Guys who aren't gifted in leadership struggle with those sermons. I talk to guys who never cast vision. Well, no wonder nobody knows where you're going. But as a leader it's natural for me — in almost any message, if there is a place to talk about the vision and mission of the church I just naturally go there because it's what I think about a lot.

Preaching: Tell me about your approach to preaching.

Stanley: The guys on our staff that want to become better communicators are constantly asking me to coach them in communication and when guys fill in for me I do that. I did that earlier today. The guy that is preaching Sunday for me — one of our staff guys — I just meticulously go through the message and outline. I want to help them all become better.

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But often people will say, "Andy, can I shadow you one day while you're preparing?" I say no. I can't imagine somebody watching me prepare sermons. You wouldn't understand — most of the time I just walk around the building!

I took four of our communicators and we spent half a day with a big flannel board with pens and cards and stuff and we outlined my message development process. I just said, "Everybody keeps asking me about this and I don't know how to talk about it, so you ask me questions and dig it out of me and let's come up with something I can talk about and we can communicate with communicators." It's very different than what I was trained to do in seminary. It's very different than the people I hear preach but I need to learn how to talk about it and not just do it. I'm real excited about it; I feel like I'm about to have a tool where I can say: here's how I do this. Eventually I think I'll have a tool that will make all that clearer.

On Sunday morning I feel like I have to start with the funnel as wide as possible. I've got believers, unbelievers, used-to-be-believers, they think — I say that a lot. It drives the Christians crazy. I don't think you can be a "used-to-be a believer" but there are people that would say that. They would say 'I used to be a Christian' so that's who I'm talking to. So I think you start off as wide as possible. You create attention. You say, "Guess what, the Bible talks about this tension." You look at the Bible, resolve the tension, summarize it and the principle and then apply it, illustrate it, and then land the plane and go home. So I don't have points. I usually have one text.

I want to come up with a statement that's either a statement we do throughout a series or a statement that's part of a message. That's the take-away. My hope and dream is to think that someone could come back to that same passage of scripture later and go, "Oh, I know what that means, I know what that's about, I know what the point of that story is." That's why I don't like to say, "Paul said" and "John said that" again and "Jesus said that again" and "over in Psalms David…" I hate sermons like that. When I listen to them I just turn them off. I think just one passage that says it is all we need. Just help me understand the one passage — please don't proof text every point with a verse. I think that's lazy preaching. It would be easy to develop sermons like that.