How to Preach with Authenticity: A Guide to Finding Your Voice

The Power (and Peril) of Words

One time, I lied to the elders. (That’s another story except to say that they were blinded by trust.) It wasn’t a big lie—I said I’d done something I hadn’t—but I realized I was getting away with it. These people believed me, they trusted my words. Words are dangerous. James warned us,

How great a forest is set ablaze by a such a small fire!  And the tongue is a fire. (James 3:5-6, ESV)

Their trust made my lie even more grotesque. In the pit of my stomach I knew I could never ever again hope to be their pastor unless I told them the truth and asked for their forgiveness. Telling the truth later that evening was both humiliating and liberating.

In that moment, whether I realized it or not, I was preaching. It was one of my most authentic sermons.

These days everyone is looking for what is authentic. Authenticity carries weight. When it comes to preaching, we aim for truth. Authenticity is truth’s delivery system.

My preaching journey passed through the church where Bryant Kirkland occasionally worshiped in the summer. He was the well-known pastor of Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York City. A few area pastors asked if I would arrange a lunch with Pastor Kirkland.

Things hummed along smoothly enough until one of my friends asked, “Dr. Kirkland, you hear Dave Peterson preach, what’s his greatest strength?” He paused, and my heart stopped. Finally, “Dave is the master of the pause.”

That was it?

It was something, but was he actually saying I was at my best when I wasn’t saying anything?

Sooner or later, I had to say something – but what?

The first and most important thing about preaching is that it is serious business. Zurich reformer Heinrich Bullinger (1504-1575) said, “The preaching of the Word of God is the Word of God.” This echoes Jesus who says, "Whoever listens to you listens to me." (Luke 10:16, NIV)

That’s probably why James offered this warning,

Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers and sisters, for you know that we who teach will face stricter judgment. (James 3:1, NRSVUE)

Finding Your Voice 

As a young preacher, it only took about 6 weeks to scrape the bottom of my topics-for-preaching barrel. According to my math, need come up with roughly another 1,800 messages.

I had stylistic options. There were plenty of preachers to imitate. Back in 1975, I returned from study leave inspired to be the next-gen Robert Schuller, but his robe didn’t exactly fit. And there were other preachers I did my best to mimic. That was the Pinocchio phase of my preaching journey.

But for the preacher who aspires to authenticity, the best case scenario is that preaching becomes an immersive way of life.

A preacher wanders around with spiritual hiccups—involuntary spasms of wonder, curiosity, grief, hope, joy, wisdom, insight that must be articulated. A preacher becomes hypersensitive to everything that makes life life. Moses heard the Lord speaking from a burning bush. Balaam’s ass spoke the word of the Lord to him. Jacob anointed with oil the rock he’d used for a pillow when God spoke to him in a dream. The wandering Israelites followed a funnel cloud during the day and lightning bolts at night on the way to their destiny.

This is a reverse awakening—not from a dream but into a dream—from the kingdom of the earth to the Kingdom of God. It’s what Jacob discovered in his dream, Surely the presence of the Lord is in this place and I did not know it. Jesus described it as being born from above.

But, while we might aspire to live in a constant spiritual wakefulness and inspiration—we rarely do. Spiritual dullness creeps in while we're not looking. And spiritual dullness is the preacher’s quicksand.

There are three things that jar my senses to the possibility of the presence of the authentically holy—laughter, tears and sighs. Finding these three things in your life and the Word is the path to authentic preaching—being able to deliver the truth in truth.

Some people may try to fake them in their preaching. But you can't fake the real store of laughter, tears, and sighs pulled out from your own experience.

When it’s time, the preacher steps forward with a flashlight, metal detector, Geiger counter, stethoscope, telescope and microscope searching out the treasures in the Word of the Lord. When they are found, listeners laugh, cry, or sigh, or better yet, all three.

Laughter

One thing Jesus probably had in mind when he told His disciples to become like children was laughter. Experts say that children laugh 400 times a day but adults laugh less than a dozen.

So what’s so funny about following Jesus? Well, if God is who He says He is and if He can do what He says He can do, then we all ought to be laughing our heads off.

Think about it. John the Baptist wanted to know if Jesus was the real deal, so here’s what Jesus said,

Go back and report to John what you have seen and heard: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is proclaimed to the poor.  (Luke 7:22, NIV)

This is hilarious stuff. We don’t expect these outcomes—the blind seeing, the lame walking, the deaf hearing, the dead rising, the poor awash in good news!

If you’ve ever been delivered from misery, you know how spontaneous and natural laughter is. So, Sarah laughed when she was told she would have a post-menopausal son. The mourners laughed when Jesus told the crowd the little dead girl wasn’t dead, only sleeping. Seriously? The thing about laughter is that it signals that, against all odds, things are actually going to be OK.

Laughter is amplified in corporate worship because people laugh 30 times more often in groups than alone. Laughter bonds people, even enemies.  

