Struggling with how to write a sermon that connects with your congregation while maintaining your own spiritual well-being? Rev. Dr. Lisa Cressman, founder of Backstory Preaching, reveals a transformative approach that moves beyond traditional sermon preparation methods. From her middle-of-the-night divine inspiration that launched Backstory Preaching to serving preachers worldwide, Lisa shares how combining spiritual direction with preaching craft can revolutionize your sermon writing process.

Learn practical steps for how to write a sermon that flows from your own spiritual formation, bringing authenticity and depth to your preaching. Lisa explains why "preaching is your life; your life is preaching" and offers insights for creating sermons that resonate with real-life experiences. Whether you're an experienced preacher or just learning how to write your first sermon, this conversation provides fresh perspectives on crafting messages that transform both preacher and congregation.

Learn more about Lisa and her work at backstorypreaching.com

Watch this episode on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJruG-5Dj5Y

Lisa Cressman: Authenticity. It is being yourself. There isn't anything I think that is more important than that, especially for younger people. They can. They can sniff out hypocrisy and a false sense of self or an agenda in a heartbeat. So for us to to genuinely believe what we are saying, to speak it in ordinary language, to unpack a lot of church words, that we think people know what they mean, and we think that we know what they mean. To unpack the church, words like grace, compassion, forgiveness, reconciliation, baptism to describe those things rather than just moving on with those words as if everybody understands.

Dwight Zscheile: Hello everyone. Welcome to the Pivot podcast, where we explore how the church can faithfully navigate a changing world. I'm Dwight Zscheile and I'm joined by Terri Elton.

Terri Elton: For those of us who preach regularly in congregations, it's easy to see preaching as a performance we need to put on for an audience or a task that we're charged with. But what if we reimagined the whole process of sermon preparation and preaching as a practice of deep listening and spiritual formation, not only to God in Scripture, but to God's movement in our own lives into the people entrusted to our care. That is why we're excited to welcome the Reverend Doctor Lisa Cressman to our show today. Lisa's work with backstory. Preaching is transforming how we think about preaching. Her approach is especially valuable as we see more lay leadership stepping into this role of preaching. She shows us how everyone, ordained or not, can preach, and they can do that with their whole life and help form disciples along the way. Lisa, welcome to the Pivot podcast.

Lisa Cressman: Thank you. I'm really delighted to be here. Thank you for the invitation.

Dwight Zscheile: So can you tell us about the middle of the night experience that led to the founding of Backstory preaching?

Lisa Cressman: Yeah, it was it was something, uh, the story is that we had moved to Texas and, uh, it was a really, really big move for our family. And for many reasons, it was not a time for me to be looking for a Traditional parish position. I really needed to be home tending, tending my family. Boys were entering middle school. It was a big deal. So I needed to be home and I didn't know anybody. And because I wasn't looking for a position no one in the diocese even knew I'm an Episcopalian. Nobody in the diocese knew I existed. So I was getting to the end of unpacking the boxes after about six months, and I was panicking. It was an awful time. I didn't know what I was going to do with myself. And of course, I'm praying and asking God for, you know, any hints any time would be quite lovely. But I got nothing until I went to bed one night, and I was literally awakened at 2:00 in the morning with this entire vision of backstory preaching laid out for 20 years, and I knew it was going to work. I absolutely knew it was going to work, and the vision was, what would happen if you worked with preachers long term in a manner that was at least as much spiritual direction as it was about the craft of preaching. What if those two things went together and preachers received long term support? So I started asking some questions, and the Episcopal Diocese of Texas very generously gave me a small startup grant, proof of concept grant, and we were off to the races. So we began in 2016, and it has not stopped since. And we have grown beyond my imagining. We serve preachers now around the world lay and ordained, and it's really gratifying to see the effect that this practice has had on so many preachers. But it was completely unexpected.

Terri Elton: Well, that's a pretty faithful, risky kind of step, both to say no right to what you had known, but then to be open to what God had for you. I'm. That's pretty amazing. Something we could all learn from, right. I'm wondering if you could share a little more about the difference between treating sermon preparation as a task, or something that pastors or or ministry leaders are supposed to do, versus seeing it as a spiritual practice. Say more about that.

