INTERVIEW Finding Your Voice: An Interview with Dale Shaeffer

How do you find out your own particular style as a preacher? Grace & Peace spoke to Dale Shaeffer, who has been a lead pastor and church planter for 15 years and recently was elected as the district superintendent of the Florida district.

INTERVIEWER: REBECCA RODEHEAVER

HOW DID YOU FIND YOUR VOICE AS A PREACHER?

Nothing will help you get better at what you do than practice, but not just usual practice— evaluated practice. One thing that helped me in my first year of preaching was getting feedback from people who cared about me enough to tell me the truth about how I communicated. I started with a simple, “Tell me three good things I did in the sermon that helped you, and tell me three things that were distracting or unhelpful.” I’d apply the feedback the next time, and that was my process for three years.

Later, about a year into my church-planting journey, I started asking people to evaluate our service with four questions: “What worked today? What didn’t work today? What was unclear about what I communicated? What should I do differently?” Those four questions helped me tremendously. Being willing to hear feedback is essential to finding your voice.

Listening to preachers helped me, too. I didn’t want to copy them, but I wanted to learn from them. So, I listened to preachers, other communicators, TED talks, and comedians to figure out how to deliver humor, time communication, and manage inflection.

I read books on preaching and on writing. Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird helped me understand the construction of a sermon. Stephen King’s On Writing helped me understand how to tell a story.

I realized I was in a didactic pattern of communicating topical messages. The culture is largely biblically illiterate, and so much of the Scripture happens in the context of a story or a narrative. When I realized the relationship between the writer and the people, and the preacher and the people, my preaching became more narrative in style and form.

So, I learned how to understand a story structure and how to embrace and resolve the tension in the story. A good story has many small tensions within the bigger tension. I began to see that most texts address a tension in a community of faith. I noted that the tension in the text is similar to what we face in life, so a narrative form of preaching became my voice. Through practice, reading, recognizing the cultural needs around me, and personal growth as a communicator, I was able to build my preaching voice.

HOW DO YOU SELECT YOUR SERMON MATERIAL?

I was taught what I call the Moses Model: Moses went up the mountain, met with God, came back with the word from God, and delivered it to the people. Over the course of my ministry, I realized that God speaks to a lot of people in our

churches, and they are aware of the context of the congregation more broadly than I am as the lead pastor, especially in a larger church.

The smaller the church was, the more I knew what was going on. But in a larger church, I simply couldn’t know everybody and had to rely on a team-based approach to sermon preparation. I keep a running list of sermon series ideas—I seldom do one-offs; I like to take people on a journey. I write down the sermon series idea, a short description, and what the text would be rooted in. I have 20 to 30 series ideas going all the time.

Then three times a year, I meet with our team and ask: “What formational needs do you see in the lives of people in the church? What theological truths do we need to teach or emphasize? What virtues do we need to call people toward? Is anything happening in our culture that we need to speak to?”

Paul’s letters were all written responsively to some cultural context. I’m not opposed to lectionary preaching, but I don’t see it as the way early church leaders addressed their contexts—they almost always wrote personal letters that addressed some kind of contextual situation. When I was a young preacher, lectionary

preaching helped me have some direction, but the further I got along, I needed to speak into what was happening in the context of that church.

After I asked the team those questions, I would tell them a number of the series ideas and ask, “Do any of these line up with the needs of the church right now?” And we’d discuss that.

Then I would go away three times a year for a two- to three-day prayer and writing retreat. I would take the material I’d been working on, the team feedback, and our calendar to see

where I could place different series from four to twelve weeks. At the end of the session, I’d have a year-long calendar with eight series in it.

I would write six months at a time, so every four months when I would go away, I’d already have material written for two months. I would sit down with what I needed to write for the next four months. I would write a one-page overview, including the text and where I sensed that text was going. Then I’d share it with our team, and they’d use that to plan worship services.

