[00:00:00] and I would go online and I was just not finding what I was looking for. And out of that sort of birthed this dream, which was, what if someone could really curate the best resources that are out there? And just to bring those to one place so that when you do get stuck, as I did, and I'm sure we all have been in that situation, you know, where you can find something with both consistency and with excellence.
[00:00:28] Welcome to episode 353. In this digital age, why is it so hard to find great worship resources like sermon illustrations and liturgy? Well, it just got a whole lot easier. Today we talk with the founder of the Pastors Workshop, Stuart Strachan, about how his nonprofit can make your life easier. That's today on The Reclaimed Leader.
[00:00:54] Hey everyone, I'm Jason Tucker and welcome to The Reclaimed Leader Podcast, a podcast where two pastors have weekly conversations about leading healthier churches. As always, I'm joined by my PIC, my pastor in crime, Jesse Skiffington. How's it going, Jesse?
[00:01:11] Well, we're doing okay, Jason. Hanging in there, man. It's just, you know, fall is inching closer and closer here. And there's just a lot of prep and a lot of things to get ready for and creativity to come up with.
[00:01:22] And ideas to find about what to talk about and what to preach on and all that. And it's just, it's good. And it's, it's a constant grind. We talk about that a lot here. Just how it, it can be difficult to keep the ball rolling and keep the momentum going.
[00:01:37] And so, anyway, we're kind of in that lane today, trying to think about what are the resources that help people working in the trenches of ministry or really, or any organization, but particularly, you know, today we're talking to pastors or those that are preaching on a regular basis or developing worship services.
[00:01:54] How do we stay on top of our game and continue to provide excellence and an experience that's going to usher people into God's presence, help them connect with the message of the gospel in a way that leads to transformation in their lives.
[00:02:06] And that is a challenge to do that well in a week-to-week-to-week basis. So we're going to talk a little bit about that today.
[00:02:14] It is. Doesn't it feel like, I mean, some weeks I am fired up. I can't wait to get that sermon written and to just kind of let my brain go. And then there's weeks like the one that I'm having right now, to be perfectly honest. And that's, I'm just back from vacation. Everything's hit all at once. We got stuff going on in the church that we got to solve. We got, and it's just like, oh my gosh, I, I gotta, I gotta get to it. And maybe you're feeling like the well's a little dry.
[00:02:43] Man, I wish there were something to just kind of snap me out of it or to give me a spark or to give me some ideas. And today we're welcoming to a podcast, an old seminary friend, Stu Strachan. He is here with us and he has a company, a nonprofit called the Pastors Workshop that helps pastors to come up with those ideas.
[00:03:04] He's got sermon illustrations and liturgy and quotes and all sorts of resources to help you put together a worship service in a way that really kind of goes together. It's, it's, it weaves together different ideas. And I think is that can be that creative spark to get you going.
[00:03:22] Cause sometimes, isn't it true? Like you'll watch a movie or you read a book or somebody will say something all of a sudden, bam. And your brain just sort of does some sort of weird mental filing and starts putting ideas together. And that's all you needed.
[00:03:36] Yeah. You just got to get the ball rolling sometimes. And other times you feel stuck and you just need some help doing something that's going to matter. And so I appreciate that today as you're thinking about the Pastors Workshop of a way to kind of get the ball rolling and to be thinking about your, the ideas and things that you want to do to create meaningful worship experiences.
[00:03:56] So really grateful for Stu coming on, talk and shop with us. And this idea of the Pastors Workshop we're going to hear came out of his lived experience as a pastor, needing to come up with these kinds of things all the time and thinking, man, wouldn't it be great if I created a resource for other pastors out there too. So looking forward to hearing Stu share about how the idea came about and what he's doing with it now.
[00:04:18] Yeah. And listen, listeners hang until the end because you are going to get an offer from Stu to save a whole bunch of money on what is already a very reasonable subscription service. So hang in there, get a special offer for our listeners. And now let us go to our interview with Stu Strachan.
[00:04:35] Well, Stuart Strachan is an ordained Presbyterian pastor. His primary passion is equipping the saints for the ministry of the church. He loves preaching, teaching, and helping churches cast vision for what it means to follow Jesus in the 21st century. Sounds like a good endeavor.
[00:04:53] He has served churches in a variety of capacities in California, Colorado, Pennsylvania, and Washington. He and his wife, Colleen, and their two children live in Colorado Springs, where she serves as a spiritual formation lead at Compassion International.
[00:05:07] And he is the founder of the Pastors Workshop that we're going to be talking about today, a curated digital library of resources to help pastors design and prepare to lead worship.
[00:05:16] And he is an old friend. And he is an old friend, not that he's old, but he's an old friend from back in the old timey seminary days. Please welcome Stuart Strachan to the podcast.
[00:05:26] Oh, I am old. I've got the surgeries to prove it, but it's great to be with you guys. I still have memories of being in summer Greek with you, Jason, and just all struggling to figure it out with my now wife at the time was my girlfriend. So, you know, we've all grown up a bit from that time.
[00:05:45] Have we, though? I don't know.
