Preaching: What are some of the things you felt came out of the sermon series that have really been the most helpful within your congregation?

Lucado: I think this might be one of the most practical sermon series that we’ve presented. The reason is because in our research we came across some phenomenal statistics, sobering statistics. 1 out of 3 Americans says, “I hate my job.” 80-plus percent say, “I’m ill-equipped and unenthused about my work.” I remember one Sunday I preached a sermon called something like “Surviving a Job Mismatch.” I said: raise your hand if you have ever been in a job you don’t like? And every single hand went up. And then I said: raise your hand if you are in a job you don’t like. And I was astounded -- it might have been 70% of the hands went up!

You know I love my work, and maybe you love yours, so I just assume everybody loves their job, and they really don’t. There’s a lot of employment dissatisfaction out there, which to me speaks to something which translates into marital difficulty. If you are 8 hours a day in a job you hate, you’re not going to be a very good spouse; it can contribute to chemical dependency, financial mismanagement. So I really felt in this series we were going way upstream and finding the headwaters of some of the problems of society.

I really enjoyed presenting that series of lessons; it seemed to connect right where people lived. I was a little surprised; I thought I would find more sermons and more books on being a Christian in the work place. Of course, I found some phenomenal works -- William Hendrickson did a great book, Your Work Matters to God -- but there wasn’t that much. And to me that’s always a little satisfying -- to find an underdeveloped topic and start developing it. That was another benefit.

Preaching: A natural question pastors would ask when they read your books is: where does he come up with these stories? To what extent are the stories you use original as opposed to finding stories from other sources?

Lucado: I have never thought about that. I could easily go through all my books and mark the ones that were original, mark the ones that were adapted or pre-published that I’ve found. I’m guessing though that probably 75% of them are personal events. I just love a personal story.

Here’s what I really love: I love a funny story that I can tag a serious line on the end of. My favorite story right now that I’m telling as I travel is this: I am eating some cookies that I found on the island in our house -- you know, on the kitchen island -- that I thought my wife had bought for me at the bake sale the day before. I ate three or four of them, and I just kind of over do it talking about how I didn’t like them that much, but they were ok; I know some amateur made them and I was hungry, so how could I complain, only to find out they were home-made dog biscuits. I’ve had so much fun with that story. That explains why, for the rest of the day, every time I when I scratch my belly my leg would kick.