Philosophers and psychologists have been trying to understand laughter since before Plato and Socrates. They're still trying. It’s much easier to experience laughter than to explain it. Laughter is a password into the debris field of the soul and that laughter somehow helps.

What William Willimon refers to as “evangelical laughter” is at the heart of every message about this mountain-moving, miracle-making, sin-forgiving, peace-making, dead-raising God. There is a place in every serious encounter with scripture that brings laughter. Authentic preaching finds that place and reveals it—not like a stand-up comedian, but like a preacher who gets the gospel’s hilarious inside joke. 

Tears

Tears are artesian, they force their way to the surface.

I wanted to say the words of committal at my father’s graveside. The first phrase come out ok, but then I could feel them coming--the tears. I couldn’t help myself. Those tears said more about my life with my father than any words of committal could have.

As a boy I collected baseball cards and marbles. The ancients recommended collecting tears. They even designed little cups, lachrymatories, to collect them. They believed God would take responsibility for the whole enchilada of things that made them cry:

You have kept count of my tossings;
    put my tears in your bottle.
    Are they not in your record? (Psalm 56:8, ESV)

The doctor pokes around, “Where does it hurt? There? There? There?” “NO, THERE!” Poke around the Word and to find the place that releases the artesian well of grief, anger or perhaps even joy.

If you can touch that place, chances are your listeners will understand two kinds of reality. The first is the old reality of what was—the root of their grief, anger or joy. The second is the new gospel reality of what has become.  

He will transform the body of our humiliation that it may be conformed to the body of his glory, by the power that also enables him to make all things subject to himself. (Philippians 3:21, NRSV)

Anyone who’s humiliation has been transformed will understand those tears.

Tears are the universal language of human emotions. They bubble up from the womb of pain, rage, but also, joyous elation.

The 9:45 service was over. My friend Bob was usually one of the first to hit the exit. But he just stood there with his left-over tears, in a state of holy hypnosis. “Are you OK?” Very quietly he said, “God spoke to me?!” That moment never dissolved into his past, it became part of his eternal and joyous now, even staying with him as the waters of dementia consumed him.

It’s not about the preacher’s tears. Your listeners will know it if your tears are just a phony prop. Instead, think of yourself as a tour guide into the world of the holy. It’s about you finding the places where your words may release their tears.

A sermon is not ready to be preached until it has found the soulful place where tears come from. Such preaching is authentic.

Sighs

We were visiting from out-of-town one Sunday. Sermon-time rolled around and the pastor started with a joke. After some polite laughter he explained, “For those of you who are new here, I always begin with a joke so that people will at least leave with something.”

That raises a good question: What do we hope people will leave with?

I remember the man who sat near the front of the sanctuary clipping his nails while I preached. Snip, snip, snip. There’s got to be more take-aways than a chuckle and a manicure.

Way before I was a preacher, I was a lifeguard. To qualify, I took the Red Cross Water Safety Certification class. It included CPR training. Way back before there were dummies to practice on, we practiced on each other—separated only by a piece of gauze. Awkward! But I’ll never forget the sensation of receiving someone else’s breath. Paul wrote that all scripture is inspired—God breathed!

Preaching is spiritual CPR. God intends to breathe Himself into us so that we will leave carrying His Spirit.

When the Word intersects with life in a profound way, a sigh is born. Along with laughter and tears, sighs are the congregation’s way of speaking back to the preacher.

Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness, for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. (Romans 8:26, NRSVUE)

I read that we sigh 12 times an hour. Like laughter and tears, a sigh is an involuntary response.

A sigh is released when the unnamed is named, when the longing is realized, when the chaos resolves, when the mystery is revealed. A sigh signals resolution to the broken, the confused, the lost. When we know we have been heard and understood, we sigh. A sigh is the soul’s way of saying, AMEN, YES, and HALLELUJAH!

Terri and I once worshipped in a local mega-church. I didn’t care much for the message. I felt like a cat being given a bath. But then I glanced over the shoulder of the woman in front of me. She was dabbing at her tears. When it dawned on me that her soul had been touched, without planning to, I sighed. And so there I was, a cat in a bath who was, against all odds, lost in worship.

Catching Fireflies

Terri and I visited the White House one early-summer evening, just as the fireflies were powering up their little lanterns. I have no idea why, but all the fireflies were inside the wrought-iron fence. Next to us was a young family from Idaho where there are no fireflies. I reached through the fence, cupped one of them in my hands and pulled it out for the boy to see up close. I half-expected an alarm to go off. The little light reflected in the boy’s eyes. He was spellbound.

Preach like you are capturing a hand full of light from heaven. Seize hold of it and don’t let go. Be like Jacob in the wilderness, refusing to let go until the Lord released to him His blessing. You will know that the blessing has come when, without expecting it, you laugh, cry and sigh. Then preach that.