[00:05:47] Well, maybe not. I hope there's a few edges that have, you know, been smoothed out. I know I had quite a few.
[00:05:53] Certainly rounders, dude. I think that's fair.
[00:05:56] That's very fair.
[00:05:59] Well, man, it's great to have you on here. I think what's really cool is the opportunity not just to catch up, but I was actually wondering why we haven't had you on before now.
[00:06:08] Because I think you have a resource that is really helpful to a lot of pastors.
[00:06:15] And I know that a lot of the pastors listening to our podcast will really find what you're doing a huge, huge help.
[00:06:21] But I want to, before we get into the pastor's workshop and all of that, take me from, you know, give us a Reader's Digest.
[00:06:28] We were in seminary together.
[00:06:31] And what happens after that and what happens that leads you to this idea for this digital resource?
[00:06:39] Well, it's funny. I like to joke with people who've asked me, you know, what brought you to Colorado Springs?
[00:06:45] You know, if you meet people in the community, and I always like to say, crisis.
[00:06:49] Yes.
[00:06:51] But we'll get into this later.
[00:06:53] But one of my favorite quotes is attributed to Winston Churchill.
[00:06:57] And it says, never let a good crisis go to waste.
[00:06:59] And so I joke about it.
[00:07:02] But, you know, like many people here, I'm sure that are listening and been through sort of some of the challenges, the ups and downs of ministry.
[00:07:10] You obviously hopefully get into it for the right reasons.
[00:07:13] You want to serve Jesus.
[00:07:14] You want to share the gospel.
[00:07:15] You want people to be alive, to be transformed.
[00:07:18] And, but you also bring yourself and you bring vision.
[00:07:23] Sometimes that's different than the vision of members of the church.
[00:07:27] Sometimes that's explicit.
[00:07:28] Sometimes it's not.
[00:07:30] And so I joke, we were, someone just once referred to my last call, which ended in 27, end of 2017, almost 2018, that I became the unintentional interim.
[00:07:44] I don't know if you've ever heard that title before.
[00:07:46] Yeah, yeah.
[00:07:47] But, you know, and really, honestly, I was doing the work that you guys are all about.
[00:07:52] I was trying to help a church that had been declined for 30 years.
[00:07:56] We had actually worked with a consultant.
[00:07:58] And so I had to pull up the roles for 30 years.
[00:08:01] And what I found was we had two years where it had been in the positive and all 20 and 28 years.
[00:08:08] It was in the negative.
[00:08:10] And the two years where it was in the positive was plus one and plus two.
[00:08:13] So this church had been in a lot of decline for a variety of reasons.
[00:08:20] And so I was just wanting to help them kind of turn a corner.
[00:08:24] I think one of the things I learned along the way, I was a young pastor.
[00:08:28] I obviously had my, this is the way I think it should be, is that you got to know pace of change.
[00:08:34] You got to find people in your congregation when you're making changes just to say, hey, are we going too fast?
[00:08:40] Because for me, it feels like we're going really slow.
[00:08:43] But I think a lot of congregants who have maybe been used to a certain way of doing things for a long time, you know, it's like, wow, why are we, it's a whiplash.
[00:08:52] And so, you know, we got in a situation, unfortunately, where I think I was just doing too much to try to turn this church around.
[00:09:00] And the cool thing was we were getting the young families, we were getting the college students, we were getting, you know, from across the street, we were doing all that.
[00:09:09] And yet, some of the leaders just decided they did not like the changes that were taking place.
[00:09:17] And so we ended up leaving that call.
[00:09:20] And in the midst of that, which is as a joke I say about being in crisis, one of the things that happened while I was at that church, there was a Sunday where a member came up to me afterwards.
[00:09:33] And this will make you laugh considering what I do now.
[00:09:36] But he came up to me after the service and he said, you know, you don't tell a lot of stories.
[00:09:43] I'm thinking it's because you're so young.
[00:09:47] And, you know, they teach us in seminary to be, you know, open your ears to hear what people are saying.
[00:09:53] And if there's those moments of, oh, they're trying to say something here, maybe they're not going to be fully explicit.
[00:10:01] Hey, you know, you need to change this about your preaching.
[00:10:04] You need to add more stories.
[00:10:07] But that was kind of an eye opener for me.
[00:10:11] And so I started trying to find more stories, more content for my sermons that would sort of bring the gospel text to life.
[00:10:19] And I would go online and I just, I was not finding what I was looking for.
[00:10:24] And out of that sort of birthed this dream, which was what if someone could, could really curate the best resources that are out there from the top pastors, scholars, researchers, people in the, you know, sort of writing on, you know, in the secular field, but people obviously within the church.
[00:10:47] And just to bring those to one place so that you could consistently find great content.
[00:10:54] We can talk about what that is in a second, but you could consistently find that great content so that when you do get stuck as I did, and I'm sure we all have been in that situation, you know, you can find something with both consistency and with excellence.
[00:11:08] That was, that was what I was trying to do.
[00:11:11] And so that's how we launched the pastor's worship.
[00:11:14] It's been about six years and it's insane how much time has passed.