Lisa Cressman: Most of us go to seminary or our local formation program because we'd fall in love with God. And we're we love the church. We want to serve. We're very excited about it all. And we learn and we grow and it's exciting. And we take our homiletics course, and that's great. And our teachers in homiletics, they do what they can with us in the amount of time they have available, which is not a whole lot for given the complexity of the art form. So we're excited and often a little nervous about beginning to preach, and we pour our hearts into it. And then the other demands of ministry encroach more and more on our time. And it is not uncommon that we're still in love with God. But preaching gets to be one more thing on this long task. List of ministry responsibilities. And very often preachers are not protecting that time for their sermon prep. So sermon prep starts getting pushed into the nooks and crannies of the week. And until it often is ending up on Sabbath days and taking away from family and personal time. So it's not. What happens then is our sermon prep is our volunteer job. Because that's when we're doing it. We're doing we're doing our prep on our time off. It's our volunteer job. So it becomes a box on the checklist. And when am I going to get this thing done? That does not serve the craft. It doesn't serve the preacher, and it is not serving the congregation as well. Instead, if sermon prep is seen as a spiritual practice that we protect, that we see, we we give at least as much priority to as we do to pastoral care appointments. Because really, sermon prep is a pastoral care appointment with the entire congregation. We are serving everybody at the same time. And it is a deeply pastoral thing to do. So when we are clear about what the task is, that it deserves to be protected and resourced so we can do it well. Then sermon prep begins to affect the preacher and our lives before it begins to. We think about affect how it might affect our listeners lives when it when we allow sermon prep and our encounter with God through scripture to change and transform us. Then we actually can believe it can transform our listeners because it just happened to us. We we believe what we are saying because we have been transformed by the good news. So we can't wait to tell other people about it. It's come and see. Look at this. This man I have just encountered. Come and see. Because I know I've met him. And I hope you will too. So we're transformed. And then we preach a message we hope will transform our listeners. That's the difference between a box on the checklist and it being a spiritual practice.

Dwight Zscheile: So let's talk a little bit more about Scripture and how preaching, viewing, preaching and approaching it as a spiritual practice This changes the preachers relationship with scripture.

Lisa Cressman: Most of the time when preachers look to see what their text is and they open their Bibles and they read it through the first time, the first question we're asking ourselves is, what am I going to say? Because we're feeling already the anxiety and the pressure of, I've got to come up with something and it needs to be something amazing and brilliant, and I and I hope I don't fall on my face. And what's the worst thing that could happen? Like, I have absolutely nothing to say. And believe me, I know of which I say I know all of those feelings of that panic, of what if I make a fool of myself? And there's a it's so we're starting with anxiety and trying to prevent shame. We want to preach something in a way that we think will will remove the possibility of our being ashamed in the experience. So what happens? Rather than asking ourselves, what am I going to say? We ask, what is God saying, right? What is God saying? When we prepare ourselves to encounter the text, we do a ritual, a liturgy. We slow down, we breathe, maybe light a candle, we create a beautiful environment, or we go to our favorite coffee shop. But it's something special and set aside. It is sacred time, sacred space, and we prepare ourselves in the same way we do for worship. And then we come to that text and we come with curiosity and wonder, right? We want we want to discover who is God. What is God doing? What is God? Hope for us? And we listen to the text. We listen for God. We listen for the good news, and we let it come to us rather than our going to it. Grasping, clawing. We let it come into us and begin to transform us. So that's why. Backstory. Backstory Preaching's tagline is be good news to preach good news. We let the word transform us first. Then only then do we begin to think about what might my listeners need out of what I have just encountered of God? So coming to the text with wonder and curiosity and hope is really different from I got a I got to get out of a jam here.

Terri Elton: So picking up on that tagline tell us, us and our listeners, what do you mean by preaching with your whole life, like in practical terms, say more about that.

