By John Chandler
Conversations about the craft of sermon preparation
A long overdue farewell…and a brief introduction to my new podcast: Consortio Dei. Consorto Dei is a podcast about healthy rhythms for those who do sacred work. In many ways, it is a close cousin of Sermonsmith, but rather than...
A native to California, Tim’s first ten years of church-planting ministry started as the Lead Pastor of Reality LA in 2006, a thriving church in the heart of Hollywood, CA before moving to the UK in 2016. These churches are a...
JR Forasteros is an author, pastor and podcaster in Dallas, TX. He serves as Catalyst Church’s teaching pastor and wants to be the Unbeatable Squirrel Girl when he grows up. His wife Amanda skates as Mother Terrorista for Assassination City...
Stephanie is one of the founding lead pastors of Mill City Church in urban Minneapolis, Minnesota. She is also the Preaching and Ministry Communication professor at Bethel University and Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota. Stephanie has opportunities to coach leaders around the...
Dr. A. J. Swoboda is a professor, author, and pastor of Theophilus in urban Portland, Oregon. He is the lead mentor of a Doctor of Ministry program on the Holy Spirit and Leadership at Fuller Seminary, and teaches theology, biblical studies, and Christian history at...
John Mark Comer lives, works, and writes in the urban core of Portland, Oregon, with his wife, Tammy, and their three children, Jude, Moses, and Sunday. He is the pastor for teaching and vision at Bridgetown Church. Prior to planting...
Jim Shemaria is the pastor of Celebration Bible Church in Grandville, Michigan (a suburb of Grand Rapids). He grew up in Seattle, moved to Michigan for school in 2003 and began working at Celebration in 2008. Jim loves the intimacy...
The Reverend Donnell Wyche currently serves as Senior Pastor and Head of Staff at the Vineyard Church of Ann Arbor where he has served for 18 years. The Vineyard Church of Ann Arbor is a growing multi-ethnic, multi-generational church in...
Rich Villodas is the Lead Pastor at New Life Fellowship Church. On October 6th, 2013, Rich succeeded Pete Scazzero as Lead Pastor. Rich was born and raised in the East New York section of Brooklyn. He graduated from Nyack College...
Nick Parsons serves as the lead pastor of Redemption Church in central San Francisco. Nick was born and raised in Phoenix, AZ. He attended Ozark Christian College where he received a BA in Biblical Literature and more importantly, met his...
Ken Shigematsu is senior pastor of Tenth Church in Vancouver, BC, one of the largest and most diverse city-center churches in Canada. Before entering pastoral ministry, he worked for the Sony Corporation in Tokyo. He is a recipient of the...
David is husband to Inga-Lill and the pastor of Calvary Chapel of Santa Barbara. He has been in Christian service for more than 30 years, including two church plants and more than seven years as a missionary in Germany, as...
Jorge Acevedo loves Jesus Christ and his Church. Touched by the grace of God at seventeen, he was never the same. Rescued from a life of addictions, his greatest delight is connecting people to Jesus and the Church. Born in...
Josh Crain is the senior pastor of The Meeting House, a multisite church in Pennsylvania. Josh and his wife, Emily, have been married since 2003 and have two young children: Jack (4 years old) and William (1 year old). They...
The Rev. Dr. Luke A. Powery is the Dean of Duke University Chapel and Associate Professor of Homiletics at Duke Divinity School. Prior to his appointment at Duke, he served as the Perry and Georgia Engle Assistant Professor of Homiletics...
Jeff Keady and Jonny Craig are pastors at Dover Church in Orange City, Iowa. They met in a seminary class in June of 2010 and have been friends since. Jeff has been in ministry for more than 27 years in...
Kevin Sweeney is pastor of Imagine—an urban church in Honolulu that is truly welcoming of all people, sees imagination as the key to the future, chooses authenticity over performance, substance over hype, and quality over quantity. He is also a...
Pastor Bryan Loritts is the privileged husband of Korie, and the graced father of three sons- Quentin, Myles and Jaden. He serves the Abundant Life Christian Fellowship of Silicon Valley, California, as the Lead Pastor. An award winning author of...
(You might also enjoy this newer interview with Tara Beth on my Consortio Dei podcast.) Tara Beth Leach is the Senior Pastor at First Church of the Nazarene of Pasadena (“PazNaz”) in Southern California. She is a graduate of Olivet...
Kurt Willems (M.Div., Fresno Pacific) is the founding pastor of Pangea. He is also a graduate student at the University of Washington focusing on early Christianity, Greco-Roman Religions, and Classical Languages. Kurt writes for various print and online publications including...
Jason Lantz is passionate about helping leaders launch new initiatives that make disciples of Jesus. He and his wife Suzi have been practitioners of discipleship systems within a large church at RiverTree Christian Church, through planting LoveCanton using missional communities...
Jeff Isaacs returned to the church of his youth in January, 2008 to serve as the Preacher at Riverlawn Christian Church in Wichita, Kansas. Prior to that he was in youth ministry for 13 years across town. He has been...
Mark Sayers is the Senior Leader of Red Church in Melbourne, Australia. He provides visionary leadership and teaching for Red Church and is gifted in prophetically speaking into the intersection of faith and culture. Mark is married to Trudi, and...
T. Scott Daniels is senior pastor at Nampa College Church of the Nazarene. Scott has also pastored in Pasadena, California and Richardson, Texas and until recently served as the dean of School of Theology at Azusa Pacific University. He is...
J.R. Briggs becomes our first repeat guest in a different kind of sermon prep conversation. J.R. shares how he is learning and being challenged by Spurgeon’s words on sermon prep in his book: Lectures to my Students. J.R. Briggs is...
