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- Introduction: A warm welcome to communicators and preachers looking to refine their craft, featuring lead pastor and author J. D. Greear.
- J.D.'s Preaching Journey: From aspirations to actualization, the importance of a calling in church leadership.
- Global Influence on Preaching: How missionary work shaped J.D.'s approach to making disciples through sermons.
- Sermon Preparation Evolved: Insight into J.D.'s evolving process and the strategic planning behind the sermon series.
- Finding Your Preaching Voice: Embracing uniqueness while acknowledging the influence of other preachers.
- Local vs. Global Audience: The delicate balance of addressing a local congregation with a global perspective.
- Advice for Young Pastors: Key tips on simplicity, disciple-making, and ensuring sermons cultivate worship.
- Rapid-Fire Q&A: J.D. shares personal experiences of failure, distractions, and overcoming challenges in preaching.
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What is SermonCraft?
Transform your preaching with SermonCraft! We interview some of today's best communicators to learn their secrets to captivating talks. Say goodbye to endless prep. Find your voice. Master your message.
Every episode is like a masterclass. Are you ready to revolutionize your sermons? Tune in to SermonCraft – where the art of preaching is made practical and tactical.
This is a podcast for communicators who teach regularly and want to become better and more confident in the art and craft of preaching.
We interview some of today's best communicators about their unique processes, habits, and secrets of turning a blank page into a captivating talk so that you can stop wasting valuable time in sermon prep, find your unique voice, and use the gift that God has given you with excellence and joy.
Join us as we unpack the concepts that helped us the most. Are you ready to change your approach to teaching?
JD: [00:00:00] never aspire to teach the church at large. Teach your church. Teach a local church, and if the church at large feels like you have something to say to it, it'll come to you.
CHASE: Well, welcome to the first episode of the Sermon Craft Podcast. Uh, this is a podcast for communicators who teach regularly and want to become better and more confident in the art and craft of preaching. And so on this podcast, we interview some of today's. Best communicators about their secrets of turning a blank page into a captivating talk so that you can stop wasting valuable time and sermon prep.
Find your unique voice and use the gift that God has given you with excellence and joy. Uh, my name's Chase Gardner. I'm a professional speaker with 10 years of preaching under my bell. I've given hundreds of sermons, but I know I have not arrived yet. Uh, I want to get better in every facet of preaching just like you.
And so our guest this week needs no introduction. He's the lead pastor at the Summit Church, a leader, a teacher, an author. He's the one and [00:01:00] only JD Greer. Uh, I've known JD for about 10 years, and what strikes me about JD is that he is the same person off the stage as he is on the stage. He really does love Jesus and love God's word like he appears to on the stage.
Uh, he's also used the pulpit to revitalize a church and grow it into the one, uh, of the most impactful sending centers for the gospel in this country. I think, uh, he's got a lot on his plate, but he still makes his sermon prep central to what he does, and you'll never believe what his answer is when I ask him, Hey, what's the most distracting thing that ever happened to you on stage?
So get ready for an awesome episode of the Sermon Craft Podcast.
When did you feel, I don't know how you feel about call, but did you feel a call to specifically preaching as a part of your ministry [00:02:00] and how'd you experience that?
If you did experience that?
JD: It is just what I figured in ministry, the where the most money was. Like most guys that get called into ministry, no, I'm just kidding. But worst answer ever. No, I you know, so I explained this to a, a a young guy the other day. I. And I, I, I really feel like it's taken about 20 years to come to this, is that, you know, there's a lot of things in the Bible.
This part isn't original or new, but there's a lot of things in the Bible that are not contradictions to be resolved, their tensions to be managed. And one of the things that I think that applies to is how we understand calling because there, there, there, there are aspects of the Bible, first Timothy three, one is a good example that encourage, you know, if, if you desire the office of church leadership, that's a good thing.
And so just an interest in it, I would like to do this. I enjoy. This kind of thing. But the other side of that tension is, you know, kind of wrapped up in, in what, how Charles Spurgeon, you know, his kind of famous statement. Don't go in the ministry unless you absolutely have to. And you know, so on the one side you got like, let's encourage this.
And the other side it's like, if you can do something else, you [00:03:00] should. So I went into college thinking, well, there's a lot of things that I could do and would really enjoy and I was passionate about. And for me it was law. And so I, I went in my pastor told me, you know, like, Hey, you should, if you can do anything else in Min, anything else besides ministry do that.
So I go in and while I did that two things happened in college. One is I just started to teach the Bible, really the three and four people at a time, you know, it was like a, sitting around my dorm room over the two or three years that I was in college, it got bigger, you know, like eventually it ended up being, you know, a few hundred people.
Big not in my dorm room, but just, you know, in the ministry and I. I just remember thinking, I love this, I love this, I love this. I wanna do this. I love law, but not like I love this over here. Simultaneous to that was studying through the book of Romans and realizing the fate of the people in the world that had never heard the gospel.
And I, I remember this, you know, these all things coming together and just saying, you know, God, if you will [00:04:00] allow me to, I want to preach the gospel. Mainly to people who've never heard it. And I felt like the Lord was like, you know, Isaiah six was like, you may go, and he gave me permission. And so it kind of brought those two sides of the tension together.
