. You need to have five not five kids to every one spiritual mentor at your church, but five adults to every one kid. ⁓ if if If you can create an intergenerational village with diverse spiritualities, if you will, not diverse in the fact that they're unorthodox, but diverse in the fact that like these are just different people living out Jesus and their different lives, ⁓ different ages, different backgrounds, different stories, and you can surround your kid with five ⁓ five different people, then it dramatically increases ⁓ their retention of the the faith over time. So like our church has got to embrace that. Like this is this is a church we got. It's a mission field we got. ⁓ like if you're an Orthodox person here at North East, you gotta be on on the bus with loving the next generation. Dr. Frank Weller: Yeah, and that makes a lot of sense because when you when mom and dad are living out really authentically Christian lives in the home, and then s children see that from grandpa and grandma as well. And then they see it from the greeter at church and the person who's in their in their youth group or their Sunday school teacher, then the the negative influence that they might have from someone who's not walking out their faith in in in good ways. Tyler McKenzie: That's it. Dr. Frank Weller: is diminished significantly because you have those five other positive impacts in in your life. Tyler McKenzie: That's it, man. That's it. He nailed it. Dr. Frank Weller: The ⁓ half an hour. Wow, really fast. ⁓ one last question. No, almost one last question. Here it is. I often ask our guests what is one piece of advice they'd pass on to younger preachers. And ⁓ I want to ask a similar question of you, Tyler, but with a twist. Cause you're you're still I would call I would call you a younger guy, but you know, man, you're getting older every minute. ⁓ my goodness. Wow, you're just still a baby. ⁓ Tyler McKenzie: Has it been a half hour? Holy cow. It's turned forty. Dr. Frank Weller: What is ⁓ what is one thing you would say to encourage guys who've been preaching for a while, guys who who've been at this a while, that fifty-five year old, that guy who's about to turn sixty, what's something that you would say to encourage that preacher? Tyler McKenzie: ⁓ wow. Okay. So I would say two things. ⁓ two words come to my mind ⁓ with that particular demographic of like seasoned elder generation preachers who have been at it for a while. Like I I would say Dr. Frank Weller: Careful with the elder generation word right here. I'm fifty-nine. It's an elder generation, ⁓ God. Okay, yeah, yeah. Tyler McKenzie: I'm thinking of village elder, not elder like you know, Elder Lee, like you're the vil you're the elder of the village, man. You got the wisdom, you got the experience, you got the chops. All right. Elder l it's it's ⁓ it's on love, man. Hey, you just call me a baby, okay? So I can call you an old man. Dr. Frank Weller: Yep. That's true. That's fair. That's fair. You all day long. Tyler McKenzie: Two words. longevity and locality. I don't even mean for those that both have L's, but those are the two words that I would say. Longevity, I think, is absolutely critical to building trust. And trust multiplies transformation in a preaching ministry. So the longer you are somewhere. the more your influence grows, the more impact you have because the people have just seen who you are and they trust you. I think you can get trust in two ways. Through either talent, charisma, which that sort of trust burns hot, like this person's speaking to me and they're they're gifted, but but it's shallow. You it can be snuffed out quickly. And then there's another way to earn trust, and that's through time spent. You've just been there, you've been faithful, you've had character, you've had integrity, they know what to expect from you, and you've you've earned their ear. Somebody who's been in a ministry for twenty, thirty, forty years, you need to hear hear this right now. Some of your best sermons may be your last sermons. Because people are listening. People know who you are. You've earned the right. So ⁓ I just I would encourage you with that. Your longevity in ministry matters. You've built all the twenty, thirty, forty years that you've spent preaching in that ministry are great and they had transformational power then. Believe that God can do just as much, if not exponentially more right now. The other thing I would say is locality. ⁓ with that longevity, you get to know your neighborhood better than like nobody would speak Louisville better than somebody who's been here for forty years and just l been a part of the neighborhood, right? You know, I've been here for fifteen and I'm starting to find that this is my now my home. You know, where are you from? Eventually like that switches if you move from your hometown, right? You you live somewhere long enough where you don't say I'm from Winston Salem, North Carolina anymore. I say I'm from Louisville, Kentucky. I feel like that's where I'm at now 'cause I'm starting to know that place, but there are people here that know Louisville better than me. They know the history of the city. They know the ways of of the people here better than me. And ⁓ and I just think that there's something about knowing your local community. And being able to speak to its unique needs and past that makes preaching especially powerful. I tell our our pe preachers and our worship leaders all the time, do not write music for Spotify. Do not write sermons thinking about how this is gonna play on Instagram reels. Write sermons for the congregation in front of you. ⁓ which in a social media day we get pulled out of our local context and into the national context way too often. Like I I got I can get on USA Today today and I can tell you that Shakira is performing at the World Cup. I can tell you all the commentary on the Spurs absolutely blowing it last night versus the Knicks. Catastrophic n you know? Dr. Frank Weller: ⁓ my goodness, twenty nine point lead. one point two seconds to go. ⁓ that yeah, I've just dated the podcast. It's not going to travel now for the next five years, but ⁓ that game will still be talked about five years from now. Unbelievable. Tyler McKenzie: Unreal game. People will remember that, okay? ⁓ you know, but I c I can tell you about things going on in all the ro I can tell about the war ⁓ you know, going on in Iran. Yeah, like I can tell you all of that, right? But here's the real question is like can I tell you my neighbor's name? Can I tell you the felt needs of my congregation? We spend so much time and give so much of our attention on things and matters outside of our control rather than giving it on the things and the matters that we actually have real influence over. And so I would say with all of that longevity. And all of that local know-how and knowledge that you've built, elder generation of preachers, man, you've got some amazing days of preaching right here before you, right now. Finish strong, finish well, cash in the chips, use that ⁓ use that leadership currency that you've gained. Dr. Frank Weller: Speaking of finishing strong, you just did. That's fantastic, Tyler. Man, I want to thank you so much. And thanks for our sponsor, Great Lakes Christian College. And I want to thank our BP2 community for listening and supporting the Better Preaching podcast. Join us next week for another great conversation because better preaching makes a bigger impact.