Jeremy Ashworth is a pastor, a spiritual and organizational leader who lives to help people grow in the way of Jesus. He has experience in pastoral ministry and church revitalization in the Midwest, Northwest, and Southwest United States. He is...
Tim Conder is the founding pastor of Emmaus Way in Durham, NC. He is also a PhD Candidate in Cultural Studies at the University of North Carolina. He is an active community organizer with Durham CAN (Congregations, Associations, & Neighborhoods)...
Kevin Doi is a church planter and founding pastor of Epic Church in Fullerton, California. He is also co-founder of JOYA Scholars, a non-profit organization inspiring and preparing students from the Garnet Neighborhood in Fullerton toward higher education. In 2012,...
Rev. Laura Sumner Truax is the senior pastor at LaSalle Street Church, a non-denominational church in downtown Chicago with a long tradition of uniting individual faith in Christ with God’s call for justice and compassion lived out in the world....
Adam is a graduate of Portland Bible College and Trinity College of the Bible. In August of 2008, Adam and his family packed up their belongings, along with his 12 years of pastoral staff experience, and moved to Vermont to...
Isaac Anderson is a teaching pastor at Jacob’s Well Church in Kansas City, Missouri, where he also oversees the church’s justice initiatives. Isaac holds an MFA in creative writing from Ohio State, and has been a writer-in-residence at Lenoir-Rhyne University,...
RD McClenagan is the Pastor for Training and a Teaching Pastor at Door Creek Church (a multi-site church) in Madison, WI. RD is a graduate of Furman University and Dallas Theological Seminary. He is married to Emily and they have...
Andy is the lead pastor of Renew Communities – a missional church he helped plant in 2011. Andy, his wife Meri and their children Kenzie, Eva and Archer, have lived in the Cleveland area since 2005. With a deep rooted...
(You might also enjoy this newer interview with Sean on my Consortio Dei podcast.) Sean Palmer is a speaker and writer serving generous-hearted Christians as we re-imagine the church as a beloved community of hospitality and reconciliation, so that all people...
Darren is the Lead Pastor of the Garden Church, a church planted in 2009 in downtown Long Beach, California. Darren is passionate about awakening this generation to the reality of Jesus and the Kingdom. He has the privilege of leading...
David has been the Lead Pastor of Markey Church since 2014. He is passionate about connecting the Christian faith with ordinary and everyday life. David is married to Wendy, the love of his life, for nearly twelve years. Together they...
Felipe was born in Brazil but was raised between his native country and The United States. He has earned a Th.B from Seminário Presbiteriano do Norte and an M.Div from Reformed Theological Seminary. Felipe has previously founded and pastored two...
Matt Woodley is the Editor of PreachingToday.com and the Mission Pastor at Church of the Resurrection in Wheaton, Illinois. He is also the author of The Gospel of Matthew: God With Us and Billy Graham: Leading with Love. But his...
Tim Suttle is the senior pastor of Redemption Church in Kansas City. He is the author of several books including Shrink: Faithful Ministry in a Church-Growth Culture (2014 Zondervan), An Evangelical Social Gospel? (2011 Cascade Books), and Public Jesus (2012...
David Eiffert is the youth and young adult pastor of Believers Center of Albuquerque, a church in Albuquerque, NM. He leads 3 weekly youth services, a weekly young adult service, and a weekly inmate bible study. He currently lives in...
Abram Kielsmeier-Jones is the pastor of Union Congregational Church in Magnolia, MA, a youth ministry consultant, a husband and father, and a follower of Jesus. He spent more than a decade in youth ministry, working at small, mid-sized, and large...
Meredith is the Teaching Pastor at The Meeting House in Carlisle, PA. Along with preaching on Sunday mornings, she also oversees the discipleship team [children’s ministry, youth ministry, community life, and congregational care], as well heading up leadership development and...
Leroy Barber has dedicated more than 25 years to eradicating poverty, confronting homelessness, restoring local neighborhoods, healing racism, and living what Dr. King called “the beloved community.” Leroy starts projects that shape society; in 1989, burdened by the plight of...
John Ray is a Youth With A Mission missionary as well as Lead Teaching Elder at Grace Church of Northwest Arkansas. He has almost thirty years of ministry experience in over thirty countries and context as well as a newly...
John Jay Alvaro is the pastor of Spring Creek Baptist Church. He has a background in art and architecture, and trained for ministry at Duke Divinity School. He is married to Corrie, who is an artist and teacher. Together they...
Justin is the Campus Pastor of Church on Morgan, a multi-site community of Edenton Street United Methodist Church in Raleigh, NC and holds a M.Div from Duke Divinity School and a M.S.W. from The University of North Carolina at Chapel...
Dan White Jr. co-planted Axiom Church when a core of families moved into the city of Syracuse, NY for a compelling dream; to submerge faith-communities deep into under-resourced neighborhoods. Dan Jr. is also a church planting strategist with the V3...
Luke is the founding pastor of the Venture Community, an inter-denominational church in the Dallas suburb of Corinth, TX. Luke hosts the Newsworthy with Norsworthy Podcast a weekly podcast discussing Spirituality, Christianity, and anything else that seems news worthy. Resources...
Ian DiOrio became a Christian in his twenties after spending his younger life in the underground music scene in Los Angeles as a DJ. DiOrio has served as a teaching pastor at RockHarbor Church & Eastside Christian Church and currently...
Jason became a Christian aged 17 and soon after graduated with a degree in Theology from the London School of theology in 1991. He is currently a governor and trustee of the London School of Theology. He then went on...