For most of our series, the initial concept was a year old. I’d delve into study, often trying to memorize scriptures and do contextual research on the background. That, I think, gave good soil from which to write the sermon.

HOW DO YOU FIND THE BALANCE OF SHARING CONVICTION AND PROCLAIMING GRACE?

I think every text has a tension—not necessarily between grace and truth. I feel like all truth is grace, and grace isn’t really grace unless it’s truthful. We live in a broken world, and that’s where the tension comes from. I think it’s the task of the minister to acknowledge the tension between the brokenness of the world and the goodness of God and His beneficial plans for humanity and for creation.

You can acknowledge that tension early in the sermon, acknowledge the way you’re uncomfortable with the tension, and then guide people into the scriptures to acknowledge that this isn’t a new tension. For instance, there’s tension around what people do—one that’s big in our culture right now is human sexuality. But the tension around human sexuality is not new; scriptures have addressed it. And in Scripture we see the brokenness of our sexuality but also what it looks like when lived out in the wholeness of God’s good intentions for it.

As you acknowledge that tension, you take listeners to the text and walk through how God’s spirit spoke into that tension in the Scriptures, and then you build a bridge back

to that, so they can understand the context. I heard Dan Boone say one time that a preacher should never try to explain what he or she can otherwise evoke—what he or she can help people experience with their senses. I think people accept truth when they can feel and experience it. So if you can help people feel the intent of the text, that’s part of the preacher’s task.

IS EVOKING TRUTH, RATHER THAN EXPLAINING IT, PART OF WHAT MAKES PREACHING TRANSFORMATIONAL?

That’s exactly what makes preaching transformational. I think it’s rooted in Scripture, it’s authentic and honest, and it doesn’t try to give easy answers. It acknowledges the tension between the brokenness of the world and God’s good intentions, and it helps people identify the brokenness inside of them and how God’s grace meets that brokenness. When we’re authentic about our brokenness, the Spirit has room to sweep in and restore, heal, and transform us.

That involves preparing the soil of a person’s heart. You can’t totally control the outcome of preaching, and you can’t control the soil of someone’s heart, but you can do things to prepare the soil of someone’s heart to be receptive to the Word. Honestly acknowledging the tension and taking them on a journey, helping them discover how God’s grace met someone else and might meet them as well, is an effective way to prepare the soil of people’s hearts to receive transformational truth.

HOW DO YOU PREPARE TO SPEAK TO A CONGREGATION WITH MULTIPLE GENERATIONS OR CULTURES?

Just like a preacher has to exegete a text, he or she has to exegete a congregation. You can’t exegete a text without knowing the text and spending time with it. The same thing is true with the congregation. You can’t just sit back and try to exegete your congregation, especially a diverse one. You have to spend time with the people you serve.

I’v e f a l l e n in l o v e wit h t h e Sc rip t u r es, a n d I’v e f a l l e n in l o v e wit h t h e p e o p l e I p a st o r. A n d I w a n t t h e m t o l o v e a n d c a r e f o r e a c h o t h e r.

When a church is smaller, it’s easier to spend time with groups within your congregation. The larger the church gets, the harder it becomes to separate more time with the groups. You have to put yourself in environments where your people are.

I’ve spent about a third of my time in sermon preparation, planning, and writing. I spend about a third of my time meeting with people, whether staff members or congregants, usually in larger groups, but occasionally individually. And then a lot of it is gathering for fellowship, both before and after the services—not hiding out, but being present where people can talk with you. Visiting fellowships when invited also helps me to understand the congregation.

The other piece is working with a team in writing the sermon. My sermon-writing team included our Latino ministries pastor, a single female pastor, and a young, married pastor with children. Having diversity on that team helped me to see through different lens. I’d ask the team their perspective on a text, and we’d work through it together. Then I’d preach it to them and ask whether or not it would resonate with the various groups in our church.

HAVE YOU EVER BEEN IN A PREACHING RUT? HOW WOULD YOU ENCOURAGE SOMEONE WHO FEELS STUCK IN A RUT?

