Episode 80: On Planning Your Preaching Schedule
How should pastors plan their preaching schedule? Mark Dever and Jonathan Leeman discuss planning an annual and quarterly preaching schedule, what both entail and how they allow the Holy Spirit to lead their planning. They talk about planning a variety of topics, books, and lengths of text for sermons and why it benefits the congregation. They offer advice on how to divide up a book of the Bible and how to incorporate topical sermons. The conversation ends with an explanation on the role elders play in the sermon planning process.
- How to Plan Quarterly and Annual Sermons
- Allowing the Holy Spirit to Lead
- Planning a Variety of Sermons
- Where Do Topical Sermons Fit In?
- How Do You Divide a Book?
- What Role Do Elders Play in Sermon Planning?
Transcript
The following is a lightly edited transcript generated by a transcription service. Before quoting in print, please check the corresponding audio for accuracy.
Jonathan Leeman:
Hi, I am Jonathan Leeman.
Mark Dever:
Seriously?
Jonathan Leeman:
For real? For real.
Mark Dever:
I’m Mark Dever.
Jonathan Leeman:
And welcome to this episode of name that pastor
Mark Dever:
Pastors Talk.
Jonathan Leeman:
Pastors talk. 9Marks exist to equip church leaders with a biblical vision and practical resources for building healthy churches. Learn more 9marks.org. Mark, you’re a planner.
Mark Dever:
Did you think 10 years ago you’d still be doing this?
Jonathan Leeman:
Working for 9Marks?
Mark Dever:
Yeah, that it would become a real full-time adult job.
Jonathan Leeman:
No, I didn’t. Uh-uh.
Mark Dever:
You thought this was a way you’re going to pay for your graduate degree or something.
Jonathan Leeman:
I thought it was a way to serve the kingdom and work through a PhD and didn’t expect by the time we got to the end of that PhD that it, yeah, it kind of turned into something full-time job.
Mark Dever:
But here you are, married with kids and
Jonathan Leeman:
Praise the Lord.
Mark Dever:
Yeah,
Jonathan Leeman:
I didn’t plan it, but we’re going to talk about the fact that you do plan.
Mark Dever:
Okay.
Jonathan Leeman:
Did you see that crafty transition?
Mark Dever:
I did. I’ve come to expect it of you.
Jonathan Leeman:
So not sermon prep, that’s not the topic. Not preparing this week’s sermon. Rather sermon planning, like the next quarter of sermons, right? Annual quarter. You plan what each Sunday sermon text will be for three months out, including what other guys preach, or at least some of what the other guys preach. True.
How to Plan Quarterly and Annual Sermons
Mark Dever:
Well, we do a sermon card for four months.
Jonathan Leeman:
Four months, okay.
Mark Dever:
So three times a year we’re coming out with a card. So right now we have a card that runs from January through April, so we would’ve printed that in December
Jonathan Leeman:
And it’s online for everybody to see little cards for people to take go on.
Mark Dever:
So we need to have it nailed down by then. But in broad outlines, probably in August, I will come out with a legal piece of paper where I’ve written down the dates 26 weekends and 26 weekends, two columns for the following year.
And I will begin by marking down which ones I am here and available to preach for. And then I will begin, I enter into negotiations with Bobby, the sort of second preacher here about how many Sundays he wants, and then how many we should give to other preachers in our congregation on our staff, anytime we have visitors coming in that we know of that we’ll schedule.
And then when I look at how many spaces I have left, it’ll usually be 26 on the low side and 30 on the high side, something like that. I’ll then decide how many sermons I want to do in a certain series. And I have a way I working through different genres of scripture. So right now I’m in Deuteronomy, and then in April or May I’ll be switching to Matthew.
How Many Sermons Should Each Pastor Preach a Year?
Jonathan Leeman:
I want to come back to that genre switch in a moment. Brief tangent. Just last week, my fellow elders and I had a conversation about what we thought was the floor for John’s sermon preaching pastor of my congregation, John Joseph.
He was asking us, Hey, I want to preach at nearby churches. Is that a good thing to do? What do you guys expect? How often do you expect me to be here? What’s a good thing?