Like I would never dare do this without feeling like God was in it. But I. I also feel like there's an initiative thing, and so all that to say is that all came together. I served as a, as a missionary for a couple of years in an unreached people group. Really felt like God showed me that, that that the call that I have to preach is a sub calling to the call to reach.
Unreached people groups. And so a lot of the preaching that I do, yes, it's here in America in a, what is a relatively church place, but there's a lot of great commission and, and God has, has put us here so that you could go and be a blessing to the nations. So anyway, that's sort of a long rambling way of saying, you know, that that's how all that went down.
CHASE: I actually had that as a question because you did spend some time overseas with an unreached people group, and that, I think just [00:05:00] listening and sitting under your preaching, I can see the shaping influence, but how would you describe that was, was it a huge shaping influence on your preaching when you first started?
Has it continued? How did your time overseas affect the way that you viewed the call of preaching or the
JD: Yeah, but Chase, there's a number of ways to answer that question. I mean, the first thing I think of is Leslie Negan's, you know, famous kind of thing where he talked about how when he was in India as a western person living in India, he realized that. That what was happening in the western world was gonna require the same missionary skills that the cross-cultural missionary was using.
And so just the shaping influence of having to preach and teach in a different culture, I think shaped how I, I I, I think as a preacher today there's a second layer of that and that is, you know, realizing that. Yes. I mean there are lots of lost people in the Raleigh Durham area where I pastor, but there, there is quite literally a church just about in every corner.
And you know, God's hand is always on the people for the sake of, you know, the people that have never heard. And when those people aren't obeying, then [00:06:00] he takes his hand and goes elsewhere. I think you can almost see the migration of the missionary. And the, the hand of God right now going to, what is it, south America and places in Africa and Korea that are really taking this seriously.
And so, yeah, I mean it's, it's Chris or CJH Wright wrote that book a number of years ago, the Mission of God. And it's not a perfect book, but in there, one of the things he points out is that every single passage in the Bible is written. Pursuit of God's great commission and that it's not that missions exist in a few sections of the Bible.
He says every, every, literally, God doesn't have a mission for his church. He forms a church for his mission. And it means any passage you preach that you're not connecting to the larger thing of what God is doing in the world of. Seeing the gospel go to all the different nations and people groups. You, you've preached it wrongly.
And so I think at every possible level it's, it's affected the way I preach. The last thing I'll say there we may get into this more as we preach as we talk here about preaching, but I. I, I've, I, this is [00:07:00] not an official classification, but you know, there are some pastors who preach like entertainers, you know, they're, they're, they're really high quotient in terms of, you know, capturing your attention.
There's some that, you know, really, they're just, they're really honest, awesome, faithful exigent. My favorite preachers are the ones that preach like leaders, that preaching is a function of their leadership, and they're not preaching about leadership. I'm not talking about that. I'm saying that they're disciple makers.
And so in their preaching, you're hearing them move people into, you know, greater discipleship and in the great commission. And so I, you know, I kind of approached this, like, of all the things I, could be taken outta context. I don't wanna preach like an je, I wanna preach like a leader who is leading people to discipleship and mission and obedience based on what the, you know, the scriptures say.
CHASE: Did you sit under a pastor like that growing up, or did you have a shaping influence that that preached as a, a part of that leadership that,
JD: Man, [00:08:00] that is a that's a, that's a revealing question. Yes, but it wasn't the main pastors that I grew up under. My very first pastor was like that, but I was so young. I basically living on what my parents tell me about his memory. Dr. E Shehan, my other pastors that I have were very faithful. Man of God.
But there was a youth pastor that I had that was that way. He, you know, everything connected to him. So people coming to know Christ and, and mobilizing out there, it was an independent Baptist background. And, you know, there's a lot of things that I, don't do exactly like the Independent Baptist, I mean, when I graduated high school, the question was, you wanna go to Bob Jones or Pensacola?
Those are your two choices. But you know what they taught me to, they taught me to, to highly value the Bible. They taught me to be passionate about Jesus and they taught me to win people to Christ. I'll take those three things any day of the week and those are a big win in my book, and that gives me a lot of grace for the rest of the, know, kind of stuff that came along with
CHASE: Yeah. Do you remember the first sermon you ever [00:09:00] gave,
and I know, I know you led bible studies, but like on a stage with a microphone, maybe even a camera, you remember that,
JD: Well, no camera. But it was other than my, my mom taking pictures in the back with a disposable, you know Kodak. But there was it was at my home church. They had a youth night on Sunday night, you know, and they're gonna get a youth to preach. And I preached, I ripped off an old Vance Havner sermon Vance.
You know, it just, and when I say ripped off, like I read it and tried to make it my own, but I look back now, it was, it was terribly isal. You know, the, what I did with the passage had nothing to do, but it was it was that classic, it's sort of like a Pentecostal slash Independent Baptist where you've taken some Old Testament thing and reading all this meaning into it.
CHASE: Yeah.
JD: Man, as bad as that sermon was, I loved it. I, that was like, I got a taste of it, and I don't think it was just being in front of people and the attention, I think it was just. I love seeing people. I love seeing their, their lives change. That moment where you just feel like, man, people are getting this and they're knowing God better.
CHASE: That's awesome. [00:10:00] How long did it take for you to find your unique voice? Because I think all of us. Kinda idolized the, the pastors that, I mean, growing up I had the first iPod and I had Matt Chandler and John Piper, and I sounded like Matt Chandler and John Piper, and it took me a long time to figure out you're not anything like them, like in real life.
