Monday stank.
I was disappointed with the sermon I delivered on Sunday and I couldn't conceive of another one for next week. My email was full, last month's giving was down, and the fire marshal stopped by my office to deliver his own sermon about our inadequate exit signs. I entered the pastorate to do and equip others for ministry, I thought to myself. This wasn't what I signed up for.
I couldn't eliminate all these frustrations, but shortly after that rough Monday I started a practice that revitalized both my equipping and teaching ministry. Someone attending a home Bible study stopped to tell me how good it was. I went to Steve, the study leader, to encourage him. He was so excited about it that I said, rather impulsively, "Steve, what would you think about helping me teach through this series on Sunday mornings?"
"Sure," he said.
I panicked. I didn't know Steve well. I'd never heard him speak up front. The Andy Stanley study he taught had a picture of Godzilla on the cover. What had I done? The right thing, as it turned out. This rash invitation is what ended up helping me rediscover why I'd been called to ministry in the first place.
I discovered the value of teaching others to teach others. Of course this is nothing new—it's right out of 2 Timothy 2:2—but the practice changed our church's approach to teaching, and my approach to ministry. We discovered that team teaching often does a better job keeping people's interest than one person teaching. And I found a new way to mentor and train people in Bible study and application. I love it. I've now team taught with more than a dozen people. This is exactly what I signed up for!
Aaron is one of my favorite teaching partners. We started teaching together when he was in college, and he has helped to develop this process through the years. And since this is an article about team teaching, we thought it would be appropriate to try a little team writing. Here is his take on picking the right study.
Picking the Right Study (By Aaron)
Picking the right study is crucial to the team-preaching process. The first time Dan and I did a sermon together, we found this out the hard way. When team teaching was still a new idea, Dan asked if I would like to help him with a sermon. Without asking any questions, I quickly agreed. Big mistake. After I agreed to help, Dan told me the topic of the sermon he wanted help on. It was in Old Testament, in a passage I had never seen before. And honestly, I wasn't that interested in it. Of course we met and talked about it, I studied, and we delivered the sermon with a degree of success, but something crucial was missing.
After that we realized that team preaching isn't just about snagging a preaching partner. It's about matching the right sermon topic with the right person. When I wasn't invested in the topic, I didn't study as much as I should have. I had less to contribute to the devel-opment of the sermon, and my delivery was not passionate. After Dan and I met to talk about how it went, we came to the same con-clusion: it could have been better. It was easy to find out why. I had helped preach Dan's sermon, rather than being part of the process to find a sermon that fit me. Collaboration should have started earlier.
It was a while before I got the chance to do another sermon with Dan, but when it came back around, the process had been refined. The goal wasn't simply to ease the burden on the pastor, but instead to give me a chance to share some of my testimony with the rest of the church. This time, we structured the sermon around my own testimony about a mission trip I had taken to New Orleans. I picked the Big Idea for the sermon, and Dan helped me place it in a biblical context. From the start it was clear this sermon had an entirely different feel. I was able to share personal stories about my experiences in the mission field—some funny, some sad—which was meaningful to me. The Big Idea was clear, the church attentive. It was a much better sermon—I had preached it instead of talking it. What a great feeling!
A lot of time has passed since those sermons, but the lesson stuck. Picking the right study lies at the heart of a successful team-preaching experience. If your partner is not passionate about the topic, if they are not preaching their own ideas their own way, they aren't going to learn or grow much, and neither will those stuck having to listen to it.
The Dance (By Dan)
Jim seemed to come alive after our men's group did a study on spiritual gifts. We decided to do a sermon series on the topic, so I asked him to do some research. I gave him some guidelines, and we did lunch a week later. We ordered some Carne Asada burritos, unsweetened ice tea and found a seat. After small talk I asked how the study was going. He was bursting.
"Wow, this is going to be the greatest week ever! If we can just get folks to figure out their gifts anything can happen!"
Jim proceeded to tell me everything that he needed to cover: he had written five pages on Samson, he had material on Romans 12 and 1 Corinthians, some thoughts on the Israelite temple, some points about speaking in tongues. Oh, and we just had to do a spiritual gifts test at the end of the service!
Jim had excellent ideas, and I didn't want to stifle his enthusiasm. But the Sunday morning sermon wasn't the best time to implement all of them. Here are some things we need to clarify early on when working with a teaching partner, especially one without much experience.
The Need. I look for and teach with people who want to communicate a spiritual truth that recently met a need in their life. That enables us to clarify the need right away.
One Passage. People doing their own studies tend to have dozens of passages they want to include. We focus on one passage for each sermon, referring to others only when they help to communicate the message's main point.
The Big Idea. Most people I work with have many ideas they want to include in the sermon. I insist on one main idea. Everything that doesn't help to communicate that idea gets cut.
Application. This is fun, as your co-leader has already applied the passage or topic in his or her own life, and often knows of others that have as well. The only problem is limiting the examples to keep the application concise.
Open and Close. Generally I open and close the sermon. I've found that having the lead pastor open helps to put the congregation at ease. Closing allows me to recap what was said, clarify anything vague, or correct doctrine that came out skewed.
Mentoring (By Aaron)
As the youngest person involved in church leadership, I've cultivated a special mentoring relationship with Dan. This is especially true when it comes to team preaching. The first time I taught with Dan was the first time I ever preached. Initially in our collaborations, Dan did the heavy lifting. I picked the topic, but he found the right Bible passages, put the outline together, edited sermon slides, and even had to drive home the sermon's Big Idea. All I needed to do was show up on Sunday with a few ideas. But as I became more comfortable behind the pulpit, I had to contribute more in the preparation process.
Over time, Dan and I fell into a comfortable routine. We would meet two or three times to discuss the sermon, pick the different areas that we were going to study and preach on, nail down the Big Idea, and select the need the sermon would fill. As we did more and more sermons together, Dan cleverly began shifting the dynamics. Soon, I was coming to him with sermon ideas based on passages I was studying. I was put in charge of the sermon outline because Dan was "too busy." I was asked what I thought the Big Idea was and what I thought people could learn from the sermon. Can you see what was going on? Dan was subtly mentoring this young, shy kid and trying to mold him into a strong preacher.
The mentoring I have received from Dan through the team preaching process has had an enormous impact on my life. I am much more confident and a better public speaker than I ever thought possible. Now I even have three or four sermons under my belt that I wrote and preached entirely on my own! This is all thanks to the fact that Dan has embraced the idea of team preaching and put in the hard mentoring work to make sure the congregation benefits from the practice as well.
In Closing (By Dan)
I team-teach about once a month now, with a variety of folks. I've taught with seniors, college students, women, and men. Now I'm considering taking on high school students. It hasn't cured my writer's block, doubled giving, or erased the many hassles of church life. But I'm doing what I love.
We are developing self-feeding believers, one sermon at a time. I now have about a dozen "Aarons" in my life, which is extremely encouraging, especially when Mondays stink. Maybe the reason Jesus had disciples wasn't just to leave them to start the church after he was gone. Maybe he, like me, needed them with him when he was here as well.
Dan Cooley is pastor of Cottonwood Church in Rio Rancho, New Mexico and author of Bizarre Bible Stories.
Copyright © 2011 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
