Joseph F. Radosevich

I attended a seminar on pastoral burnout several years ago by mistake at Exponential Conference in Orlando. The organizers changed the topic without notice. I don't remember what seminar I expected, but a pastor got up and said that he was asked to speak on burnout. He shared that he recently (as in that week) finally hit a wall in ministry after being warned by a good friend for along time that it was about to happen. He described his life as a pastor and confessed that he had no authority to speak on the topic assigned to him. He asked his friend (also a pastor at his church) to share on that topic. Everyone seems to be talking about pastoral burnout. There are books, podcasts, seminars, etc. I find it revealing when the pastors with big platforms give interviews where they explain their breakdown after they spent the last 10-20 years telling pastors how to pastor like they do. Brian Croft and James Carroll share an original insight into burnout in their book Pastoral Perseveranc...

Last year, I started preparing sermons four weeks in advance. Now that I've done it for a while, I thought I would write on why I started, how I began, and what I think about it. I decided to try it while reading Paul David Tripp's book Dangerous Calling . He writes in one section about the seriousness of the pastor's calling to preach and warned against preaching without meditation and personal application. He strongly advised preparing further out.  I never did the Saturday night rush sermon. I thought I was doing well since I prepared on Monday (all day) and Tuesday (morning). That felt as far out as I could do. I decided to try it anyway and see what the results were. I always use a checklist for sermon prep. I have it broken down into 10 or so steps. I decided that I could do the first half of my checklist four weeks out and then the second half the week I will give the sermon. The first half of my sermon prep involves translating, outlining, rereading, studying notes,...