So how long did it take you to find your unique voice?
JD: Yeah, I remember reading a book on that. It was at least 10 years in the ministry by a guy named Dave Stone, the old pastor of Southeast Christian church. And I, I can't even find that book anymore. But he had in there and he classified different kind of preachers, and it, it like suddenly made sense to me because because, so my two big influences, my first four or five years that were contemporary that I wanted to be like, actually it was three.
One was Clayton King. And he was like an evangelist. One was but the big ones were Rob Bell. He was doing all these PMA videos,
CHASE: Yeah.
JD: and just like, and this is before he kind of went, you know, Oprah, but he was just,
CHASE: I think I still have the pneuma DVDs in the blue case, like
JD: [00:11:00] they were amazing.
CHASE: Because if you're a youth pastor in like the early two thousands, you had 'em.
JD: That's what you do. Yeah. So, man, and so, but you know, it's reflective and kinda, you know, just the, the Rob Bell and then Mark Driscoll at the same time. So I, I look, there's a reason you can't find sermons pre 2008 on our website because it sounds, it, it is whiplash. I mean, it is like, 'cause I go right from Rob Bell, kind of that reflective, I go right into a Driscoll esque.
Kind of like yell at everybody with the veins popping. It sounds so confused. It was probably, I think I really didn't get comfortable till, I wanna say 2013 or 14, but this is kind of who I am and even be, even since then, it, it, it took a while. You know, Keller's got that famous statement. He's like, you listen to one person, you're clone, listen to two, you sound confused, 10 or more.
And given, you know, probably 10 years or more, you start to, you start to find your own voice. And that's certainly how it was for for me. You know, there's, I, I look back now and I realize, okay, there's a little bit of Keller in there, that [00:12:00] cultural apologist and kind of Christ-centered approach to.
To a text. There's a little bit of independent Baptist still in me, you know? I mean, you know, I've had people describe me before as the open the Bible and yell at people guy, so that's a, you know but there there's also a little bit of, I mean, you know, dare I say Andy Stanley, that kinda like, man, how do you take the first 10 minutes of your message and make everybody wanna listen?
You know, I'd like to think that there's some influence, you know, in that too. Tony Evans is
CHASE: Yeah.
JD: influence. I love him. He's been a big impact on me, so.
CHASE: That's awesome. So what is your process? This is where we'll spend the most time. What is your, I guess your process has probably changed. So what, what was sermon writing process like for you when you first kind of. Took over, you know, the church that you serve at now, the Summit Church, and what does it look like now?
I'm familiar with kind of the middle part, but now that you're so busy and you, you have so much impact in so many places, what does that, what did it look like at the beginning and what does it look like now?
JD: [00:13:00] Yeah, you know, it really hadn't changed even with all the, the size of the church or the additional staff. What's changed is the quality with which it happens, the, these things. And then the second thing would be really how much of it I can do, I just, I'm able for the use of staff to have a lot more resources at my disposal.
You know, I've always been 70 to 80% of my week. At least should be, should be reserved for that. Whether I use it all or not. I've always done the morning times. That's when my brain is the most alive and making the best creative connection. So from the very beginning when it was essentially just me and a, you know, well actually there were I, I took over a church I didn't plant, so we always had a very small staff, but when it was a really small staff, I still just would not meet with people in the mornings.
And that kind of made me, it was actually a little bit unpopular in the church. 'cause now, I mean there's a crisis of course. Yes. But, but just said, I'm gonna take every morning. 'cause I knew that the value that I would add, whether you're thinking spiritual value or even just professionally, I. [00:14:00] You know, took place in that hour on, on Sunday morning and, you know, I was willing to let some other things slide if it meant that I could devote that time.
You know, I always tell our guys at, at Summit that we're trained to preach. I'm like, there's some guys that don't need to hear that because they would spend, I.
38 of their 40 hours a week there, and you need to get out and, and talk to people. But, but for a lot of us, because we do want to take care of people and because we're kind of people pleasers you, you just end up letting other people eat away your week.
And I was like, no, I'm gonna, I'm gonna block that off. It's been the same, the process for me, I've always been a week of guy.
Um, I've tried before.
CHASE: out the sermon series? How far in advance do you plan those out?
JD: We're about six to nine months. And about once every three to six months we get together and there's a few, couple, few of us teaching pastors. I'm definitely take the lead role in that. I've done it in consultation with our elders. We usually have our counseling pastor and you know, some [00:15:00] female representatives there.
We try to have everybody in the room. We just say, where do we need to go in the course of the year? And we throw out some stuff and we we decide on things. That's a very loose. I mean, we have the books of the Bible, we'll, even about, we're about two months ahead when it comes to the specific passage.
CHASE: Okay.
JD: And that's because there's so many other things that take place with it, you know, the, the small groups team and the programming team. And, I know I frustrate them sometimes because I really, sometimes I'll get into a passage and feel like this needs to be two messages, not one. And they, they very graciously reserve the right for me to do that.
I try to, you know, keep things realizing there's a lot more, you know that, that rides on it. But, you know, so I'll take that week. I, I start for the most part on that Monday, other than just a general idea, you know, like Ephesians two is about blank. You know, it's about unity in the church to the gospel.