[00:11:18] And it's been a rollercoaster ride for sure.
[00:11:20] But yeah, so that's a little bit, if that helps kind of catch you up.
[00:11:25] Well, I know the content creation side of sermon writing is one of the unique challenges for any pastor.
[00:11:31] I mean, we always joke around about how sermons are like old telephone pulls on an old highway.
[00:11:36] They just keep coming, right?
[00:11:37] You just, so to have stories, to have anecdotes, to have useful quotes or statistics or those kinds of things.
[00:11:44] It gets, it gets wearisome after a while if you're responsible for all of that.
[00:11:49] And so having resources that we can, that help solve that problem.
[00:11:53] It sounds like that was kind of what your heart was pointing toward and saying, I think this is the challenge and maybe we can provide something of a solution.
[00:12:02] And I think that's a helpful thing for pastors out there going, please just, I just need an anecdote here.
[00:12:08] I need something beyond just my own exegesis and exposition of the text.
[00:12:13] So, so Stu, I want to follow up a little bit just even before we get to the content of the pastor's workshop is, so you have this idea.
[00:12:23] Yeah.
[00:12:26] And at some point you execute to the point where you've got to build out a giant, massive website of content.
[00:12:38] And it's, it's you and I'm sure Colleen, you know, helping you out or whatever, but my goodness, that seems pretty daunting to me.
[00:12:48] How, at what point were you like, we're doing it, we're going in.
[00:12:51] And then how did you even get the ball rolling?
[00:12:54] Was it just you just like cranking away at the keyboard for a while?
[00:12:59] I mean, what did that look like?
[00:13:00] Oh man, you've, you know, I think more than anything, it was sheer ignorance of the task that was set ahead of me.
[00:13:09] But, you know, I will say it was primarily me.
[00:13:12] Colleen was at that point watching kids.
[00:13:15] And so the first I remember, so I, I kind of started a little bit in the, at the beginning of 2018, but really started working at it.
[00:13:24] I think starting in April, we launched about a month later and we launched with over 500 pages of content.
[00:13:33] And so I was working on it like not nonstop, but as almost every single minute of the day, I was finding content.
[00:13:42] I was adding.
[00:13:42] So I started, of course, with my stories that I had, you know, kind of compiled in my little, you know, Word document.
[00:13:48] Then I started, you know, asking around to other folks.
[00:13:52] I found myself a lot of times just in good books.
[00:13:55] One of the things I realized too, I mean, obviously the goal from the beginning was to find content that, really excellent content that, you know, it wasn't about me, right?
[00:14:06] It's not about the Stu show.
[00:14:07] This is really like, let's try to curate the best because the problem with the internet in general is it's, it's tons of content, tons of information, but no curation.
[00:14:17] No one who's going through that process of selecting the best pieces to be used.
[00:14:24] And so, yeah, man, it was, it was brutal.
[00:14:26] And there was this realization where I launched with these 550 pages of content after about a really a month of hard work and realized though that, you know, it's like, okay, I'm checking a page of quotes and there's like one or two.
[00:14:40] It's like, all right, I'm gonna have to backfill here.
[00:14:42] And, but then within another year, I think we had, you know, about a thousand to 2000 pages.
[00:14:49] We've just transitioned the site and we can talk about that if you want, but we have a brand new website launched end of May.
[00:14:55] And so what we did was we actually transferred my, let's just call it mediocre website that I created on WordPress into a real database.
[00:15:06] And so what that meant was taking 3000 pages of content, putting it through running some computer scripts and then cleaning up what is now 15,000 pieces of content.
[00:15:17] Wow.
[00:15:18] So that was the process.
[00:15:19] I will say it was a lot of elbow grease and perseverance.
[00:15:25] I like to joke early too, as we started to gain traction, like what's your secret?
[00:15:29] I'm like a long obedience in the same direction, you know, quote Eugene Peterson, but that's kind of what it was.
[00:15:36] That's awesome.
[00:15:38] So give us a taste.
[00:15:40] I'm looking, okay, I'm, I'm a pal.
[00:15:41] Let's say I'm a pastor writing a sermon.
[00:15:43] I'm, that never happens.
[00:15:44] You know, and I'm, and I'm thinking, okay, you know, I would love to, I want to make sure that the liturgy is kind of matching up with where I'm going with the sermon.
[00:15:52] And I, you know, I need, I got a personal story and I'm looking for kind of another story or a quote.
[00:15:57] What's, what do I do?
[00:15:58] Tell me what to do.
[00:16:00] It's a great question.
[00:16:01] Well, this is a massive difference between the old site and the new site and the old site.
[00:16:05] You kind of have to go, go to liturgy, say, okay, I'm tired.
[00:16:09] You know, I'm focused on light or I'm focused on joy or justification.
[00:16:12] And then you go to that page and then you go to another page, say, to find another piece of liturgy.
[00:16:16] Let's say you need, you got a call to worship.
[00:16:17] Now you need a prayer confession.
[00:16:19] And so you just kind of go bit by, and, and it was simple and it was easy to follow.
