PODCAST | How To Improve Your Sermon (feat. Ben Stapley)

Transcript:

Christa Neidig:
Welcome to the Vanderbloemen Leadership Podcast. I'm your host, Christa Neidig, senior marketing coordinator here at Vanderbloemen. In today's podcast, our VP of marketing Michael Buckingham talks with Ben Stapley, executive pastor at the Life Christian Church. Ben shares the importance of feedback and sermon reviews for senior pastors. He shares tangible ways to do this well, and incorporate feedback in a healthy setting. We hope you enjoy this conversation.

Michael Buckingham:
I am really excited to be talking to my friend, Ben. We got to see each other. We've seen each other before, but I got to see you for the first time in a long time at that church conference just a few weeks ago, loved your talk. I want to make sure our listeners hear this idea that you have, because I think it's remarkable and I think it could be such a great tool for pastors and honestly, all speakers. As you were giving the talk, I was like, "Oh, I should have done this." So I want to go there, but before that, you're in a brand new role, correct?

Ben Stapley:
Yeah, so I have been an experienced director for, gosh, maybe about almost 20 years in the church world. But recently I transitioned from that, so I'm kind of overseeing the whole experience from the streets to the seats, to the screens, to an executive pastor position within the past year. I'm now at the Life Christian Church in Western Orange, New Jersey. It was the next step for me and the next challenge for me to take it on, so excited to jump into that role recently.

Michael Buckingham:
It's interesting because I mean, I really was a executive creative director at a church and now I'm here at Vanderbloemen as vice president of marketing, so very similar in shifts, right? How is that shift? Easter was interesting for me because in many regards it was amazing that I didn't have to spend weeks upon weeks ahead of time, just heads down and things of that sort. But then on the Easter program I'm like, "Oh, I didn't get to do any of that." How has that transition been for you?

Ben Stapley:
If you're an adrenaline junkie, you miss it, right? You lose that aspect of the adrenaline. "Man, we're doing 12 Easter services. Let's go." But at the end of the day, I think, from my perspective, the way I see it, if your church is trying to be culturally relevant and trying to connect with your current culture, you need to have a younger guy or gal in that role who's really knees deep in culture so that they're able to speak the language of the people they're trying to address. I'm watching Disney shows with my daughters at this stage in my life, and so that has passed me on by. And I knew I needed to pass the baton to that next generation or I would be doing that role a big disservice.

Michael Buckingham:
That's great. It's funny, one of the last projects that I did, it was for the music team. They were coming out with a new single and they wanted T-shirts and all that cool stuff. So my team, my team was young, but I'm not, and so they created this stuff. I'm like, "I don't get that, guys." So then they explain it and show me, I'm like, "Oh, okay. I'm just not that guy anymore, so I'm going to trust you." They rolled it out. The whole music team loved it, and it was a hit. But yeah, at some point you have to understand that you're just not the guy anymore, you can still lead and things of that sort, but that's exciting.

Michael Buckingham:
All right. So talk to me about this new idea, and it's kind of funny, honestly, that it is a new idea because as you rolled it out, I'm like, "Well, that makes a lot of sense." So talk to me a little bit about what you shared at that church conference of how pastors can do something to increase Sunday.

Ben Stapley:
Yeah. So for me, this is something I kind of stumbled upon halfway through my ministry career, and by no means do I take credit of finding it out myself. I stumbled upon it. I was at a church that did this and I saw the huge benefit of it in that context, and I've applied it to two different contexts since then. I say this, and this isn't hyperbole, but I say it's the best ministry advice that I have to offer, doing a message review, a sermon review, because at the end of the day, it benefits so much things in the organization. That's how I stumbled upon it, and I've been able to help other churches implement this. If there's one thing for people who are listening here, executive pastors, lead pastors, team pastors, this is, again, if that doesn't get your ears perked up, the best ministry advice I have to offer, it really is.

Ben Stapley:
And it isn't just another thing for you to do, kind of to check off the list, or another means for evaluation. There's a lot of evaluation that teaching pastors, lead pastors will go through, but this one actually when applied is very life-giving, it's very liberating, very releasing. To that end, you give me any mics like this, any soapbox to stand on and I'm going to encourage those people in those positions to... and like you said, this is beyond sermons, beyond... Any communicator, if you have a presentation, review it. It's going to get so much better and the impact and whatever your call to action is, is going to skyrocket because of that as well.

Michael Buckingham:
Give me the practical kind of nuts and bolts. What does this look like?