I, we know that, but I don't, I won't have a lot more than that. And the first thing I do, and again, I used to do all [00:16:00] this myself, is when I open it up now on Monday morning my, my research assistant has populated a folder that's got. Everything from, you know, let's say three or four of my go-to preachers.
And we're trying to rotate who those are in there. But you know, pretending on passage three or four of go-to preachers at least will be in there. There's some initial commentary work. But I say very initial I'm gonna say something in a minute that will disappoint some of the preaching purists, but I stand by it.
Let me, let me, let me come back to it. But a little bit of commentary work. Most of my commentary work is gonna come later in the week. And then, just sort of a, he, he's kind of written a map for me of like, here's all the things. He, he's already met with a group of people in our church. I used to do this myself too, but he's met with them, counseling pastor, women leaders in our church diversity, you know, minority, and just said, Hey, here's all the concerns we have coming into this [00:17:00] passage.
Here's some big takeaways. I'll spend my first three or four hours. On, on Monday morning, just going through all that stuff. I've, you know, well, I will have spent a decent amount of time in the text the week before, just kind of pondering it. And by the time I get done with Monday, I've got a general trajectory of where it's going.
Commentary work. The reason I say it comes later is because you know, I, I've preached and I've taught enough and. That I, I can usually tell the majority of places that there is something in the passage that needs to be dug down in. I used to, when I first started, I mean, I was trying to be so pure chase.
I would have like, Greek New Testament was my first thing. Reading and making sure it see the, and then I'd read all the commentaries on it and man, I'd, I'd spend 10 to 15 hours. And it just, it just wasn't efficient time. And so now I'm like, okay, there's something here in this verse that we need to go deeper on.
Sometimes, you know, that's what listening to these other preachers and teachers [00:18:00] and my own reading will, will and, and just a study bible be like, okay, there's something else here I need to do some work on. And so that, that usually happens on Tuesday or Wednesday if I'm still pressing in on that. Monday it, then after I get that initial thing, it goes back out to this team and they look over it and they, they tell me whether they like the direction, you know, problem
points to look for.
CHASE: outline? Just a
JD: Loose outline, but it, it, it's got a little little meat to it, not that you can tell where it's going. And so, like, you know, for example our our, our, our counseling pastor might look at it and say, you know, I can see on this, you're trying to really lean on this, but I, I just know there's a lot of people in our church gonna hear it this other way.
They're gonna hear it, you know, and it's gonna create a sense of shame the way that you're talking about this. So I would encourage you to. Take this approach with it, you know? And so I'm, I'm, and then Tuesday Wednesday I'm doing, that's, that's just hardcore writing. There's a little bit of back and forth between me and my research assistant.
Like I said, commentary work. Thursday is just where I'm polishing and cutting. [00:19:00] That's all that happens on Thursday. I've always heard the difference in a good sermon. And a great sermon is not what you put in, it's what you cut out. Yep. So Thursday is that I manuscript word for word.
CHASE: Yep.
JD: And I, I would encourage.
Generally everybody to do that. I would encourage very few people to take the manuscript into the pulpit itself because most people, they don't write the way they, they speak
and
CHASE: I instead of the ear.
JD: correct and they don't interact with their notes well, for whatever reason and how God has designed me, I do write the way I speak and I do interact with notes or whatever, wherever I've got 'em.
I interact fairly well, so I actually carry my full manuscript into the pulpit,
but I would just.
CHASE: copy. You don't use digital, right?
JD: Correct. Well, physical copy and I actually put it up on now in, in, in our auditorium it's on the, I have some different places that are teleprompter. Usually means it's right here. But think, think screens that are back there that other people in the audience can't see unless they turn around and look.
So I have it there too. So I'm looking [00:20:00] here, I'm looking there and I'm looking at people and it just, it's a system that works for me that allows me the greatest access of notes plus, plus people. So, and then we review it after Thursday night. There's always some, 'cause you know, some things you just don't know until you get it out.
And I'm like, that, that didn't work. I love the book. Who was it? Guy wrote the metaphor of getting down the mountain Preaching that moves people.
CHASE: Yeah.
JD: One of the
most important.
CHASE: think Yancy.
JD: Say again?
CHASE: Yeah. Yancy's gonna be on the podcast.
JD: Oh, great. Well be, that's the most important preaching book nobody's ever heard of. Because he, he just says at the beginning, I'm gonna take for granted that you already understand the, the, the theology and the hermeneutics and the Brian Chapel, d Martin Lloyd Jones stuff on pre I'm gonna take for granted.
You know that if you don't go back and read that, he said. But then a lot of people just get stuck in being able to move a sermon along. I'm getting better at that, but it's that Thursday night that I can usually tell like, man, we just got stuck
CHASE: Yeah. Yeah,
JD: I don't know why I told [00:21:00] four illustrations on one point.
I needed to do was make the point and move. But you know, Thursday and then, and then Sunday, Sunday it's ready.
CHASE: so Thursday night, is that an actual service and do you record it in case there's a problem with the live stream? Is that why you do the recording?
JD: Yeah. We record it for the live stream. We also do it because one or two of our campuses start. Early enough earlier than the broadcast campus does.
CHASE: Okay.
JD: need something they can show on
CHASE: And so you don't do the, the sermon before that Thursday first run, so you get
JD: Hmm.
CHASE: it's recorded, then you get back with the group of people and kind of discuss it? Or is that just a you individual thing?