And so we had that good conversation. I would commend that conversation among senior pastors and elders. How often, because when you began here, you were preaching more than 26
Mark Dever:
Oh my goodness. 48 out of 52.
Jonathan Leeman:
And over the years as more preachers have grown up, so you’re planning that out.
Mark Dever:
And I don’t feel strongly about it. I mean, if the elders wanted me to preach 16 a year or they wanted me to preach 36 a year
Jonathan Leeman:
16?
Mark Dever:
If I’m still here. I mean, even people don’t realize this. I think a lot of preachers just see their ministry as only preaching. I see my ministry as sort of leading the church.
So I’m here usually leading the service on Sunday evening every week, whether or not I’m preaching. So for me to actually be away from the service on a Sunday is unusual. So even when I’m not here, I’m very much here.
Jonathan Leeman:
Just this last Sunday, I heard Bobby preach and you led.
Mark Dever:
Yeah, that’s right. Yesterday. Yes. That’s what I meant. That’s right.
Jonathan Leeman:
Yeah. I don’t think that’s encouraging for the church to see you do that. Okay. So you’re planning out in some ways a year partially, but then a third of the year
Mark Dever:
Well, a third of the year gets planned with a series title, sermon titles that specifically-yeah. Well, I’ve probably done the texts a full year out. So I probably right now have the texts that are being preached in December of this year.
And you and I are talking in March, so I have the texts written down. I haven’t worried about sermon titles. I haven’t done that kind of stuff yet, but I know the preacher and the text.
Jonathan Leeman:
And you’ve asked Bobby to give you those texts for the sake of the sermon card,
Mark Dever:
Right, that’s right.
Jonathan Leeman:
And guest preachers?
Mark Dever:
Yes, the same thing.
Jonathan Leeman:
So Lig Duncan’s preaching here like,
Mark Dever:
Hey Lig, I need this by Wednesday. We’ve got to get this to the printer now. And if you don’t answer me, I’m going to phone you. And if you don’t answer that, I’m going to just come up with a text and a title. And I love you. Thank you for coming. Yeah.
Jonathan Leeman:
You’ve not done that to Lig.
Mark Dever:
In fact, I think I have. But anyway,
Jonathan Leeman:
You do give the text to the young guys, interns, or PAs who are preaching.
Mark Dever:
Well, I mean we were doing Psalms, but we’ve almost run out of them. So I want to be very careful with the few we have left. I want to come up with the Psalms-a-palooza to sort of finish off the Psalms. So we’ve shifted to Isaiah,
Jonathan Leeman:
Is that the pop culture reference?
Mark Dever:
As our go-to, so yeah, we are up into the teens in the chapters of Isaiah, but the guys are getting sick of preaching judgment in Isaiah. So they’re asking him, Dad, can we do something else?
And I’m thinking like, I’m getting soft in my old age, so I’ve been letting them, but I mean, I will enforce it back. So we get to keep going through Isaiah slowly but surely.
Jonathan Leeman:
Now, do you ever, on that point, a lot of churches will have a team preaching team and they’ll work through a gospel together or work through an epistle together and take turns? You don’t quite do that.
Mark Dever:
Well, that’s what we’re doing with Isaiah. It is like the Psalms. It’s what we’re doing when there’s nothing else. If a guy on staff is getting one sermon in a four month period, it’s probably going to, I’ll probably assign him in the next chapter of Isaiah.
Jonathan Leeman:
That’s new. I was here for something like two decades. I don’t know if I ever saw that.
Mark Dever:
No, what you saw was me working through the Psalms.
Jonathan Leeman:
Right. I saw it in the Psalms, not in Isaiah.
Mark Dever:
I’m saying we’ve just about finished the Psalms, so we’ve gone to Isaiah now as our next,
Jonathan Leeman:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Tell us about your own book selection back and forth between Testaments genres. Explain that.
Mark Dever:
Yeah. I’m just recognizing that in the Old Testament, you have the Law, you have the histories, you have the Writings, and you have the Prophets. And in the New Testament, you have the gospels and Acts, you have the letters of Paul and you have the general letters. And so taking those seven categories, I just go back and forth from the Old Testament to the New Testament working through various books.