Ben Stapley:
In the context that we're talking, but at least what I'm talking about right now in terms of a message review or sermon review is basically... Let me explain what's what's happening and what's not really working and then how to modify it. Most lead pastors, most communicators, they'll spend 10, 15, maybe 20 hours preparing the message and then preaching the message. But no one else ever sees it in the course of the week. Maybe their spouse does, but they're never presenting it to someone else for feedback and saying, "Does this work, does this not work?" You spend sometimes half of your work week with no feedback out whatsoever, and that doesn't work for a number of reasons. It's just no one's speaking into it, making it better. You have no idea if it's landing.

Ben Stapley:
What I'm saying is, take that same amount of time and add a little bit on the back end, 90 minutes to do a review, a review with a couple of people in the room and you spend 45 minutes preaching your message and then 45 minutes getting feedback. Then after that, apply what you think you can and what you think you should, not that all the feedback you get needs to be applied, but you take some of that. Then again, it makes things so much better for a guest who's going to receive it and hear it on a Sunday morning. For yourself, gives you the confidence going and that it's going to get better.

Ben Stapley:
Then the big thing, you're [inaudible 00:06:37]. We've seen this in terms of staff turnover. It makes a much healthier work environment for everybody that, and you are involved with the message. If it's your graphic operator, your videographer, people who are helping you make the content, you're not asking them for content Saturday night, you're doing that midweek. Now they want to be a part of the organization, not for three months, but maybe three years or maybe 13 years. That revolving door that we see spinning so much faster slows down a little bit. That's some of what it is and kind of a couple of the wins.

Michael Buckingham:
I love that. I mean, because the truth is a lot of times, if we're really honest, 9:00 AM service is our run through. Then we sit back and go, "Hey, this didn't land and hey, just so you know, this actually needs this." Nine o'clock is kind of your test, right? Matter of fact, we used to call back at Victory, we had a Saturday night service, we called it Saturday Night Raw and he'd just go off and be like, "Okay, what are we going to keep of that? What are we not going to keep of that?"

Michael Buckingham:
I really like the part, because I talked about it at that church conference, about it's now involving your staff in the reason that they came there. They came to be a part of the vision of the church and in a big part, a part of the vision of the senior pastor. So now for them to have the honor of being a part of what's being preached on Sunday, I can't imagine the level of value that that gives. Here at Vanderbloemen, Monday is one of the busiest times that we will get a senior pastor's resignation. "I'm out. You got to find a new one."

Ben Stapley:
Interesting.

Michael Buckingham:
Because Sunday just happened. They thought they put it all out there and then the negative, right? "Well, what about this? And this scripture means that," whatever. How do you protect this kind of a review from some of those things?

Ben Stapley:
Great question. Yeah, I appreciate you pulling back the curtain there and this even pushes into that. If you're teaching, you're putting so much of yourself out there on stage emotionally, physically, mentally, spiritually. If it feels like it's a dud, that potential spiritual high can come crashing down to a spiritual low come Monday. How do you fix that ebb and flow of that emotional rollercoaster week to week based upon how you performed? Or at least how do you get better and more successful in that batting average? But to your question, how do you make sure that that doesn't feel like you're being eviscerated? A couple things, real basic, is one of the things I say is to do it with a panel of trusted advisors, so it's got to be a panel. Can't just be one person. You want to get multiple people around the room talking to you. I find three to four is good. Any less and you're not getting enough feedback. Any more, and it becomes too many cooks in the kitchen.

Michael Buckingham:
Yeah.

Ben Stapley:
But then the key thing, trusted advisors, right? Faithful are the wounds of a friend. So a friend is going to tell you something and that's stung, but I know it's coming from a friend and because it's coming from a friend, I know it's to help me, not to hinder me. At the end of the day, I'm going to have the emotion maturity to receive that from a friend. So that's the biggest thing I say, get those people that you believe in and believe in you and then you're going to be receptive to their feedback. It's interesting when you talk about the...

Ben Stapley:
I just want to piggyback on something that Saturday Wild, Wild West. I was in a church context where we had three services and we, generally speaking in terms of the capturing it for the archive's sake, it was first was a little rough. Second was good, and then third got little off again. It was fun because the lead pastor would always, after the second one, would verify and just in terms of the capture, "Hey, do we have it in the can, from a production standpoint? Audio was good, videos was good. Are we fun? Are we good?"

