On Sunday afternoons, after preaching, I often feel wrung out — so spent that all I can manage is to sink into the couch with a novel or binge-watch mindless television.
Early in my ministry career, I wondered if other preachers experienced this too. Was it normal to feel so drained after stepping out of the pulpit? In his beautifully written yet practical book, Some of the Words Are Theirs: The Art of Preaching and Living a Sermon, pastor Austin Carty affirms what I have come to understand: Preaching is a profoundly personal act. Preaching is not only proclaiming God’s redemptive love but the offering of one’s self.
Carol McEntyre
The emotional exhaustion I experience on Sunday afternoons is the result of putting myself out there. Some sermons feel especially vulnerable. I recall times I have preached on grief and shared about my father’s sudden death, or the unbearable way cancer took my mother. And yet, even when I’m not speaking about something as intensely personal as grief, the reality is every sermon carries a measure of vulnerability, a piece of the preacher woven into the words.
In his new book, Carty, pastor of Boulevard Baptist Church in Anderson, S.C., clearly reflects on and demonstrates this truth.
While he offers valuable, helpful guidance on the craft of preaching, the book reads like a deeply personal memoir. Step by step, as Carty walks readers through the process of writing a sermon, he grounds his teaching in the story of his family of origin. In a brilliant move, he uses his family’s story as the “hook” of the book — just as a sermon often begins with a story or illustration.
A hook is essential: It captures the listener’s attention and draws them in, but as he notes, it also veils the sermon’s main point. If you give away too much too soon, the listener’s mind begins to wander elsewhere. In the same way, Carty at first only hints at his mother’s disenchantment with their ordinary life and his father’s struggle with addiction. Gradually, he reveals the depth of their struggle and its impact on his own life. In doing so, he not only demonstrates how a hook works but also reflects on how much of his preaching has been an effort to make sense of his past.
Carty’s point is that every sermon, in one way or another, carries the preacher’s own story within it, a claim that resonates.
Preaching on human suffering, for example, has been an attempt to articulate a theology strong enough to hold the sorrow and heartbreak of my own life. But this wrestling with my own story is not confined to a few particular sermons; it is present every time I step into the pulpit. I am constantly grappling not only with the biblical text, but also with my own lived experience, my faith in God and the hard questions that arise from both.
In this way, I find myself living into what Carty describes: “Each week, a preacher must sift through many ideas, and so much information, and then try to pare everything down and piece it into something not only coherent, but true to what the preacher most deeply believes. Most times, it is only after the parting and piecing is done that the preacher even finds out what they most deeply believe.”
In other words, we often do not know what we truly believe until we have wrestled it into words. The work of preaching, then, is not simply about teaching others, but about offering the word I am most desperately seeking myself.
“We often do not know what we truly believe until we have wrestled it into words.”
So, preaching is for the pastor’s own soul — but it is never only or even primarily for us. The prayer I often repeat before sermon preparation captures this tension: “God, preach to me, in order to preach through me.”
The word must first form me, but it cannot stop with me.
To highlight this essential aspect of preaching, Carty devotes a chapter to the audience: the congregation. Early in his ministry, his sermons were less contextual, seeming to have no particular audience in mind. As he reflects, “We can be so eager to preach to everyone that we end up preaching to no one.” As he has grown as a preacher, his sermons have become more rooted in his local community and congregation, and he encourages preachers “to make certain that our message is being aimed at these people, in this place.”
This caution is especially crucial in the post-COVID era, when many of us are streaming our sermons and might imagine a broader, less immediate audience. However, like the incarnation of Jesus — personal, local and tangible — preaching must remain contextual. God has not called me to preach to the anonymous masses, but to my particular congregation, First Baptist Greenville. Just as God chose to become flesh in a specific time and place, our sermons must be incarnated among the lives of the people right before us.
What impressed me most about Carty’s book was how seamlessly it weaves together reflection and practicality. Again and again, it helped me see how much of my preaching is autobiographical — how every sermon bears the imprint of my own story and becomes part of my own spiritual formation.
At the same time, he offers concrete guidance for the craft of preaching, wisdom that would serve not only seasoned pastors but also seminarians just beginning the journey. Even after more than a decade in the pulpit, I found myself both affirmed and stretched by his insights.
In fact, I have returned to the chapter on revising a sermon several times. There, Carty offers a set of thoughtful questions for the preacher to consider: “Have I made sweeping generalizations? Have I over-argued my point? Have I considered other viable perspectives?”
Because preaching is such a personal endeavor, these questions keep me honest. When a preacher feels especially passionate about a topic or text, it is easy to overstate a point or, worse, to conflate the gospel with one’s own perspective. As Carty writes, “I have found that one of the things a congregation most appreciates about a sermon is a preacher’s willingness to speak with conviction while simultaneously recognizing that his or her own perspective is necessarily limited by background and circumstances.”
In other words, revision is not only a matter of sharpening clarity and focus; it is also an act of humility — a practice of interrogating our own assumptions and confronting our blind spots.
“Revision is an act of humility — a practice of interrogating our own assumptions and confronting our blind spots.”
What makes this section especially compelling is that Carty does not simply tell us how to do this revision; he shows us. Returning once more to his family story, he imagines possible rebuttals his parents might raise against his interpretation of their dysfunction. He writes 10 rebuttals, things like: “I haven’t said anything about how patient and forgiving Dad and Mom have always been with me — and how much I gave them to forgive” or “how close we always were, and how much fun we had.” By naming these rebuttals, he models the honesty, self-scrutiny and humility faithful preaching requires.
He goes on to reflect on how hard and essential the editing process can be, noting how many words never reach the pulpit. Letting them go is rarely easy. I know this tension well. I often paste passages I remove from my sermon into a separate Word document, just in case I change my mind. Currently, there is an unsaved Word document on my computer that contains nearly 1,900 words cut from last Sunday’s sermon.
“To be serious preachers,” Carty writes, “we must face and eliminate those parts of our sermon that are hampering or obfuscating the transformative truth we are pursuing.” Deleting those 1,900 words was painful! I spent a great deal of time crafting them, but it was necessary for the sermon to speak with clarity and purpose.
In this and so many other ways, Carty captures the paradox of preaching: It is both a personal labor of love and a disciplined craft. He details the rhythms and habits that sustain the work, such as setting aside a specific day for sermon writing and approaching that time with liturgical intentionality. Because Sunday is always coming, discipline is essential.
Just last week, a young clergywoman asked me how I manage to balance preaching, pastoral care, staff leadership and community engagement. My answer was simple: I am crazy disciplined. For the past decade, if you wanted to know where I am on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday mornings from 9 a.m. to noon, the answer has been the same — I am working on my sermon. That rhythm has become second nature to me, and Carty’s reflections confirmed just how crucial such habits are.
His concrete recommendations on the discipline of sermon preparation would be invaluable to those just beginning their ministry. If a preacher can establish these habits early on, they will carry you through seasons of exhaustion, creative stagnation and the relentless nature of crafting a weekly sermon.
Ultimately, what makes Some of the Words Are Theirs so compelling is the way Carty skillfully weaves together his personal story with such practical guidance on the craft of preaching. The book serves as both a guide and a mirror, assisting preachers with the mechanics of writing and revising sermons while also inviting us to reflect on the ways our own stories influence our preaching.
Whether you are a seminarian just beginning or a pastor with decades of experience, you will find something here to guide, challenge, inspire and sustain you. In its insight, practicality and heart, this book stands among the very best I have ever read on preaching.
Carol McEntyre serves as senior minister at First Baptist Church of Greenville, S.C.