[00:16:23] I'm not saying it didn't work.
[00:16:25] And then you'd say, okay, now I'm into the sermon.
[00:16:27] So now I'm going to look these things up.
[00:16:29] You know, I've got a topical index.
[00:16:32] Now you can do all of that from one page.
[00:16:36] You can essentially what you can do, let's say you're, you're preaching a sermon on, on John one or on light.
[00:16:43] You can type either one of those right into the, into the menu bar.
[00:16:46] And then you're going to get a ton of responses.
[00:16:49] I mean, I, I looked up a light, I think, and we had something like 800, uh, or at least a few hundred.
[00:16:55] Yeah.
[00:16:55] 800 different entries that had the word light either actually tagged.
[00:17:00] Like, you know, we've gone in there and said this contents about that, or it had the word light in it.
[00:17:04] That's way too much.
[00:17:05] It's not very helpful.
[00:17:07] So, but then we have these, these, um, filters on the left-hand side of the site.
[00:17:13] And you can start to really get down into the nitty gritty of exactly what you're trying to find.
[00:17:19] So let's say, yeah, you need that illustration.
[00:17:21] Well, it's not just illustrations that we have.
[00:17:24] We've actually broken our illustrations into five different categories or four different categories.
[00:17:28] So we've got background content, sort of like, let's say, what's the, what's the Greek sort of word on, on light or something like that.
[00:17:37] That'd be called, that'd be our background content.
[00:17:39] You also, of course we have stories because stories are always sort of central illustration types.
[00:17:45] But you can also search by analogy if you're like, you know, I really kind of want to get at this by comparing it to something and kind of get our brains just to think about it a little bit differently or humor.
[00:17:55] You know, I mean, a lot of times people are looking for humor.
[00:17:57] I get that that's subjective, but we've really tried to make the site a cheese-free site.
[00:18:01] So, but with humor.
[00:18:04] Yeah.
[00:18:05] And so you can, you can like, you can kind of dial it in.
[00:18:08] Same thing with the liturgical resources.
[00:18:11] You can actually just from that one place, you can say which liturgical resources you want with a check just by clicking a checkbox.
[00:18:18] And then, and then again, you can kind of filter down.
[00:18:21] So let's say you want joy, but maybe it's like suffering and joy.
[00:18:26] You could actually go down to keywords, click on that second keyword, and it'll only pull up content that has both of those.
[00:18:32] Or if you want actually all content with those, you can toggle the or button.
[00:18:36] So now all of a sudden you've got everything on joy and pain or something.
[00:18:39] So I think the beauty of how it works is we're really trying to give it, give, we want to have as much content as we can for you.
[00:18:50] That's excellent.
[00:18:51] But just as importantly is we want that content to be as accessible and fast for you guys to get to, because we just know how much you have going for you.
[00:19:00] Because I've been there with you.
[00:19:02] Yeah.
[00:19:03] Does that make sense?
[00:19:04] Yeah.
[00:19:04] Oh yeah.
[00:19:05] It's, it's actually really impressive.
[00:19:07] Um, and I was thinking about this question, Stu, and I sent it over in the, in the questions, kind of the, the pre questions we were sort of talking about, because I had this thought, I was thinking about what's happening right now.
[00:19:21] I was just talking to a pastor who basically just said he, he just got a new call and the word on the street is, and I mean, everybody, I guess, sort of knows this, but there aren't enough pastors to fill the churches that are open.
[00:19:36] And everybody I'm talking to from seminary world is telling me so many young people are just choosing not to be pastors in local congregation.
[00:19:45] They'll go to seminary and then, and then they really don't want to be a pastor in a local congregation.
[00:19:50] And so it's creating this, this void, especially in our denomination.
[00:19:55] Um, and I was just wondering, you know, I see a resource like the pastor's workshop and I was just wondering what your take, I have some ideas, but I was wondering what your take is on how could a resource like this help during this kind of crisis of leadership?
[00:20:09] Yeah, that's a great question.
[00:20:11] And I think the answer is a lot.
[00:20:13] Um, and I, I, I get that that might sound proud or, or arrogant, but one of the things, and it's a great question.
[00:20:21] I, as I was processing, I think there's a couple of ways to come at it.
[00:20:24] One is to say, uh, for the, for the pastors who the sort of what we'll call, I don't want to say conventional pastor, but the pastor who goes through seminary, you know, they've heard lots of great stories.
[00:20:36] They have heard lots of great quotes, but unless you're a person with a perfect memory, uh, if you, you know, if you, if you, if you can hear something once and memorize everything, these stories, these quotes, uh, they're just not going to come to you as you're, as you're preaching every week.
[00:20:52] And so simply having a place that's consistent, that hopefully done with excellence that you can go, it's gonna, I mean, we really have two outcomes we want for our people who use our site.
[00:21:03] I'm so, I will answer your question though.
[00:21:04] And the first is we want to save you time because we know that there's always going to be a massive amount on your plate.
[00:21:12] And so whether it's saving you time so that you have more time to focus in other areas of your ministry, or if it's just having a better life balance with your family and with your, your own spiritual nourishment, which is so important.