Jonathan Leeman:
So back and forth between old and new, but also down the list of genres. Correct?
Mark Dever:
Yes. Yes. So I’m always going back and forth
Jonathan Leeman:
And the goal of that?
Mark Dever:
To in the space of say two years have the congregation be exposed through my preaching to each different major genre of scripture and how to read it.
Jonathan Leeman:
You’re also varying the size of the text you preach as you do that.
Mark Dever:
Yeah, that’s more a byproduct. But I certainly am doing that of the length of the text I’m going to cover in the three weeks I’ll be in this book or four months I’ll be in this book, how many Sundays it is.
Jonathan Leeman:
True or false. Early in your ministry, you did bigger chunks.
Mark Dever:
True.
Jonathan Leeman:
And you’re moving towards smaller chunks. Explain that.
Mark Dever:
I’m excavating each book of the Bible. I begin with an overview sermon, the whole book in one sermon. The next level down will depend on how many weeks I have to be in that book. And then after I’ve done that, and then depending on the size of the book, maybe a second go-through at a more detailed level. After that, I feel free just to dig certain portions of the book deeper.
So with Romans, I’ve done a whole series in Romans 10, I think a whole series in Romans three. And I may do some of the other chapters like that over the years.
Jonathan Leeman:
Well, you’ve done an overview of Romans.
Mark Dever:
Well, I’ve done an overview.
Jonathan Leeman:
Then a chapter by chapter of Romans, and then
Mark Dever:
I’ve done these longer series in certain chapters.
Jonathan Leeman:
Have you ever used your powers of 10 analogy in these conversations? I don’t know if you have.
Mark Dever:
I use it every time I give this talk.
Jonathan Leeman:
Not in the pastor’s talk.
Mark Dever:
Oh no, sorry. Right. No, I don’t know. I don’t know.
Jonathan Leeman:
What are the powers of 10 and how does that work?
Mark Dever:
It’s just, it’s a film that you can see at one of the museums or I’m sure online where you have a couple that’s laying there on a towel in a park in Chicago, and the photograph is of the couple laying there, and then it goes out by the power of 10 and you see the section of the park and then a little further and you start seeing Chicago as it keeps going out. And then you see the central part of the US and then you see North America, then you see the planet and it keeps going.
And soon the moon whizzes by and it just keeps going out until all the planets and the solar system of whiz by and it stops somewhere out there and then it starts going back in until you’re finally back at earth and then North America and then Chicago and then in that park and then that couple, and then it pauses for a moment and then it goes to the back of his hand and then it starts going in by powers of tin to the back of his hand and
Jonathan Leeman:
Molecular level.
Mark Dever:
Exactly. Artist reconstruction, I’m sure what that conveys is that there is meaning at every level of the universe, the physical universe, there’s understanding to be had. And I think it’s the same thing with scripture. I think you can legitimately preach on one word in the Bible.
You can legitimately preach on the whole Bible in one sermon. I think you can do anywhere in between. I just think that the size of the text you’re taking will help to determine some of the challenges and difficulties you have in that message.
Jonathan Leeman:
Now Mark, all of this planning is that you, is that like idiosyncratic mark? He likes to do this kind of planning because a lot of pastors like, well, the spirit’s going to move me. Is there something you would commend here in all of this planning?
Mark Dever:
I would commend you.
Jonathan Leeman:
The Bible doesn’t say you have to do this.
Mark Dever:
No, certainly not. I would commend you as a pastor for thinking about how you can teach your congregation to read the whole Bible, to understand the whole Bible.
Allowing the Holy Spirit to Lead
Jonathan Leeman:
And this allows for that. What about letting the Holy Spirit work?
Mark Dever:
I don’t think he needs my permission.
Jonathan Leeman:
But doesn’t the Holy Spirit ever provide an occasion for something just to come up that’s going to go against your planning?
