Sometimes I genuinely wonder what people actually hear when I preach. Not what I say . Not what I carefully pray over, study, write, revise, and deliver. What people hear . Do they hear one word they don’t like and then mentally check out for the remaining fifteen minutes? Do they grab onto a phrase, assume they know where I’m going, and stop listening before I even get there? I suspect that happens more often than we’d like to admit. Last week, I was chatting with a congrega

Not long ago, someone asked me a question that stopped me in my tracks: “Why don’t preachers preach from the Bible anymore?” I’ll admit, I was taken aback. My first instinct was to laugh — not in a dismissive way, but in surprise. Because as far as I know, I do preach from the Bible. Every week, in fact. That’s literally where I begin. So, I took a breath and asked this person to tell me more — to unpack what they meant. I got curious. They weren’t able to fully articulate t