In one church plant, I preached with a topical, didactic approach. I carried that into a legacy church that was focusing on revitalization, and something just didn’t feel right. People were responsive, but I felt like I was in a rut.

Some of the things I did are things I mentioned earlier. I found new preachers to listen to who taught in a way I’d never taught before. I listened to narrative-style preachers, expositional-style preachers, and I reread a couple of books on preaching, such as Dan Boone’s Preaching the Story that Shapes Us and Eugene Lowry’s book on preaching.

My second year in that church, I practiced preaching in different sermon forms to find what might be most effective in my context. I was nervous about how the congregation might respond, but growth happens when we do new things, so I was willing to push through that tension.

Some folks didn’t love the new form. My sermon length went from about 35 minutes to about 45 minutes because that narrative style needed to be longer for me to take them into the text.

People did ok with it, but it led to a change in service structure. We had to cut a song in the worship service to have more time to preach the sermon. It did create some changes in the church, but it broke me out of the rut and made our ministry more effectively reach a post-Christian culture that didn’t have biblical awareness.

A couple of other things that really helped me were the prayer and writing retreats. Inviting other people into the sermon process helped me to break out of that rut too.

IS A PREACHING RUT TIED TO A PASTOR’S SPIRITUAL HEALTH?

At times that is true, but other factors may be involved. During one season, my preaching rut was tied to a spiritual growth challenge. I had fallen into a period of overwork and

under-rest and began dealing with anxiety and even panic attacks when I thought about having to write a sermon. I wasn’t taking regular time off, and I wasn’t practicing Sabbath. I had to address my own unhealthy situation to break out of that rut.

I’ve probably had three different preaching ruts throughout my ministry. The first one was when I didn’t think I had anything to offer. I had to learn to get myself out of the center point of the sermon. That was spiritual formation.

The second was due to poor rhythms and personal health. But that also related to taking on a Messiah complex and some unhealthy perspectives on the role of a minister.

And then the last one was contextual. The context had changed, and what I had always done would not work effectively in that community, and I had to be aware of that.

WHAT DO YOU DO FOR YOUR SABBATH?

I usually take Fridays off, and on Saturday mornings, I try to be present with my family. When I didn’t have Saturday night services, I took off both Friday and Saturday. I also take off four seasons of annual retreat.

I take a week between Christmas and New Year for personal formation and retreat—sometimes with my family, but I also try to have three days of personal prayer and retreat. Then I have writing retreats, which are prayer and restorative retreats for me. I also try to take a week of time in the summer or fall, with personal backpacking and Sabbath and rest— sometimes with a friend or two.

IS THERE ANYTHING YOU DISLIKE ABOUT PREACHING?

I still feel immensely burdened every week about the message I have to preach. I burden myself with the thought that my sermon is important and people need to hear that. I don’t want to do anything that will stand in the way of it being heard. That puts this lowlevel heaviness on my spirit. I would say by 9 or 10 a.m. on Saturday morning, I just can’t focus on anything other than preaching.

I don’t necessarily like that weight. I don’t like the way it makes me struggle to be fully present with my family on Saturdays, which is one of the few days we’re all together. I haven’t found a good way around that yet.

WHAT DO YOU LOVE MOST ABOUT PREACHING?

I’m a storyteller. I love taking people into the world of the Scriptures and helping them see things they’ve never seen before. Especially in our last context, a number of people in the church had been Christians for 40 or 50 years. When I take them into the world of the text—especially if they’ve grown up on didactic and propositional truth preaching— it opens them to a whole new world of the Scriptures, and it is pretty transformational!

I’ve fallen in love with the Scriptures, and I’ve fallen in love with the people I pastor. And I want them to love and care for each other. Have you ever had two friends that don’t know each other, and you’re like, “These friends need to meet each other because they’d be great friends.” I absolutely love helping people see and fall in love with the Scriptures for themselves.