JD: That's me. We, we, we're not physically together, but we're on email. We're going back and forth.
CHASE: Okay.
JD: we use a Google Doc. So there, there's commenting right in there.
CHASE: And then do you run, if you edit it a lot, do you run it again or No, you just kind of put it in your outline, change the outline and just
JD: Then, then do it again on Sunday morning. So, so, so there are people at our church that hear what I consider to be a slightly deficient sermon, [00:22:00] you know, 'cause they'll, they'll, they'll hear it on Thursday or they, they're one of the early Sunday morning ones after nine o'clock. It's all live streamed.
CHASE: Yeah.
JD: But people usually say that they can't tell as much of a difference as I can.
CHASE: Yeah.
JD: feel like it's a night and day difference, but they're like, it sounded the same.
CHASE: Yeah. That's awesome man. So what advice, obviously this is, you still devote probably 70, 80% of your week to sermon prep even
now.
JD: Yeah, that's fair. 60 to 70.
CHASE: That's awesome. Why would you encourage, pastors to do that? Like from a church planter? I mean, early on it's almost like, 'cause you gotta raise funds, you have to. Do the, the, the databases yourself, all that sort of stuff.
But I've heard from Andrew Hopper, I've heard from other pastors as well, that it's really important to prioritize preaching and you still do it even today. How long have you been in ministry? How long have you been at the summit?
JD: I've been at Summit since 2002, so that's what, 22 years now.
CHASE: Yeah. What are some things that's happened at Summit that wouldn't have happened [00:23:00] because of your preaching?
JD: Well, so again, I want to answer on two levels. On a spiritual level, preaching drives the church. You know, it is, it is, it is the word of God. I mean, I. I believe the word of God gives life. And so I am, you know, I want to devote time to proclaiming that word. Believing that it, it just, you know, it's like Luther said, you know, I preached the Bible and sat back and, you know, his words, he said, I sat back and drank beer and the word did all the work.
And so I, I believe that still happens at the church. And, and so, you know, I think devoting yourself to give faithful, timely vision sensitive application, rich. That just, that stuff just takes time and you gotta work at it. It's, you know, 10% inspiration, 90% perspiration,
CHASE: Mm-Hmm.
JD: you know, on the professional side.
And you gotta be careful with this. 'cause we're, you know, brothers were not professionals as John Piper said. You know, on the professional side, preaching grows the church. I mean, you ask [00:24:00] why people come to a church. It's the preaching, the worship. Sometimes it's the kids and the facility, but you know, it's.
Preaching's a huge part of that. It's not why they stay at the church, you know, they stay because of connections and friendships, but they come because of that. And so just professionally, I'm like, you know, I could be a, a mid-range counselor, I could be a below average administrator. You know, these things aren't gonna bless the church if I'm mid-range at all those, but.
But I know that I'd be able eventually to hire people who were skilled in those things. So even for a church planner, yes, I get it. You got a lot of stuff to do. I, I think it's fully okay for you to lean even more heavily on some of your preaching heroes. You're acknowledge it, but you know, but you can lean a little bit more heavily as you're devoting some leadership there, but.
But, but this, this is, is what's gonna grow and sustain your church and it's gonna feed you personally. So, of all the things to cut, I would just say don't, don't cut that. Now, I do want to say there are a handful of people out there, and I don't wanna say they all went to Southern Seminary, but some of them [00:25:00] did.
And they would, they would, this is what they want to do. They, you know, it's like, ministry would be great if it's just the people, you know, like, and, and when I'm, I'm not really trying to rip on Southern Seminary. I'm just saying that there's a certain kind of us that we love academics. And these guys would spend 40 hours a week, you know, in their office.
I, you, you, they need to realize that pastoring is people. And so, you know, you've, you, you're, the majority of us I think probably need to hear pres, you know, preserve time for preparation. But there's a handful of people need to hear like, Hey, you gotta be with people. 'cause your sermon sounds like whoever you talked to that week,
and that's why you preach your worst sermons in seminary.
'cause you're, you're talking essentially to a bunch of seminary students. From the pulpit. Nobody wants to hear that. But if you, if you're actually in people's lives, then it becomes so much richer and more personal because you're leading people and you're not just Exogen a text.
CHASE: How do you think through? 'cause now, I mean, I, I listened to you on the radio the other day. Is that Molly that does the intro?
I think it, it [00:26:00] is, yeah. Molly and us, we went to the same summer camp growing up, which is
crazy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So now, I mean, you have such a huge audience and then you added radio on a few years ago.
So when you get up and you preach the message, or you're writing it that Tuesday and Wednesday, do you have in your mind a global audience, or are you specifically trying to preach and teach the Summit Church at this moment in time in this geographical location? And
JD: I'd be dishonest if I didn't say I'm, I'm thinking occasionally about that global audience, but I've tried really hard not to let it shape because the guys that I've heard in the past that I, you could almost hear it, the transition when they went from being a pastor of a local church. To be in a pastor who had a live audience in one city, and he was preaching to the world, and I felt like, man, it, it took the quality of their preaching down.
Martin Luther said [00:27:00] in a series of lectures he gave to his young, you know, ministry students, seminary students they, it it became, I think it was the, the bond freedom of the Christian, I think it was that word. It, it's the intro, and he made this statement, I've never forgotten. He said he said, never aspire to teach the church at large. Teach your church. Teach a local church, and if the church at large feels like you have something to say to it, it'll come to you. And so whether it's books I'm writing or podcast or radio stuff, I'm like, this is first and foremost for the Summit Church if it can be adapted to use in one of those other forms.
