What is The Preaching Co?
We were sitting around the conference room table trying to solve a problem together as a pastoral team. A few months down the road there was a Sunday Terry Thompson, our Senior Pastor, was going to be gone. Normally this was an easy fix, we had an Associate Pastor who typically stepped into those Sundays. The problem this time was that the Associate Pastor was also scheduled to be gone that same Sunday.
We brainstormed some of the solutions you might expect: Were any of our other Associate Pastors available to preach that day? Who else did we have in the church who could step in? Should we bring in a guest preacher for that Sunday? We talked through different scenarios for a short time when Terry threw out an idea that sent a shiver down my spine:
“Brock, you will preach that day.”
My immediate reply was, “No I won’t.”
To which he quickly replied, “Yes you will” in a way that let me know this wasn’t a suggestion to be debated but a decision that had been made.
So, there I was, a 22-year-old ministry intern who had just recently been handed the responsibilities of the student ministry who was just assigned his first Sunday morning to preach to the church. This was a moment a young aspiring youth pastor should look forward to, and yet this youth pastor had made a deal with God about 18-months earlier, and the deal with God went like this:
“Ok God, I will go into ministry so long as I never have to preach.”
Preaching to a church on a Sunday morning in my mind wasn’t something I could do. It was too daunting. Too scary. Too much responsibility to handle. And yet not even a year into local church ministry God had already not held to the deal I thought we had made of me never having to preach.
A few months later, Sunday came. I had prepped, sought counsel, rehearsed, and prayed as if my ministry life depended on it. The final worship song ended, I took a deep breath, climbed the stairs, opened my Bible to the book of Job, and began to preach. At that moment two things happened:
I preached a very poor sermon.
God revealed a call on my life and a passion to use my life to preach his word.
From that Sunday in the spring of 2010 until this day God has been growing this passion to preach the word. The ministry mission statement of my life is to passionately preach the word of God in the power of the Spirit of God to see lives changed for the glory of God…and to equip and encourage the next generation of preachers to do the same. From that mission statement, and nearly 15 years now of preaching the word, the passion and vision for The Preaching Co. was born.
WHAT IS THE PREACHING CO?
The command from God is clear. The battle cry of our ministry is summarized in Paul’s words to Timothy in 2 Timothy 4:1-2 “I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: preach the word; be ready in season and out season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort with complete patience and teaching.”
With this clear charge as the driving force of all we do, the mission of The Preaching Co. is to equip and encourage the next generation of preachers to preach the word. We are committed to expository preaching as the way this command to preach the word gets fulfilled. We define expository preaching as drawing out the message from God’s word, making that the message of our sermon, and proclaiming that message to God’s people by explaining it, illustrating it, and applying it. We believe every church should be marked by the faithful, powerful, Spirit-led, expositional, applicational preaching of the word of God. The Preaching Co. exists to equip and encourage men God is calling to fulfill God’s charge to preach the word.
We fulfill this mission by building all our content, coaching, cohorts, and community on our Six Preaching Co. Pillars:
· Convictional Belief: Developing and deepening a biblical conviction to preach the word.
· Healthy Preacher: Cultivating the healthy heart and healthy family of a faithful preacher.
· Excellent Preparation: Establishing a clear and intentional process to prepare biblical sermons.
· Engaging Delivery: Sharpening the delivery of sermons to engage the hearts of hearers.
· Dependent Prayer: Practicing prayer for supernatural power in and out of the pulpit.
· Enduring Impact: Growing a resolve to persevere in the call to preach.
If God would be pleased, we pray The Preaching Co. will be an instrument in his hands to mold godly preachers of his word who grow in their conviction and ability to preach the word and who endure in that call to one day finish well for his glory.
This is what The Preaching Co. is about and the mission God is calling us to. In our second post we will cover how we will seek to execute this mission God has called us to.