[00:21:25] That's our first outcome.
[00:21:27] And of course, our second is we want you to preach with excellence.
[00:21:29] We want you to preach and prepare worship services that are done with excellence.
[00:21:35] You know, uh, I don't know about you.
[00:21:37] Have you ever been in a situation where you come out of worship and someone says to you, man, it's almost as if all the prayers and the scriptures and the sermon went together.
[00:21:47] Yeah.
[00:21:48] And you just kind of like laugh.
[00:21:49] Cause you're like, yeah, that was, that's what we're doing every week.
[00:21:52] It is almost like that, isn't it?
[00:21:53] Yeah, exactly.
[00:21:55] Yeah.
[00:21:56] Yeah.
[00:21:56] Yeah.
[00:21:57] But that's not always easy to do.
[00:21:59] I think what our resource enables is to, for you to kind of bring all of that into one place.
[00:22:04] Obviously our hope is you can still adapt it.
[00:22:07] You know, we, we see our place as a, we call it the workshop because we want to give you, we call the raw materials of worship that you then craft into the final product.
[00:22:15] So you might start with a prayer, you know, be a prayer confession or invocation and you might sense, oh, you know what?
[00:22:21] This is where our church is at.
[00:22:23] You know, maybe we're struggling with unity right now.
[00:22:26] And so I'm going to type in that unity prayer.
[00:22:28] I'm going to grab it and then I'm going to adapt it to make it so that it's actually going to fit our context even better.
[00:22:33] Okay.
[00:22:34] So coming back to your question, the second way that I think our, our, our, our resources can be so helpful and maybe even more than the first is that for those churches and those denominations that are now having to be filling the pulpit with folks with less of the, the, the formal education, less of the, you know, all the time that we spent, you know, in the cafeteria at Mackay, you know, like fleshing out.
[00:23:04] What it means to be a pastor, who God is the nature of the gospel.
[00:23:09] All of those have been sort of, they haven't been a part of the experience for most of these folks that are now being sort of thrust into this role of being a lay pastor.
[00:23:18] And I can say I've actually been a part of lay pastor training.
[00:23:21] And so it's, it's been a real privilege to do that, but you realize they just don't have the same context that we have.
[00:23:28] And what I mean by that is I think as we go along through seminary and through our ministry, we hear about great pastors.
[00:23:37] We hear about great authors, people who are, so I'm even thinking.
[00:23:41] So for example, there are certain authors that we kind of go to naturally when we are looking for content by a certain person.
[00:23:49] Like if we're really interested in understanding Jesus in second temple, you know, sort of in his context of second temple Judaism, you know, N.T. Wright someone, you're just going to kind of naturally go to that sounds maybe esoteric to some of our listeners.
[00:24:02] But, but even like spiritual formation, spiritual disciplines, you know, you're going to go to a Richard Foster, Dallas Willard, some of these names.
[00:24:11] Well, the reality is for folks who have not gone, right, who have not had the chance to go to seminary, who've not had that experience, they might not even be familiar with some of these names.
[00:24:21] And so I think our hope is that there's actually in some sense a catechetical element of our site that we're actually can be teaching people by just exposing them to great content by some of the best thinkers, pastors, scholars.
[00:24:38] And so what I think the value is for these denominations that are filling pulpits with folks that have maybe a lay pastor training, maybe not even that, is that they can say, they can go to this site and they can see, okay, wow, they've really taken this seriously.
[00:24:55] And they're, they're vetting the kind of content that we think is going to be really valuable for our congregations, even if they don't get the, the, the past, the installed pastor, the pastor who's gone to seminary, that's been in the pulpit for a long period of time.
[00:25:11] And I, I just personally would feel more comfortable if I was a denominational leader because I knew, oh, they've got access to great content and it's exposing them to the folks who are going to really bless their ministry, both in their preaching and in their pastoral care and their whole overall leadership as a pastor.
[00:25:33] That's great. That's great. That's a great answer. Could you give us a, listen, Jesse loves wine tasting. So could you give us a taste of your best sweet bear wine, a taste of a couple of the resources?
[00:25:50] Yeah. So, um, I didn't answer this question earlier. I didn't, I didn't mention this when I started the site, what I did, it was very simple and maybe even like stupid proof. But what I did was I said, Hey, what are the resources I need every single week in worship that I struggle to find with that excellence or that consistency. And so I just started building out those resources, you know, quotes.
[00:26:17] I always had to have a quote in my bulletin on the top of the bulletin that was, you know, like some like meditation people could read as they're preparing their hearts for worship, which I actually really loved. Um, and I love finding those, but it was hard to find them in good places. And so, um, it's interesting actually that, that quote, uh, situation because I started curating quotes for that reason. I'm like, well, I got to have my bulletin. I'm sure other people do too. This is amazing market research, by the way, that, that you're learning from me.