Michael Buckingham:
"We got one safe one."

Ben Stapley:
He'd say, "Yes, we are." Then the interesting thing was, and this is a little shop talk, for the third service, he's like, "Okay, let's have fun." In his mind, he's good, he would capture it. Now, as a communicator, he's like, "I'm going to go and try some things that I might not normally try, that I know is archived." So he did that. But if you do a review, in a sense you get to... It's like a comedian, right? You think of like Jerry Seinfeld, a comedian, when we work with the material, they're going to work the small clubs before they go to the Netflix special and record it there. They're working out context. So the review allows you to do that, allows you to try out content and say, Did that work?" You're like, 'No, that was a dud. Okay, I'm taking that out of my routine. That's not going to be in my standup special anymore." The review gives you all that opportunity. So other tradesmen and other tradeswomen do the same principle in their... just for some reason, Christians don't do it. I don't know why.

Michael Buckingham:
Yeah. It's interesting. I mean, being in the creative and marketing side, I don't just create stuff and put it out there. I'd create it, look, "Hey team, what do you think? Let's get input." Because sometimes they just see something I just don't see, like, "Wow, I had no idea that that meant that or that that would make you feel that way" or whatever. So there's definitely... But I think it's so critical to get that circle of people around you that, one, you can trust, but two, can also be honest. I mean, because there's the "I trust them." Well, do you trust that they're not going to say anything or do you trust that they're going to be honest, but fair and gentle and all that kind stuff at the same time? That's good.

Ben Stapley:
I'm going to piggy back on-

Michael Buckingham:
Yeah.

Ben Stapley:
Well, it's interesting, right? Sometimes we over specialize message and like, "God has told this to me to tell this to you." But at the end of the day, it's also an artistic form. Just as you as an artist, so if you're talking about artistic content that you're working on, you would get feedback on that before you released it to the world. To the same degree, a presentation, a speech, a sermon, a monologue is an artistic expression and so from that craft standpoint are we letting people speak into it? That's a fascinating comparison where we usually don't do that with a message.

Michael Buckingham:
Yeah. Obviously any senior pastor that's listening to this, they're like, "Yeah, that's a good idea." And they can implement it. But others, your exec pastors, your creative pastors, things of that sort, they're going to have to bring this to the senior pastor. How have you seen them bring this in a way that the senior pastors can grab, hold of and go, "You know what, yeah, let's give this a try"?

Ben Stapley:
Kind of what's in it for me? How do you appeal to someone else's self-interest? Yes, you got to do that. The first thing I would say is let them know they're going to have a weekend. If they're able to apply this... What it forces them to do most... We've talked shop a little bit before, a lot of those sites where you download sermon illustrations, their peak traffic is Saturday night because communicators are waiting [inaudible 00:13:34]-

Michael Buckingham:
"Yeah, I got an idea." Yeah.

Ben Stapley:
... yeah, to download that content. But if you take your work week and you just flip it and you put all your meetings in the back end, you do some prep at the beginning, well, guess what? You're done with the sermon prep and you can review it midweek, a Wednesday or a Thursday, maybe even a Friday. Then you walk away from it, knowing it's good to go, and then you actually have a weekend instead of... No, I've done it myself. I'll say this, I'm not a teaching pastor. It's maybe a area, or more honestly maybe a tertiary gift of mine. I can get up and do it, but it's... my strength. When I'm doing that, if I'm prepping Thursday, Friday, Saturday, well, the whole weekend, even when if I'm with my kids, it's in the back of my mind. I still got to get that illustration for point three, how am I bridging that second... ?

Ben Stapley:
I'm doing all that stuff instead of actually being present with my family on a Sabbath. What's in it for them? It gives you a break, and even if you don't have a family, even you're single guy, you're a single gal, you have margin in your life, you have professional margin, you have personal margin. Look at the burnout rate. It's going to keep you in the game longer, so do it for yourself before you do it for anyone else.

Michael Buckingham:
Yeah, it's interesting. A whole byproduct of this could just be a better healthy rhythm, which, I mean, I tell you one of the benefits of not working for a church right now is my weekend is kind of my weekend. There's stuff, there's little things here and there, but for the most part, I'm not being pulled to and fro. Sure, you're still going to have Sunday, but man, imagine a pastor having all Saturday to actually be present with whatever, go to the pool, take a bike ride, whatever, go to your kid's game that's on a Saturday, things of that sort? That's huge. I didn't even think about that being maybe even more of a valuable asset that you're gaining from this than the sermon itself. That's really, really good.

