The Unexpected Benefits of Preaching Cohorts
By Joe Stecz
Ministry is busy. It has its way of consuming us. Before working in ministry, I worked in the insurance industry. While I was busy with my career and raising a family, nothing compares with the busy of ministry. It’s just different.
A ministry friend has said, “No one really gets it…this job, this calling. It just feels lonely sometimes, like no one really gets the challenges I face, the heartbreak, the hard conversations, the big decisions, the questions.” He goes on to ask, “Am I really making a difference? Is all of this worth it? Am I doing this right?” If you work or serve in ministry, have you asked questions like this?
It was questions like this that inspired the Evangelical Free Church of America to start cohorts to help those of us in ministry be spiritually healthy and find biblical community with others in the same area of ministry.
At the same time the EFCA was launching these cohorts, I was already participating in a preaching cohort with The Rephidim Project. When I joined this preaching cohort, I had no idea how I was going to fit ‘another thing’ into my already far too busy schedule. Little did I know the unexpected benefits of adding one more thing. I am so glad I said yes because I have learned to expect the unexpected. The unexpected benefits exceeded my expectations and improved my ability to preach more effectively. Let me explain how.
When my preaching cohort met for the first time, and every other time since, we did not rush into the practical but focused on the personal. What do I mean by that? Far too often, as busy people, we rush into meetings, our daily responsibilities, and yes, even cohorts with what we believe is most helpful, and we bypass what’s most essential. Not so with The Rephidim pastoral cohort process. Rather than jumping into the how-to’s, we first focused our attention in God’s direction. We start our time together with a cohort group devotional. Now, that may sound perfunctory, like an obligation or something we might approach superficially. But we never did. We always prioritize our relationship with God before our responsibility to the church.
Have you noticed how organizations rise or fall based on the quality of leadership? This includes the church. Now, if we are paying attention to the news recently, sadly, we hear story after story of men in ministry failing miserably because there is little to no accountability.
It’s why every cohort devotional (along with that one time when our cohort leader’s daughter was visiting from out of state and led us in worship) emphasizes and challenges us to build our lives, ministries, and preaching upon our union with Jesus Christ in His death, burial, and resurrection. Imagine the impact when every preaching cohort participant receives this unforeseen benefit. When this is present in the pulpit, God’s people are blessed because their pastor is preaching from a place where he is at peace with God, allowing God’s word to preach to him before he preaches to others. This reminds me of one of my recent morning devotionals in Ezra 7:10, which tells us, “Ezra had set his heart to study the law of the LORD and to practice it, and to teach His statutes and ordinances in Israel.” This emphasis recognizes the significance and importance of investing in our relationship with God before rushing into our responsibility with the church.
I want to pause for a moment and ask everyone reading this article an important question before we move into our second unexpected benefit. What are you prioritizing in your preaching ministry? Is it your relationship with God or your responsibility with the church? If you are continually hopping from one responsibility to another without giving much (if any) thought to your relationship with God, you might have your priorities out of order. I do not ask this as someone who has never had his priorities out of order. It’s why I greatly appreciate and attempt to elevate the importance of this preaching cohort in my life. It’s because I have people in my life who have care and concern for me as a person before they have care and concern for me as a pastor. That’s why I encourage others to participate in ministry cohorts. They are invaluable because they are places where we talk about and encounter the personal before we talk about and develop the practical.
What I expected when I agreed to participate in the preaching cohort was that I would be adding to what I was already doing. I did not expect that I would be changing or doing anything that was all that different. What I found was that I was slowly but surely buying into removing some of my preconceived ideas about preaching, especially in the areas of preparation and presentation.
The process I work through with my preparation has developed over twenty-plus years of preaching. It helps me get from the tee box to the green, to use a golf metaphor. I study and pray through the text until I have what I call my sermon-ready sheet. This prepares me to know what type of message I am going to preach, similar to when I’m standing on the tee box and deciding what club I’m going to use. This sermon-ready sheet identifies everything I need before I begin writing the message – the big idea and supporting points of the big idea from the text, along with the reason why this message needs to be preached.
What happened when I began attending the preaching cohort was that gradually, my approach changed. No, I didn’t scrap everything with the process I had developed over the years, but I improved upon it. I could give countless examples how, but let me just list a few. There are three examples: two that relate to my preparation and one that relates to my presentation.
First, I have added something I never thought I would do and that’s something called block diagramming. It sounded so technical and, to be honest, difficult, so I was never really interested in giving it a try. But when we read and talked about it and then practiced doing it in one of our cohort sessions, I realized how helpful it was. It made outlining the message so much easier. It saves me so much time going back to my notes and reviewing them about the basics of block diagramming that I can’t imagine not doing it now. I even introduced this to someone I am mentoring and he has found it to be incredibly beneficial as well.
Second, I have always fought the idea that you must write your introduction last. It just didn’t make sense to me. I am a systematic person, so I thought it made the most sense to start with the intro. What I learned was I had to try it before I realized I liked it. Since I began writing my introductions after I had written the message, I have noticed how much better they are. They connect the big idea with the message with more clarity and unity.
Third, when we meet together, we listen to and review one another’s sermons. While this can be very difficult to hear, constructive criticism is beneficial because these are brothers who know the ins and outs of preaching. They know what it takes to prepare and present a message. We are all learning and developing together. So, hearing from one another like this is extremely helpful because we talk about what went well with the presentation as well as what and how the message could be presented better. It’s an overwhelmingly positive and encouraging experience. We don’t feel beat up but built up to “preach the word in season and out of season” as Paul writes in 2 Timothy 4:2.
I suspect the unexpected benefits of The Rephidim Project’s Preaching Cohorts are different for everyone. I have come to expect the unexpected and anticipate there’s more to come for me and, hopefully, for you. If you are in a preaching cohort, I’d love to hear about your unexpected benefits. If you are not, I can only say that ministry is busy. It has a way of consuming us. But please make the investment and become a preaching cohort participant. You will reap the benefits personally. And those you have the privilege of preaching to will appreciate the investment you have made in your relationship with God as well as your responsibilities to those you serve.
Joe Stecz has served in the Evangelical Free Church of America for 7 years. He currently is the Associate Pastor at Hope Community Church in Mount Joy, PA. He believes nothing compares to living with purpose, on purpose, and helping others do the same. He can be reached at revjstecz@gmail.com.