[00:26:46] I'm making a bad joke of self-deprecating joke here. But, um, but it was interesting because as I was building this site out, I started preaching as well, just filling in, you know, doing pulpit supply. And some of these quotes just sort of naturally sort of bubbling up in my sermons, like in the moment. So it wasn't even something I had written down. Uh, and I found that they were so powerful, so funny. Like even that Winston Churchill quote, I quoted that right before my benediction.
[00:27:15] Cause I just been preaching on James, you know, the, the idea of like suffering, uh, produces perseverance and perseverance, character, character, hope. And so I get to the, the benediction and all of a sudden that quote comes in. I'm like, you know, Winston Churchill once said, never let a good crisis go to waste.
[00:27:37] So the next time you find yourself in a crisis, are you going to simply try to survive the way that kind of the world tells us?
[00:27:47] Or are you going to lean into your faith in Christ and to see that actually as a way in which Christ is shaping you to become, to, to be closer and nearer to him.
[00:28:01] And that he might actually be revealing deep truths about who you are.
[00:28:06] And so, you know, I, I did another sermon and I was, uh, I got there was the second time.
[00:28:11] And I, um, I remember, I remember this guy came up to me right before the sermon.
[00:28:16] Uh, yeah, the service started and he said, I introduced myself and he said, um, yeah, I think I was here the last time you preached.
[00:28:26] So I, so I get up into the pulpit to preach and I said, you know, I can tell I've had a transformative impact on this congregation because Mike just told me, I think I was here when you last preached.
[00:28:41] And then I said, but they'll forget what you say.
[00:28:43] They'll forget what you do, but they'll never forget how they make you feel.
[00:28:48] That's a Maya Angelou quote.
[00:28:49] And so my prayer for you today, as we dive into this valley of the dry bones and Ezekiel is that you're going to feel encouraged even in those desert places of your own spiritual journey.
[00:29:02] And so you see how these, so I love quotes.
[00:29:05] You can see how that just kind of, um, it adds something, uh, to the sermon.
[00:29:12] It does.
[00:29:13] It weaves everything together.
[00:29:14] It really is.
[00:29:15] It's part of the art form of, of creating the sermon is you're trying to, you're trying to weave in different elements in such a way that it creates, it sort of generates curiosity.
[00:29:28] It, uh, helps people make connections.
[00:29:30] They didn't have before all in the service of helping them see Jesus in their lives and, uh, and the impact that they may have on the world through him.
[00:29:39] Um, so that's good.
[00:29:41] That's really good.
[00:29:42] Yeah.
[00:29:43] Go ahead, Jesse.
[00:29:44] I think with, with a quote like that too, is it takes the focus off just you and the content you came up with.
[00:29:51] And there's a credibility aspect to bring in another voice that's known or trusted, or at least people are aware of.
[00:29:58] And I think as I've thought about this, there's, there's more to this than just one person sitting in a room, scribbling some notes down.
[00:30:04] You know, there, there's, there's a breadth to our thinking and our connection of our faith to the rest of the world.
[00:30:10] So I think those, those kinds of quotes are powerful for that reason.
[00:30:14] Somebody goes, Oh, I recognize those words.
[00:30:17] It's they're part of our, our, you know, our, our language and our, how we understand ourselves.
[00:30:22] So I, I love that too.
[00:30:23] I think that's, it's a really powerful way to communicate credibility as you're, as you're speaking.
[00:30:27] And you're not starting from zero when I'm, as I'm listening at all the resources, I think the hardest thing, some of the time for pastors or leaders or anybody that's creating content is if you're starting from zero.
[00:30:39] It is incredibly difficult, but if you can just even have a running start with some content that you adapt and make your own, you, some of the, the hardest part of the work is done for you, or at least you've got that running start.
[00:30:53] So I appreciate that about what you're talking about.
[00:30:55] Just getting the ball rolling and starting to see how you can connect a thread through a whole service and not having to come up with every single piece of that just out of your own research and whatever.
[00:31:06] So good things.
[00:31:08] This is something, you know, I, well, if you don't mind me jumping in here, I, and I don't want to dominate our conversation, but, but I get passionate about this stuff.
[00:31:16] But one of the things I, so here's a reality that maybe you guys remember this, maybe you don't, but I remember in our time in seminary, yeah.
[00:31:25] And I think our, our professors had all the best of intentions, but they say, don't use those, those resources, like those books and those, those online sites.
[00:31:33] They're just, it's, it's first of all, the quality is really low and it's canned.
[00:31:38] It's just not, it's going to hurt your preaching.
[00:31:41] And I, I can hear that.
[00:31:43] And I think there's some truth to that, but I think it's actually a false dichotomy.
[00:31:47] Uh, because often what happens, and I've heard this from a number of our users, they will be stuck.
[00:31:55] They will come to our content and it will either get their mind going.
[00:32:01] As you just said, Jesse, just getting the, the, the ball moving and they can start to build some momentum in their preaching or in their, in their, their writing of their manuscript say, or however they do it outlining.
[00:32:13] And at the same time, another thing they can do sometimes, and they often do is they will, uh, adapt the story to their own life.
[00:32:22] And, uh, there's some research out there actually about storytelling that if you can find a way, because, okay, here's the reality.
[00:32:31] It is true.