Michael Buckingham:
Once this is in, I also imagine, just thinking back through the process, this isn't a checklist. "Okay, pastor, here are the things that you need to do and you must do them." This is feedback, right? I mean, and pastor's going to take some of it and not take some of it. Have you experienced that circle of trusted advisors sometimes feeling like, "Why did you still do this or why didn't you do this? I thought I said we should do this." Right? I mean, I can see that.

Ben Stapley:
Yes. This is great. This is a two-way street. It takes humility. We're kind of speaking around it. It takes humility on the lead pastor's part, the teaching pastor, to say, "I'm going to open myself up and you're going to give me feedback to get better." But then it also takes vulnerability on the panel where I've seen some panel members where they can get dogged on their idea. "No, no, no. You really have to switch to the order between point 3 and point 3, the flows can... " They oversell their case in the next time during the review. "I saw that you didn't take my suggestion and why was that?" They are thin-skinned. So yes, that humility and that vulnerability needs to go both ways.

Ben Stapley:
Then the other thing, too, in terms of what I tell lead pastors to structure this well, is like, think dictatorship, not democracy. You're getting suggestions from a panel. You may apply one of 10, you may apply 10 of 10, that's up to you. That lets them know that it's a suggestion, it's not a mandate they're giving to you. Sometimes you can let the wrong person in the room and they take over or you feel handcuffed to their feedback. So just remind them, "Hey, it's going to be a benevolent dictatorship. I'm the dictator here, and it's not a democracy. We don't have an equal vote on the stuff."

Michael Buckingham:
We're going to vote for point three, right? Yeah. Like that. Yeah.

Ben Stapley:
Yeah. Let's all vote on that. That puts the lead pastor in the driver's seat and makes sure that they're comfortable with the process.

Michael Buckingham:
Yeah. It helps because you might be nudging here and there, but it's also still very respectful and honoring of that pastor and of the work that they put into this message, because there's a lot of heart in that. It's just like my designers would... I mean, this is your work, and so when I say, "I don't like it," you might hear, "I don't like you," but that's not what I said. I said, "I don't like this." It's definitely your work, that sermon, that thing you're about to speak to everybody, it's personal to you. When I spoke at that church, that was personal to me. I got to tell my story and what I've learned and all that. So it's about being a part of that, but also protecting it, but also making it the best it can be at the same time. That's great. I love it.

Ben Stapley:
Any artist is, yeah, it's going to be personal, because it's your art, but any artist wants to grow the craft and get better at it. From that vantage point, yeah, you're going to take a couple hits on it, but you're going to get much better at your craft. And instead of coming on... Most communicators, it's like kind of slow burn, right? Like over 20 years, they get better. If you're a young teaching pastor, you implement this and you gain 20 years of feedback that it would normally take you 20 years to get. Just, I think of younger communicators who would potentially be applying this, you're going to accelerate your growth as a communicator so much faster with this process.

Michael Buckingham:
That's interesting because I you've got that end where the younger communicator is increasing and the older is now polishing it because, well, they've probably done that sermon a couple of times, right? If they're talking about tithing, not their first time they've talked about it. The truth is still the truth, but what can I do to shine it up a little bit? Yeah. Yeah. That's great. Well, Ben, thank you so much. I love this advice. I'm hoping for those that you are listening and got this message, if you put this into practice, please reach out, let me know. We'll connect you to Ben as well. If you need further, like, "Hey, we need someone to help us strategize all this, or we need more information of it." Contact us.

Michael Buckingham:
I'd love to hear your story of how this has worked out for you. Send us some even before and afters, things of that sort. I would love to hear how this has taken Sunday, or whatever communicating that you're doing, to that new level and really taking that heart again and making it the best it can possibly be. Ben, thank you so much. It's so good to see you again, and I hope paths continue to run across each other.

Ben Stapley:
Michael, thank you for having me. Appreciate what you're doing. Appreciate what Vanderbloemen is doing and how you're equipping people in the trenches of ministry, like myself.

Christa Neidig:
Thanks for listening to the Vanderbloemen leadership podcast. At Vanderbloemen, we help Christian organizations build their best teams through hiring, succession, compensation and diversity consulting services. Visit our website, vanderbloemen.com, to learn more, and subscribe to our Vanderbloemen Leadership podcast wherever you listen to podcasts, keep up with our newest episodes. Thanks for listening.