That's fine, but I'm, I, I would feel almost, I don't wanna use too strong of a word, but I would feel almost like I'm prostituting myself if I turned that pulpit into a global thing and said, this is first and foremost for these people that God has called me to lead.
CHASE: No, that's so good. On that note, are there today I, I think. I've [00:28:00] preached, not nearly as much as you, but I had different goals and different desires for my sermons at a early age than I do now. So are there some like priorities that you've just learned over the past 10, 15 years that when you get up on the, on the pulpit, these two or three things, I can sleep well tonight because I, I hit those two or three benchmarks.
Are there two or three things that you go for in every sermon?
JD: Well, you tease me by saying that you've chatted. Tell me what yours are real quick.
CHASE: I don't know. I, no one asked me that question yet, so probably think about it tonight.
No, I think, yeah, I think for me it would be, it would be faithful to the text, but also I wanna make a real connection with, with the person's heart. Actually want to connect with them. That means setting the Bible aside and just having a conversation around the text for a while before they let their guard down so I can apply that text.
But it's that connection. I think I'm after most of the time.
JD: Yeah, yeah. You know, d Martin Lloyd Jones is this famous, [00:29:00] I guess famous. Conversation where he was talking to preachers in the 1950s and he, he said, you know, there was a controversy in the 1950s about whether sermons 'cause you, you were starting to have the hints of the mega church and should sermons be more doctrinally rich or should they be more application heavy?
And a lot of the church growth guys were saying, look, you gotta apply. You know, that's where, that's where the growth is. And d Martin Lloyd Jones weighed in and he said, well, respectfully, I would say neither of those is the goal of a true sermon. He said, you know, the goal of a motivational speech is that you leave with a page full of action steps.
The goal of a a lecture is that you leave with a page full of notes. He said The goal of a, a true biblical message is that you leave worshiping.
CHASE: Mm.
JD: And he said that there, there should come a time in every sermon. Where the pen goes down, whether you're writing down action steps or facts about, you know, whatever, where the pen goes down and the eyes go up and you stop [00:30:00] saying, oh my God, look at all these things that I've gotta do for you.
And you start saying, oh my God, look at what you've done for me. And so my benchmark really, and I, I hope this doesn't sound too hyper spiritual, but are people. Loving Jesus more and are they really being moved to worship? Are they leaving? Are they talking about what a creative sermon that was? Are they talking about even the things they gotta do?
Or are they, you know, is am I gonna leave the Summit Church whenever that is? Am I gonna leave that body of people more in love with Jesus? Because they realize how much? God is in love with them. Is he really glorified in the, in the preaching? That's probably the one that I, I think about the most. The other, and I would say a much, or, you know, much secondary thing is, is have I, have I given something to the people that are in the room in a way that would really help them grow?
Whether they're the, you know, mom that's struggling because she's, you know, trying to work two jobs. Take care of her single mom, take care of her kids. [00:31:00] Is it, you know, the the, the, the, we have a, a large prison audience that listens to us and I think about them, like what kind of hope is there in there for them?
I think about all the teenagers in our church. I think about some just pure unbelieving or de-churched, deconstructing people. And I'm like, am I addressing their questions or am I just talking to a little echo chamber of Christians who like sermons. You know, I really wanna, I wanna be an evangelist. I wanna be a leader and a disciple maker.
I, I, I, I hinted at this a moment ago, but, ultimately preaching is part of the disciple making command and the great commission. You know, it's been pointed out, the Great Commission only has one verb in it. The verb is make disciples. All the other things in the Greek commission that look to us in English, like verbs are in Greek, they're sles going, baptizing, teaching them to observe all things.
Those are all sles. And what that means in Greek is that they come out of the verb, the center verb is make disciples, which means my job is [00:32:00] not teaching them to observe all things. My job is making disciples and I'm using. Teaching all things as a part of the disciple making process. So that's my question is have I made disciples better through the teaching of all things and the Greek things that I pointed out and all the history, have I made disciples
CHASE: Yeah.
JD: better?
That's that's what, that's my benchmark.
CHASE: So good. What would you say, what's two or three things you would encourage for the young pastor? Maybe one that's just stepping into the pulpit weekly, or maybe one that you know, gets a shot to teach on the big stage, however big that is, maybe three or four times a year. What would you encourage them to do?
Maybe some habits, maybe some books to read, maybe some priorities or perspective.
JD: Yeah, one would be give it time.
CHASE: Yeah.
JD: It really is. I mean, I man, I just, I stepped in and I wanted to, you know, Malcolm Gladwell ends up being right. The 10,000 hours is what it takes to get good at something, and there's really no shortcut to that. I don't care how many books you read, how much you listen to, you know, take every chance.[00:33:00]
Especially if you're listening to this right now and you're, you don't, you're not really even in a pulpit yet. I mean, you know, I used to preach at rest homes and FCAs with two people and I mean, it was just like, but I was, I was getting, I was getting reps and I was learning. So take every chance, if you're called as a preacher, every, I'd never heard a sermon probably for seven or eight years.