[00:32:31] They told us in seminary, personal stories are often the most powerful often.
[00:32:35] I would use that word often, not always.
[00:32:37] I think that's dangerous, but.
[00:32:41] Uh, I don't want to get too off a sidetracked here, but at the same time, I said, we don't always think of stories.
[00:32:47] Sometimes also we can make our story, the normative expression of Christianity of all of our illustrations are from our own story.
[00:32:54] And that's problematic in my, in my, from where I'm coming from.
[00:32:57] So one of the cool things about an illustration is you can take it and, and make it about, you can adapt it so that it impacts your own life.
[00:33:07] Uh, what I was going to say earlier is research has shown, if you can have sort of an emotional response to say a story, even if it's not your own, um, that will, that kind of can, can replicate the same kind of experience of a personal story where of course you also have that emotional response.
[00:33:25] And what the, the neuroscience tells us about, um, about preaching or about storytelling is that it is the absolute best form of communication, not just for information, but for transformation.
[00:33:39] There's all sorts of reasons for that in terms of the neuroscience of what's going on.
[00:33:43] And so I bring that all up to say, if we can bring a, even a, just a connection to the story or the analogy or something that will also kind of, uh, engage the sense of engage the emotional, the, those, those, um, neurotransmitters like dopamine and oxytocin.
[00:34:01] And so what that's going to do is it's going to, it's going to get the attention, get your people's attention.
[00:34:08] I see so many times, I don't know if you guys have seen this in preaching with, especially with our mainline folks.
[00:34:13] We start a sermon with a great story, right?
[00:34:15] Some personal illustration.
[00:34:17] And then we dive into exposition and then we never come back.
[00:34:22] And so we find ourselves, we find ourselves just, and people just start zoning out, like, because it's just all information.
[00:34:31] There's no digestion.
[00:34:32] There's no time to like, start to see the information in different ways.
[00:34:36] And so by about 10 minutes in, you know, half the people in the room are thinking about what they're going to make for lunch or where they're going to go out to eat.
[00:34:45] And we've lost them.
[00:34:46] And that's sort of, so that's one of the reasons why this work I think is so valuable.
[00:34:52] I love it, Stu.
[00:34:53] Okay.
[00:34:53] So a lot of our listeners right now, they're probably, okay, enough already.
[00:34:57] Sign me up.
[00:34:57] So where do they go?
[00:35:00] How do they do it?
[00:35:01] And I know you have actually a very generous offer for our listeners.
[00:35:04] So I'd love for you to walk us through the process.
[00:35:07] Oh yeah.
[00:35:08] It's super easy.
[00:35:09] The pastors workshop.com.
[00:35:11] The pastors workshop.com.
[00:35:13] Yes.
[00:35:13] Do not just type in pastors workshop.
[00:35:15] Someone else has come along the way that is taking that name.
[00:35:19] So it should be, it should be the first option on Google.
[00:35:22] So, and you're going to go to pricing and we've got a great, uh, a coupon code for you.
[00:35:27] It's, it's just reclaimed like the podcast here.
[00:35:31] And we're giving you 20% off and that's on top of the discount you get for signing up for an annual discount.
[00:35:36] So from a hundred bucks, it goes down to 80 bucks.
[00:35:40] So just think about that.
[00:35:41] 80 bucks a year.
[00:35:42] That's a steal.
[00:35:44] Yeah.
[00:35:45] And we've talked about this, Jason.
[00:35:46] I would rather have a hundred people paying $10 a month and 10 people paying a hundred.
[00:35:51] And that's the reality.
[00:35:52] Like this is kingdom work.
[00:35:54] And so we're in this strange situation where we think we have an amazing resource and we're giving it away at a, at a very reasonable price.
[00:36:00] Because reality is us pastors make money, not like doctors and lawyers.
[00:36:06] We make it like pastors or, um, maybe even people that come from a monastic, uh, poverty, uh, you know, sort of drain of Christianity.
[00:36:15] So we'd love for you.
[00:36:17] Uh, use the, just reclaimed all uppercase go on pricing.
[00:36:21] It's right in the right hand corner of the website and type that in for the annual, our annual plan.
[00:36:26] And you'll get, I mean, essentially for the price of you can barely get Taco Bell, I think for less than 10 bucks these days, the cheapest form of, of food.
[00:36:34] And that's what it costs, you know, in terms of monthly, I mean, it's just a great deal.
[00:36:38] So we'd love for you to check us out.
[00:36:40] Yeah.
[00:36:41] I don't understand your talk about reference at all.
[00:36:43] I don't know.
[00:36:44] Um, but, but I just know that any food I could get where they use a caulking gun to, uh, to prepare it.
[00:36:51] I'm in.
[00:36:52] So anyway, that is a, that's an awesome deal.
[00:36:56] Stu.
[00:36:57] Uh, thank you so much for that.
[00:36:58] Any, anything you just kind of want to say to our listeners here as we close out our time together.
[00:37:04] That hasn't been said, you know,
[00:37:05] I just, I'm just grateful for you.
