I feel like preaching is a journey and I'm responsible for taking however many people that show up for the journey. And that's teenagers, the lost people — the ones who say, "I'm here, I'm going to give this one shot." You have all these people and at the end I want us all to work our way together, resolve this tension. Whether you accept it or not, here's what the scripture teaches and lets all end up together. So it's a journey.

Transitions are extremely important. In fact the only part of my sermons that I manuscript are my transitions because a transition is: "we've been here together; now I'm about to go here and I don't want to lose you." And if you don't know where we're going related to where we've bee, I've lost you. I'm listening to a sermon here going, "Why we talking about this?" We started here and I'm sure on your outline where we are relates to where we started but I lost track — so transitions are huge.

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I preach one-point messages. I just have a point then I'm going to make you wonder what it is, take you there, apply the one, hopefully restate it in such a way that you remember it at least till you get to the car, maybe forever. Most sermons I hear are sermon series. I think, "Gosh that would have been a great series. You have four great points. You wasted all that effort. You could have preached that for a month instead of one week!" People aren't going to digest that.

And the other thing I do that people say is unique — I don't know if it is or not — is often in a message when I get to a part that I think non-Christians may think "that's just too strange" or "who can believe that," I often stop and say: "You know, this next thing is really unusual. In fact, this may be the reason you're not a Christian, or this may make you glad you're not a Christian, or this may give you a reason to never become a Christian." I just feel like if I can state their resistance they will follow me on this journey to the end whether they agree or not. But if they think I don't know what they're objecting to, in their minds they're arguing with me throughout. I know that I do the same thing when people speak. But if I get to a place where I think they may check out, then I know if I say what they're thinking they will at least follow me mentally to the end of the message. I've heard that said so many, many times. And when you can say what a person's thinking — they know you know that he's aware this is strange, he's aware that this is hard to believe, he's not assuming that just because the Bible says it we should all believe it.

I preached a message not too long ago on the significance of things that are unexplainable versus things that are undeniable and how often the unexplainable causes us to doubt God but there are some things that are undeniable. I talked up front about how much I doubt. Then I listed some of the reasons I doubt scriptures, sometimes I doubt God. I went on and on because it's true. At times I can become the biggest skeptic and cynic and then I went on and preached the message. The response was overwhelming because I gave people permission to doubt, because we all doubt. But everybody thinks the preacher never doubts.