After I was you kind, I just started to discern the call that I didn't rere in my head and figure out how I, how I would've done that. Yeah. It might be the greatest preacher in the world, but I'm like, well, I would've done it this way. And, and that's healthy, you know, it's a, it is a good thing. So one is, is give it time.
Two is you know, really, really meditate. Ask God like, alright, am I doing this A to glorify God and b, make disciples, or is there some other thing in my heart that I really enjoy? Because if, if your preaching ever gets beyond those two things, then it's, I feel like it's gotten off course and become idolatrous.
It's to, to make people love God and, and [00:34:00] to make disciples. I probably the third thing I would really encourage them to is, is I feel like most of us practically, we try to do too much in sermons. I've really been attracted. I'm not a one point preacher, you know, where you just, but I would say that I'm more and more things are getting simpler where I'm like, there's one point that I'm gonna try to, I'm gonna try to, I may say it three or four different ways, or this point may have different components, but I want people to be able to summarize the entire message in kinda one.
One thing, realizing that life change, John Piper said it, sermons don't change people. Books don't change people. Sentences change people. And so there needs to be a, some kind of sentence in there that that captures the whole thing that people say, my life is different now 'cause of that one, that one sentence.
And so I think when I go back and listen to earlier sermons earlier, sometimes even five years ago, it's like a Wikipedia entry. Like I'm, you know, I'm like, I'm trying to literally put everything in there [00:35:00] about this subject. I'm like, you know what? These people have room for one thought
CHASE: Yeah.
JD: on kind of this subject.
I'm not gonna try to do the Wikipedia article. I'm just gonna try to give them this one thing and realize that over a lifetime, they'll assemble the rest.
CHASE: Yeah. No, that's good. Well, thanks for that. We, we have something called the quickfire round, and so I wanna just ask you just a handful of questions. Five or six. So that the, the, the younger preachers, those that are just starting out will realize I am not alone, the stuff that I'm experiencing.
But have you ever just bombed during a sermon? Like
absolutely bombed?
JD: I mean, I, I, I used to walk off stage, especially those first ones and be like, I, I, I gotta do something else in my life.
That was absolutely terrible.
CHASE: Do you remember a specific one or No, there's just too many to remember.
JD: I, it really is. Yeah. I mean, just sometimes what what's frustrating is when you, one of the reasons I manuscript is 'cause I get [00:36:00] so frustrated. Like, like one sermon would kill,
CHASE: Yeah.
JD: and then the next, I I, the same message. And I'm like, and I'd say it and it wouldn't land. So I'd say it again and I'd try it, you know, and, and I'd circle that runway like 10 times.
And
CHASE: Yeah.
JD: started to be like 55 minutes an hour trying to, trying to, trying to create what happened in the first service.
CHASE: So it happens to all of us. I think the last time I did it was in, it was in 2014 up in Asheville to college, and I tried to shrink a 40 minute message to a 14 minute message, and I got off the stage and my wife was like, what was that? And I was like, I have no idea. So
JD: I remember one time this'll I hope this doesn't come out and discourage somebody in the wrong way, but I just really felt the Lord, like I had my sermon, I had and it was ready. And I felt like the Lord was saying, I want you to do something different and I want you to talk about. And I was like, well, I don't, so I'm just gonna get up there.
So I got up there and I, and I tried to pull a Francis Chan, you
know.
CHASE: Yeah,
JD: You just start talking on a word and 45 minutes later, nobody could tell you what you said. But it was awesome, you know, and, and I, [00:37:00] so I got up there and I was like, oh, I just wanna talk about forgiveness. And man, I puttered around for 12 or 13 minutes and I was like, this is awful.
Like, I just was kind of round, I was like, and something else I've been thinking about and how about this? And this is what happened to you. And it was just, it was terrible. And my, my only hope is maybe in all the awfulness, there was one person out there that needed to hear one little shard of something about forgiveness.
And God said, we're gonna do that today. Who knows?
CHASE: What is the most distracting thing to happen in the audience as you were preaching?
JD: Well, two, three weeks ago, a woman, you know, passed out on the front row. And the, the, the distracting part though was, I mean, I love our EMS workers and our fire, but you know, sometimes there's a handful of people that kind of live for that moment. Yeah. And so they're like down front. I mean, this is like their moment to shine.
They're giving orders. I'm trying to preach. 'cause you know, I mean, two thirds of the people listening to me are listening through that camera right there. [00:38:00] So they don't, they can't even see anything. And most of the people in the audience can't see it. But now I got people coming in and they're, you know, yelling stuff at each other across, and I'm like, guys, you just, because I could see, she wasn't like, it wasn't life threatening.
I was like, just, you know, kind of move her out and, but it, but it turned into a thing like down front. So that was a pretty distracting thing one time. I so I had a cold or getting over a cold and I told a joke and it, I made myself laugh. I. And so when I made myself laugh, I, you know, I kinda laughed and blew this like snot sickle out on my shirt and I saw it and I thought, I bet you I can get it before anybody sees it.
So, so I took my hand and I went like that to like, and it just, it was a gray shirt, like gray, so it smeared it. And so now it's this big, like, I mean, it looked like I'd been shot and, and so I just had to stop and tell everybody, I'm like, y'all. I just blew snot outta my nose and I just smeared it. And I don't know, there's no way to recover from this.
So could we all just take a [00:39:00] moment, think about how awful this is, and then I'm gonna keep going,
CHASE: That's hilarious. I think that one takes the cake. You're a brave man to wear a gray shirt on stage too.