Lisa Cressman: Another one of backstory preachings taglines is, uh, preaching is your life. Your life is preaching. And that came out of an understanding of of being a parent, that when we are parents, we have to realize that we are always teaching our children something they are children are watching us all the time, and they're watching our expressions, how we answer people on the phone. How much time are we spending on the phone? They're watching the food that we eat, the exercise or not, the way we work, what we do for a living, how we speak to each other in the family, the place that God has in home life. Children are always watching us, so we are always teaching them something. The only question is what are we teaching them? The same is true for the preaching life. And the preaching life is not because we're ordained or we are a licensed lay preacher, or in some way vetted to do so. We're preaching because we're baptized. We were baptized into the church, and that means something. It means that the way we conduct ourselves, the way we comport ourselves, is always saying something about what we believe about God. We are preaching something about the way Jesus is interacting with our lives. The only question is, what are we preaching in the way that we answer the phone? How much time we spend on our phones, our work, the food that we eat, the way we interact with people, the way we interact with our family members. Everything we're doing is expressing something about who we believe God to be. The only question is what are we preaching? So whether we are a preacher or just a layperson, we are preachers with our lives. So hopefully our lives are congruent with what we say. We believe what we say we believe about who God is, who Jesus is, that those are congruent and they match, so that what comes out of our mouths is the same as what people would see with our lives. So we hope now as as preachers, people who have been asked to share a word of God, that we are very intentional, that our lives are matching what we say. And that's really the the name of backstory preaching is it is the backstory of the preacher who our lives are, what we believe about God. But like the backstory of a character in a movie, our backstories are rarely spoken out loud, but they are always with us. Our backstories are what inform our understanding of Scripture. It's it's everything about all of our lives family of origin, our educations, the experiences that we've had, all of that is playing into our understanding of God and the ways that we interpret Scripture. So we want all of that to be as congruent as possible, so that the way that we are using our backstories, the way what we give of that to God's use and glory, the way that we are conducting our daily lives, is congruent with what we preach from the pulpit. So our lives are preaching is our life. Our life is preaching. That is the nature of being a preacher as well as being a baptized follower of Jesus Christ.

Dwight Zscheile: So, Lisa, I'd love to to dig into that a little bit more. I'm thinking about, you know, John Mark Comer's observation that spiritual formation is a human thing. We're always being formed spiritually by relationships and habits and stories that we inhabit in our environment and experiences. But for preachers in particular, this this role of personal spiritual formation being the grounding is, from what I'm hearing you say, of the preaching life. You know, I think a lot of ministry leaders find themselves finding their own spiritual lives, being kind of like you described earlier, this sort of something you try to fit in at the edges, you know, maybe in your volunteer time because they're often so many administrative tasks to do, so many people to take care of. And these days it often feels like you're doing that with fewer volunteers, maybe fewer staff or resources in your context. So explore for us a little more that that role of personal spiritual formation in sermon preparation.

Lisa Cressman: Yeah. You know, in any given moment, we are doing the one thing that is the most important thing for us to do right now. And it doesn't matter what that thing is, whether it's doing a podcast or it is eating or doing something at work, or doing something with our families, or doing sermon prep or praying, whatever we choose to do in any one moment is the thing we are saying through our actions is more important than any of the billion other choices I have. So if we are choosing, for example, to work in a system that says constantly that the way we're going to work and operate is trying to stuff £25 of potatoes into a £5 bag, and we are willing to go along with that, then we're saying that's the most important thing, is that this is the way I'm going to live my life. I'm choosing to do this, I will live in a manner that is this busy, rather than saying this is unsustainable, that we need to look at the system that is saying it's okay to try to stuff £25 of potatoes into a £5 bag week after week after week. So my first question is always, why is it that way? What is the system and what are the ways that I am contributing to the system that says that working in this manner is the most important way to work. This is the way I will give my life in service to God. But if we are saying that that's not okay, then we need to start making some significant choices. One of those choices is to say the most important thing I can do for the next 20 minutes is to spend time with God. That there is simply nothing more Are important, unless literally the building I am in is on fire. There is nothing else more important than this. There is nothing else more important than I will have a once a month appointment with a spiritual director, and I will consult with my director and I will. I will work with God and pray with God, and do some reading so that I am always going to the well to be fed. So I think as a church capital C, we have some significant questions in front of us, especially as, as you said, Dwight, that parish staffs are shrinking. There is more to do is to say yes. And we as a church, as a congregation, have to decide where our priorities are. This is the system we're in. One person cannot do all of these things because if one person, the clergy person, the person in charge does all of these things. Then it is coming at the price of their relationships, their health, their mental capacities, their emotional life. And if we're okay with that sacrifice and the clergy person says, yep, that's okay, I am willing to sacrifice all of those things, then have at it. If everybody's happy with that, go for it. But if that is not, if those are not sacrifices we're willing to make, then we need to have some really big conversations. And that is a question of stewardship. That is a question. Question of justice, of compassion. Things that we say that we're about and looking at the system as a whole and to say we are limited and blessed in our limitations, we can't do all of that stuff. And as your church leader, the most important thing I can do for you is for me to spend time with God. Because then everybody, everyone benefits. When God and I are in close proximity, close relationship, then I have a lot more to bring to you than if I am sacrificing that relationship also to the tyranny of the urgent. That I don't think is the way that we love our neighbor as ourself.