[00:37:08] And, um, I love you guys and ladies, I should say, ladies and gentlemen, I, I,
[00:37:14] um, I am one of you and I know the unique sort of challenges that you face every single day,
[00:37:22] whether you're on Sabbath or not.
[00:37:24] And, uh, just, we just want to know you to know that we care about you and we are trying to create an amazing resource for you to help you in your ministry.
[00:37:32] We're not perfect.
[00:37:34] Uh, we still have a ways to go, but we're always trying to improve.
[00:37:37] We're always trying to help in any way we can.
[00:37:39] So thank you.
[00:37:40] Thanks.
[00:37:41] Thanks Jason and Jesse for having me.
[00:37:42] It is such a gift.
[00:37:44] I've really enjoyed it.
[00:37:46] And, um, yeah, happy to come back and share about anything you, you guys would like to learn.
[00:37:50] If you, I I'm a nerd, so I'm always studying different things and would love to share more about other areas that God's doing,
[00:37:58] but, uh, in my life and, and, you know, in the world, but, um, just so grateful for your time.
[00:38:04] Awesome.
[00:38:05] Thanks so much, Stu.
[00:38:06] And we'll see you on the conference circuit.
[00:38:08] I'm sure we'll see you out there.
[00:38:09] Oh yeah.
[00:38:10] All right.
[00:38:10] Sounds good.
[00:38:11] See you then.
[00:38:12] Thanks again.
[00:38:13] Well, Jason, so much fun to have Stu with us and to catch up and we were catching up before and after we hit record and all that.
[00:38:19] And talking with a colleague from back in the Princeton seminary days and all of that.
[00:38:24] And what struck me at the start of his story, and we were just reflecting on this is how you get into the church and you're so excited and passionate and wanting to do things that are going to make a difference.
[00:38:33] And sometimes you just kind of unload on the church and you fire everything up all at once.
[00:38:39] And so leading change is hard and, and we didn't really go down that, that part of the story too far.
[00:38:45] But what I appreciate about the pastor's workshop is it was kind of an outgrowth of that lived experience and leading change in the church or leading the church just in general is such a challenge.
[00:38:55] And so any resource that can help us do that well is, is beneficial, I think.
[00:39:00] Yeah.
[00:39:01] And I think, you know, everybody's heard the adage work smarter, not harder.
[00:39:04] Um, sometimes you need to work harder, but I do think what this, a resource like the pastor's workshop does is it really helps you to be a bit more efficient in your preparation time.
[00:39:15] It's not going to sit there and write a sermon for you.
[00:39:17] I was thinking, you know, I wonder if people are like, well, you know, I'll just, once AI gets to be good enough, I'll just pop in my sermon topic.
[00:39:27] And yeah, but it's not curating in the same way that a resource like this is, you know, it's rare that you go to a place and you know that it's been thought out.
[00:39:34] It's been, the dots have been connected.
[00:39:37] Um, so I love it.
[00:39:38] I think it's a great opportunity and I hope, uh, listeners, you guys take advantage of this.
[00:39:42] I think it's a really sweet deal.
[00:39:43] Again, it's a coupon code for 20% off the annual price at the pastors workshop.com use coupon code reclaimed as in reclaimed leader.
[00:39:54] Um, yeah.
[00:39:55] Anything else before we kind of sign off?
[00:39:57] I know we're in the, we're like getting toward the end of summer in real time.
[00:40:00] Yeah.
[00:40:01] It's crazy.
[00:40:02] Everything's like, I got my calendars out by the way.
[00:40:04] I'm living, I'm living in two calendars for the rest of the month.
[00:40:07] Cause I have August.
[00:40:08] Christmas is here, Jason.
[00:40:10] Oh my gosh.
[00:40:11] I know.
[00:40:11] You hope you have your Christmas Eve sermon ready because it's just amazing how quickly everything goes.
[00:40:18] We are reflecting as a family, uh, kind of feeling like at the beginning of August, I was like,
[00:40:23] you know, we got a lot of summer left.
[00:40:24] And then a week went by and I was like, well, I guess we don't have a lot of summer left.
[00:40:28] And, um, so, but learning to appreciate the seasons and I always love getting back into
[00:40:33] the fall.
[00:40:33] People are coming back from traveling and doing all the different things.
[00:40:37] And so really rooting for all of our pastors and church leaders and whoever you are out
[00:40:41] there.
[00:40:41] If you're leading an organization, as we head into the fall season that you'd hit the ground
[00:40:45] running.
[00:40:46] And I hope you got some good rest and rejuvenation this summer.
[00:40:49] And, you know, a resource like this can help you maybe, uh, plan a little bit further ahead
[00:40:54] and do all the things you're going to do, but we're rooting for you.
[00:40:57] We're cheering for you.
[00:40:57] And, and we're, we're digging in ourselves because it's common whether we like it or not.
[00:41:03] Well, thanks everyone for listening.
[00:41:05] And as we say, ministry is hard.
[00:41:06] It is so much better when we do it together.
[00:41:08] Thank you.
[00:41:08] Thank you.
[00:41:09] Thank you.