JD: you know? So at one other quick. So my son, we did this Christmas at, at the Durham Poorman Arts Center a couple weeks ago. And I had my son quote. Luke two before I got up to preach. He's 14. Actually he was 13 at the time and it was, you know, it, it, it, he did a great job. So before the first service, he text me from his, you know, his, his little watch and he's like, 'cause he's on the opposite side of the stage.
He's like, dad, I need you here now. All, all caps now. I go over to where he is, he's back in the, our little green room and he's got this panicked look because he was like he was like, dad, I was, I had to use the bathroom and I missed. And so he had on a pair of khaki pants and it's like he's about to get up in front of like 3000 people, you know?
He is like big debut. And I was like, son. I was like, I want you to know that [00:40:00] this happens to me enough that I always have a hairdryer in the green room supplies. Because when you run that water fountain and it splashes up
CHASE: Yeah.
JD: I'm like, I'm saying, so whether it's pee or whether it's
CHASE: The water.
bottle condensation. Yeah.
JD: And it drips in the wrong
CHASE: Yeah.
JD: I just like, just use the hairdryer
CHASE: Yeah.
JD: realized that dad's done this at least 50 times while he was preaching. And so he was like, okay, so, and then by the time you got up, you couldn't see it.
CHASE: I I recorded Christmas Eve. I recorded it two years ago, got off stage, felt great, and the guy said, Hey, your fly was down the whole time. And I was like, what? But the camera shot was chest up, so I'm like, I'm good. It's
JD: You're perfect. Right?
CHASE: it. Yeah. On a more serious note, have you ever experienced anxiety or depression during ministry?
Any mental health issues?
JD: I feel like I'm supposed to say yes, but I'm, I'm, and how God wires different people. I have a, a, maybe a point I could make with [00:41:00] this that that's just not something I've yet to experience. But I want to say I know enough people whose walk with God is better than mine, whose skill in ministry exceeds mine that have been through those seasons enough that, you know, we all want to imitate each other.
And whether it's somebody's how they work or you know, how they preach or how they deal with emotional thing, you've gotta. God gave you a particular vessel of your body and you've gotta learn it. And I've had to do that in some areas of my life. A lot of areas where I'm just like, God did not make me that person.
And I, I've had gift envy I've had, you know, I've coveted. So, I want to give that answer just very cautiously at some of it is just the energy and the mindset. There's some of the relationships guy's given me. It's, I've never had that, and I
CHASE: Yeah.
JD: I would be more helpful if I could say, oh [00:42:00] yes. You know, me and Louis Giglio, we both went through time in 2022 where we wanted to quit or
CHASE: Yeah.
JD: it was.
And I, I mean, because I think that's real, it just, anyway,
CHASE: Has there been a time where, where it's been hard to preach, maybe not because of depression or anxiety, but because of family stuff or interpersonal relationships and you, you have to compartmentalize so much to get up there because I mean, the truth is lot, lots of stuff can happen Monday through Saturday,
JD: Yeah.
CHASE: two 30, I mean three 30 minute periods where you have to get up there and just preach.
JD: Yeah. There've been a couple times that, you know, like, I had to say to, you know, because Veronica and I, my wife and I were just, you know, according to first Peter, my prayers are being hindered because she and I are not in fellowship with each other. And to say, I, I, you know, 'cause then you start to feel like a hypocrite.
I have this kind of moment of like, all right, you know, but I'm like, okay, Lord, I am very committed to working through this with her and getting to the other side. I don't know what the solution is, but my yes is on the [00:43:00] table. A couple times have there been things, you know, when you start to worry about your kids and you're like, if my own kids don't follow this, have I lost my motivation to preach altogether?
Like, I almost felt angry, you know? Because I mean, you know, I have teenagers and I don't care who they are as a teenager. They're, you know, you're, they're gonna have weeks and months where you're like, what is happening in you right now? You know? And, and every parent fears the loss of their kids. So I'm not trying to imply anything special about my, my kids, or none of them right now are in a state where, you know, by the grace of God, they're, they've rejected these things.
But you just have moments where you're, you're, and you feel like, you know, I almost felt like God. Some of these seasons, like, you let me down. Like you didn't keep up your side of the bargain. I was supposed to do this, and you were supposed to do that. And it makes you really kind of have to go back to the gospel to say, alright, what do I deserve?
And, you know, am I really, am I in a place where I'm gonna be more righteous and more carried and more compassionate than [00:44:00] God is? And the answer of course is no. And I've gotta be willing to trust him with some of those things. Luther Martin Luther said one of the greatest things about faith, he said, faith sometimes is just not thinking about it. Because, because if you're trying to think about it, you're gonna wrestle with the devil and lose. So you just say, I know God's got this. I know he's, he's good. I know he is got a solution. I can't enter that right now. And when I step into this pulpit, I'm gonna have to shut that off. And that, that is a, a, a, a statement of faith because I know that eventually, you know, when as I getting through this, God's gonna have a solution and I can trust him with it.
CHASE: That's good. Well, thank you so much for hanging out with us jd.
JD: Yeah, I feel like I, I feel like I did the, the classic preacher thing with the rapid fire, like rapid fire, and each of those answers was about two minutes each
CHASE: Sorry.
Thank. Yeah, dude, appreciate it. \ ,