Terri Elton: I love that, and that is going to be hard, and probably a journey that takes a months of discipline and and some good conversations. But I think, um, I think and I will say this was, I think, present before the pandemic, but certainly after the tyranny of the urgent tends to grab us, and we can't live in that all the time. Right. So this provides another way of being. I want to pick up on on something that you said that I really appreciate, and then I want to wonder about it. I actually love that the call to preach comes out of our baptism, and that it's a life preaching, right? It's not a X number of minutes on a particular day of the week. Right? And I wonder, I believe there's also a leadership call to preaching right for the community. I don't hear you saying that there isn't. So I'm curious about that move to being the the preacher for a community and the idea of not only listening to God in your the craft and preparation of preaching, but also listening to the congregation. I think for me as a professor of leadership, the leadership move here is what does this mean for a people? For a collective people. And I find myself preaching to communities asking those questions, say more about that relationship, about not only listening to God, but listening to the community in this preparation kind of part.

Lisa Cressman: Right? Yeah. We use a particular format that I designed called The Heart of the message. When we are discerning our one clear message of good news. And let me emphasize one, one, not three points.

S4: Clear, right. Yeah.

Lisa Cressman: One clear message of good news. That's all we get. One. Um, so when we are in the process of discerning that one clear message, uh, we are paying attention, of course, to the text, Who is God? What is God doing? And what do I believe about who God is? And then also considering the congregation exegeting the congregation, what is happening in their lives? What has had an impact on them? Where are the places they need to grow? Are they in a space right now that is joyful or are they grieving? Are they challenged already or are they complacent? So is there a pastoral word that is needed, or is there one that perhaps needs to have them consider new perspectives and be stretched somewhat? So exegeting the congregation is critically important so that we can take what we what we believe about God on the basis from the text and then be able to say, well, I know why I believe this is true, but now I want to know what difference does it make to you? I know, for example, that God is a God of love or compassion or justice. But what is happening in the life of the congregation that that matters? Why would I hope that you in particular right now, also believe that God is a God of justice, or that God is a God of abundance? What is happening for you that that matters so that you can also encounter the God I have just discovered in Scripture as well. That's the come and see. Why? Why would you want to come and see? One of the analogies I often make is that if you are, if you want somebody to go to a favorite restaurant of yours and let's say this is a steak restaurant and you love their steaks and you think they are the best in town, and you want to invite some really good friends also to try this restaurant. But they're vegetarian, so you know why you love this restaurant. But now you've got to figure out, well, why would you, on the basis of being a vegetarian, also want to go to this restaurant? So now we're taking I know what I believe, but now I need to translate it into what is helpful for you so that you are willing to come and see also who this God is.

Dwight Zscheile: So I want to explore that a bit more. So it's easy as a preacher sometimes to assume again that people like steak, if you will, in your analogy, that people who hear our sermons are taking away from them what we want them to hear. And we all know that many of us have had experiences kind of at the receiving line as people leaving church where they will, you know, come up with something quite different than than what we thought we were communicating. So what are some really kind of practical ways that preachers can listen to test assumptions, to understand how the people that they are preaching to and the community that they're in, how those folks are actually making sense of the gospel in daily life. What does that look like in practice?

