How to Find Your Preaching Voice
This coming Sunday morning I am going to preach in the main service at our church. I am a Student Pastor, which means these opportunities are usually few and far between. Pastors and seminary professors alike decry young preachers trying to sound like other preachers (usually their own personal favorite preachers). “Don’t try to be like someone else,” they counsel, “learn how to be yourself in the pulpit! Find your voice!”
This is difficult for those of us who rarely preach on Sunday mornings. Sure, we may teach or preach weekly (or more) to our students, but anyone who does that knows there is just something different about standing before the entire congregation on Sunday and preaching. It is not the same as teaching in youth group. Indeed, you may have “found your voice” when you are teaching and preaching to your students, but you may feel like transitioning that voice to the Sunday morning pulpit is more difficult than you imagined.
The idea of finding your voice is not unique to preaching ministry. Many actors and music artists have spoken of the importance of “finding their voice” in their own forms of art. It is not difficult to imagine that a young comedic actor would attempt to be like Jim Carrey a little bit in their movies, just like we might try to be like John Piper a little bit in the pulpit.
The Best Advice I’ve Heard on Finding Your Voice
Speaking of other forms of art, some of the best advice I have ever heard on “finding your voice” comes from musician John Mayer, and I think what he said can help us in preaching too. Regarding finding his voice as an artist, Mayer said: “You find your voice when you try to be like other people and fail.”
I like this line for at least two reasons.
We All Try to Be Like Other People, and That’s Okay
Mayer acknowledges that we all, in fact, try to be like other people. Sometimes we can feel bad that we have tried to be like other people in the past, or that other people’s voices have influenced our own. But that is okay in a sense. We all do it. Furthermore, for people who are given few opportunities in the Sunday morning pulpit, it can take quite some time to find your own voice.
Show yourself some grace here. So often I hear harshness being thrown around at young guys who sound like other preachers. This is unfortunate. We are called to be gracious and gentle with one another, especially those who love Christ, want to serve His church, but are still learning to do something new. All pastors are in this process to varying degrees.
The Important Role of Failure
That leads to the second reason I like Mayer’s quote: we find our voice when we fail at our attempts to sound like others. This is so important, because it means that trying to sound like other people and then failing is all a part of the process of finding your own voice. Trying to sound like other people is natural. In this sense, you should be doing it. Why? Because everyone does it or has done it. Anyone who says differently is probably not being honest. It is a part of the process. We all try. We all fail. Then we all find our voice, eventually.
An important theological consideration to make here is the role of influences. My dad is probably the biggest influence in my life. Sons often sound and act like their dads to a large degree, for the good or for the bad. Likewise, Paul referred to Timothy as his “spiritual son” in the faith (see Phil. 2:22, 1 Tim. 1:2, 2 Tim. 1:2). Are we really going to sit here and believe that Timothy didn’t sound a lot like Paul when he taught, counseled, or preached?
Furthermore, Paul wrote to the church at Corinth, urging them to “be imitators of me.” In the very next verse, he continues, “That is why I sent you Timothy, my beloved and faithful child in the Lord, to remind you of my ways in Christ, as I teach them everywhere in every church” (1 Cor. 4:16-17). When Paul wanted the church to “imitate him,” he sent them Timothy. While this passage isn’t talking directly about preaching style, the clear implication is that Timothy modeled Paul’s life, which most likely included some forms of Paul’s style.
Trying to be like other people is a part of the process of finding your own voice and style while learning something new. If you are currently trying to sound like someone else, you can be assured that you are well on your way to failing and finding your own voice.
How Your Student Ministry Has Been Training You
Mayer’s advice isn’t the only thing that can help us in finding our voices. Whether you realize it or not, your student ministry has been training you on how to find your voice.
As youth workers, we should already know that students can easily identify when we are “not being ourselves,” and they don’t like it, not one bit. To its credit, this generation craves authenticity. Maybe that’s because everyone and everything on social media is so curated and fake.
I even had one parent in my student ministry tell me that their son likes me because I am “real.” In other words, I am not trying to be hip, cool, relevant, or someone that I am not. Students can sniff that out from a mile away. They want us to be genuine, real, and authentic. This means that when we stand before them each week to teach/preach, they want us to be us, not someone else. This is how they have been training us to “find our voices” in the pulpit.
It might sound a little bit like I have undermined the entire article right now. The argument earlier in the article was that it is okay to sound like other people as you try to find your voice, but now I am telling you to be yourself, and that our students don’t like it when we try to sound like other people.
But that is just the point, isn’t it? It’s a process and journey towards discovering your own distinct voice and style. Your students have been guiding you along the way.
As you walk into the Sunday morning pulpit, though it is a different audience, the principles remain the same: they are still real people, they still want you to be authentic, and they still want to make a connection with you. They don’t want you to just dump content on them in the style of someone else you like. They want to see how the passage has affected you, and they want to see you deliver the message.
Though it is difficult to transition the voice that you have already found in student ministry to the Sunday morning pulpit, you are already a few steps ahead in the process. Student ministry has trained you for this. If you have found your voice in youth group, then since you’re the same person that voice will guide you with the adult congregation, too.