On Preaching: The Call, The Craft, and The Cost
The Word opens. And for a few minutes, eternity presses against the ordinary; against the commute that morning, against the argument that happened on the way to church, against the grief that has not lifted in months. Something is at stake in that moment. Something that cannot be replicated by a podcast, a self-help book, or a motivational talk dressed in theological language.
Paul asks it plainly in Romans 10: "How are they to hear without someone preaching?"
The church is formed, shaped, and sustained through the faithful proclamation of God's Word. Not primarily through programs, platforms, or personalities, but through preaching. Which means that for those of us called to it, the work of preaching is not one item on a long list of pastoral responsibilities. It is the responsibility that gives shape and weight to everything else.
That reality carries with it a serious implication: preaching must never be treated casually.
The Call Is Not Enough
Here is something I have had to sit with: being called to preach is not the same thing as being equipped to preach.
The call is real. The call is sacred. I would never minimize it. But the call is the beginning of the story, not the whole of it. Paul tells Timothy to "rightly handle the word of truth," and that word rightly implies the possibility of handling it wrongly. It implies skill. It implies effort. It implies that faithful proclamation is something that can be done well or done poorly, and that the difference matters.
Which is to say: preaching is not only a calling. It is a craft.
The Kobe Standard
A few years ago, during what would be Kobe Bryant's final NBA season, I found myself watching his farewell tour with a kind of awe. Not just for the career, but for what his teammates and coaches kept saying about how he got there. The stories were almost mythological — 4 am workouts, film sessions that stretched for hours, a level of preparation that most people never see because it happens long before anyone is watching.
Around that same time, I was the Sunday school teacher for a group of middle school boys and we got to talking about Kobe. I read them a few lines from his poem Dear Basketball, the letter he wrote to the game he loved, the thing that had his whole heart from the time he was a kid. And I asked them a question that has stayed with me since:
If this is how far an athlete is willing to go for a game — a game — how much more should we be willing to go for the cause of Christ?
Now I say that with a bit of a smile and a bit of tongue in cheek. But I also mean it with everything I have.
I refuse to let an athlete's dedication to a sport make my dedication to preaching look weak in comparison. The sermon that lands on Sunday morning is not the product of Sunday morning. It is the product of years of study, of wrestling with texts, of learning how language works and how people hear, of sitting before God long enough that the message comes from somewhere real. Kobe did not show up at the Staples Center and figure it out in the layup line. And we cannot afford to treat the pulpit that way either. The stakes are infinitely higher.
Preaching deserves careful study. Disciplined preparation. Thoughtful structure. And a life that is being genuinely shaped by the very truths being proclaimed, because God is worthy of a preacher who has lived in and loves the text, not one who has merely visited it.
The Cost Nobody Talks About
There is something that does not make it into most conversations about preaching craft: the cost.
Not the cost of preparation, though that is real. The deeper cost, the one that E.M. Bounds kept writing about, the one that Brother Lawrence understood, is the cost of the preacher's own life with God. Preaching is not ultimately sustained by talent or technique. It is sustained by prayer. By a genuine, ongoing, unhurried life before God that gives the sermon its weight and the preacher his authority.
You can be a gifted communicator and still be preaching out of a shallow well. And the congregation will drink what you give them without knowing there should be more. That is not a small thing. That is a stewardship problem.
The cost of preaching well is not just the hours in the study. It is the willingness to be a person who is continually formed by what you are asking others to believe.
But this cost is not only spiritual, it is also practical. The preacher must give himself to the study of his craft.
That means learning how communication works, how structure either serves the text or obscures it, how the same truth delivered with clarity lands somewhere entirely different than when it is delivered carelessly.
It means reading widely: theology, yes, but also history, literature, and culture. It means returning to sermons you have preached and asking hard questions. Not "did they like it?" but "did it faithfully handle the Word?" It means being a student long after anyone requires you to be.
Most of this happens in private, long before anyone is watching. The cost of the craft is paid in the quiet. And preaching that costs the preacher nothing tends to give the congregation nothing.
Resources That Have Shaped My Preaching
With that in mind, here is what has shaped how I think about all three. The list below is not exhaustive, and it is not prescriptive. It is simply what has shaped me — the books that have refined how I think about the call, the craft, and the cost of standing before people and opening the Word of God.
The Bible
The foundation, the authority, and the source. Preaching begins and ends here. Every other resource on this list exists to help us return to this one more faithfully.
Preaching and Preachers — Martyn Lloyd-Jones
This was the first book on preaching I ever read, and it is largely responsible for how seriously I take the work. He does not let you treat the pulpit casually — writing about preaching the way a surgeon talks about surgery, with a sober understanding of what is actually at stake. This book will raise your standard and challenge you to hold it.
Speaking God's Words — Peter Adam
A helpful theological grounding for why preaching is what it is. Adam reminds us that preaching is not fundamentally about communication technique — it is about faithfully delivering what God has said. The clarity this brings to the task is worth the read alone.
Communicating for a Change — Andy Stanley
Practically speaking, this book changed how I structure sermons. Stanley is ruthlessly focused on clarity — on making sure people can actually follow, remember, and apply what is being said. Not every instinct here will fit every preacher, but the core questions it asks are ones worth wrestling with.
Say It! Celebrating Preaching in the African American Tradition — Cleophus J. LaRue
This one is personal for me. LaRue excavates the depth, beauty, and power of the Black preaching tradition — the theological seriousness, the communal rootedness, the movement from proclamation to celebration. If you want to understand what preaching at its most full-bodied looks like, start here.
Preaching — Fred B. Craddock
A classic for good reason. Craddock sharpens your thinking about how a sermon moves — how it builds, how it engages, how it lands. Particularly helpful for preachers who want to think more carefully about the listener's experience.
Power Through Prayer — E. M. Bounds
The corrective reminder every preacher needs. Bounds is unrelenting: preaching is not sustained by talent, polish, or preparation alone. It is sustained by prayer. This is a short book. Read it slowly.
The Practice of the Presence of God — Brother Lawrence
Not a preaching book in the traditional sense. But a profound reminder that what happens in the pulpit is only as deep as what is happening in the preacher's soul. Lawrence's vision of an ongoing, moment-by-moment life with God is a quiet rebuke to anyone who has let the work of ministry crowd out the life with God that makes the work worth anything.
Outliers — Malcolm Gladwell (Honorable Mention)
Gladwell's argument about mastery — that excellence in any domain is the product of sustained, intentional practice over time — has no direct theology in it. But it has everything to do with preaching. Growth in the pulpit is not accidental. It is cultivated. It is the accumulation of thousands of hours of study, delivery, reflection, and refinement. The preachers worth listening to did not arrive there by gifting alone.
Preaching is a sacred responsibility.
To stand before people and say, "Thus says the Lord", to open the Word and ask a room full of human beings to let it reshape them, is no small thing. It deserves everything we have.
So we study. We pray. We labor.
And we do all of it with one aim: that people would behold Christ clearly, believe His Word deeply, and become more like Him.
Behold. Believe. Become.