Lisa Cressman: Ask them. So I don't think the receiving line is the place to do it. There need to be other times as well. So one is of course, you can always say, if you would like to talk about this, call me anytime. I'm happy to make an appointment. But far more casually, it's during a church, potlucks, or times when they're gathering to decorate the church for Christmas or, you know, other sorts of casual gatherings. You can say. So, you know, if you heard the sermon last week, can you tell me about it? What touched you? What resonated with you? Did you have questions about it? Can you tell me what you heard? And in that way of asking, we can start learning whether or not they're hearing what we intended to offer. But I would also say that we, as preachers, often want to get a sense of, uh, more of a like technical evaluative questions rather than that was a good sermon. We want to know. Well, okay. Great. Why was it a good sermon? When our listeners are listening for us, listening in, listening to us preach, they are not listening to critique or evaluate. They are listening to hear the good word. They are listening for the word that will have an impact on their life. That's really, really different from setting somebody up from the beginning to say, I would really love it if you would listen in such a way that after the sermon you would come to me and say, what was the message? What did you hear? Because I'm trying to learn whether the sermon I am saying is what I am hoping is being heard by people in the congregation. So would you do me a favor? Would you be a part of of improving my sermons by listening specifically for. And it could be the sermon message. How are the how are how is my storytelling? Did I lose you at any point so we can get specific about those questions? But then they are offering something to us rather than only receiving something from us and from God. So as much as we may want some of those questions answered, the average listener is not prepared for that. That's not what they're listening for. So if you want that kind of thing, Then also ask people in advance if they would be willing to listen in particular for your questions, and then we can get a better sense of am I offering what I is? Is what I'm offering being received in the way I hope that it is?

Terri Elton: So you have invited us into another way of thinking, of preaching, and I hear my homiletics professor on the other shoulder giving me performance anxiety. Maybe not totally that, but I think there there has been this sense of, um, of performance around the act of preaching, like isolating it in a way how as people are living into this new paradigm, let's just say it, put it in that context. How would you imagine, what would you say to those preachers that are feeling that pressure, right, to perform and are feeling that, and that's coming out in I got to tell the right story. You know, it's the technical parts of this, rather than the journeying and daily life kind of things that maybe aren't sexy and ordinary. You know, they're a little more ordinary. Well, how would you tell those preachers to handle, to deal with that anxiety and to lean into this paradigm?

Lisa Cressman: Two things. One is authenticity. It is being yourself. There isn't anything I think that is more important than that, especially for younger people. They can they can sniff out hypocrisy and a false sense of self or an agenda in a heartbeat. So for us to to genuinely believe what we are saying, to speak it in ordinary Language to unpack a lot of church words, that we think people know what they mean, and we think we know what they mean. To unpack the church, words like grace, compassion, forgiveness, reconciliation, baptism to describe those things rather than just moving on with those words as if everybody understands how how does the preacher understand those things? So talk about it in your own everyday speech, rather than a different type of highfalutin speech, your regular conversational speech. So being authentic, being you is the most important thing. The second thing is seeing preaching as an act of hospitality. In the same way, when we invite people into our homes for a meal. We want them to feel we want our guests to feel relaxed and at home, and not thinking about the outside world for a little bit. We want them to enjoy what we have prepared for them the meal, the table settings. We want them to be able to relax and enjoy themselves. When we approach preaching as an act of hospitality, then we are approaching it with a sense of invitation and preparation so that people are able to relax and settle down. Let go of the outside world in order to worship, to be in community, to check in with God, to listen to the Word of God so that they can take it back out to the world again. But for this hour we get to be together as a church household, and so we do a lot of preparation so that people can be fully present when they arrive and take in everything we have prepared for them. So rather than it being a performance, if we think of ourselves as being a host of I want you to be fully present and available to everything we've got ready for you. So come on in and relax and listen to the Word of God.

Terri Elton: I love that, and those things go together. Really, I think really well.

Dwight Zscheile: Absolutely. I think that's a great word for us to end on. Lisa, thank you so much for sharing your insights and wisdom with us. Where can our listeners and viewers find you and the work of backstory preaching?

Lisa Cressman: Yeah, go to backstory preaching. Com and we've got a lot of resources for you that are free able to download them any time you want. You can get on the newsletter list, or I write a weekly blog with really practical tips about process, craft and spirituality of preaching love for you to get on the newsletter and also let me know what you need. Write to me at Lisa at Backstory preaching.com and let me know how I can serve you and your preaching and preaching life.

Terri Elton: That's awesome! Thanks for this good work that you are doing. And to our audience, thanks to you for joining us on this episode of The Pivot Podcast. As you know, spreading the word about pivot is really helps us carry out our mission here. If you're watching on YouTube, please like us and leave a review. If you're listening on any of the podcast platforms, please do the same and share it with your friends.

Dwight Zscheile: This is Dwight Zscheile and Terri Elton signing off. See you next week!

Faith+Lead voiceover: The Pivot Podcast is a production of Luther Seminary's Faith+Lead. Faith+Lead is an ecosystem of theological resources and training designed to equip Christian disciples and leaders to follow God into a faithful future. Learn more at faithlead.org.