Mark Dever:
Yeah. I mean, if I get sick, somebody else preaches. I mean that’s happened very rarely. The question we often get asked at our weak weekenders is, what about if you have this sermon card, how can you change it in case of a big disaster in like nine 11? And I always point out the sermon card that you’ve just placed in front of my face here, Jonathan, our,
Jonathan Leeman:
Again, very crafty,
Planning a Variety of Sermons
Mark Dever:
Our September to December 2001 sermon card in August. And so when nine 11 happened, we were in a two-part study in Habakkuk called When Bad Things Happen, September 9th has in questions, and September 16th is confidence. And then we had eight studies in the Psalms after that plan, we called it the Quest.
Jonathan Leeman:
So this is now moving into late September, October,
Mark Dever:
September 23rd was the fourth peace. September 30th was for justice, October 7th for security, October 14th for forgiveness, October 21st for salvation, October 28th for Mercy, November 4th for holiness, and November 18th for wisdom. And then we had what the future holds, five studies in Revelation in November and December, and then the last Sunday of the year and the first Sunday of 2002, studies who holds the future?
Two studies in Isaiah’s prophecy, the sovereign God, Isaiah 6, and the God of judgment verse Isaiah seven. So basically I think the Lord had prepared us as a congregation even in this. So the observation always made is the Holy Spirit doesn’t have to lead last minute.
I have no reason to think the Holy Spirit can’t lead. That’s through planning as well as through something apparently spontaneous.
Jonathan Leeman:
I’ve heard that story maybe two dozen times and it still, you’ve heard
Mark Dever:
A lot more than two dozen times.
Jonathan Leeman:
It still astounds me just how neatly it worked out. In fact, nine 11 itself, I was in Louisville sitting in a dorm room with Bert Daniel, and we were watching as everybody was, most people were watching the Towers fall. And at one point that morning he turned and looked at me and he is like, I have to preach at Capitol Hill this Sunday.
I was like, oh my goodness. He’s like, ah, Mark will surely want to preach and not me, have me preach. I’m like, I don’t know. We’ll see what’s your text. And he mentioned the Habakkuk, and sure enough, you had him do it.
Mark Dever:
Sure enough, I did.
Jonathan Leeman:
Now you gave a special word.
Mark Dever:
I had a special statement before the pastoral prayer where for about 10 minutes I just talked to the congregation and Chris Bruce recorded it. I had lots of people asking me for copies afterward. It wasn’t written out. I couldn’t do that. But he had recorded it, so he, God bless him, went back and transcribed it and then had copies printed up and ready for everybody on Sunday night when they came back.
Where Do Topical Sermons Fit In?
Jonathan Leeman:
I dunno if I’ve seen that. Maybe I have. Where do topical sermons fit into all of this? We talked about going back and forth between genres and scripture. Where do topical sermons fit?
Mark Dever:
I think topical sermons are not a bad thing. I think they don’t serve well as the basic diet of a church, but I think they’re fine as a supplement. So we have had topical series from time to time. We would probably do it less than once a year.
We’ve had them on everything from prayer to, I think my first topical series I called Nine Marks of a Healthy Church. So literally my first topical sermon was on expositional preaching.
Jonathan Leeman:
Where do you get the ideas for topical sermons? What does it take for something to rise to the level of, oh, we need to address this, we need to break from our pattern and address this.
Mark Dever:
Just an opportunity. It could be like when I was writing the discipling book, I thought like, Ooh, if I just make myself preach five sermons on that, that’ll give me,
Jonathan Leeman:
Did you bring that to the elders?
Mark Dever:
I did because I’m not a big fan of these topical series. So I would like to say, okay, elders, it was the elders who suggested we do one on gender a few years ago, like 20 years ago on prayer. So the elders from time to time have weighed in and said, Hey, I think we could use a little concert of teaching on X.
And sometimes you can do that through expositions, but I don’t want to make expositions have to do any particular thing, so I’d just rather do a topical series. So I remember when I did the one on the atonement just being concerned about some of the pushback that
Jonathan Leeman:
CT you and Michael did.
Mark Dever:
Yeah, we got from the CT cover article, what I did on the Atonement when there were critics who were saying, well, this is too much focus on the cross. And I just thought too much focus on the cross, and I don’t know how to do that. I mean, I’m not sure what that means.
And the academic garbage behind that was that this was a later theological construct that was being foisted onto the text of scripture. So I thought, well, no, let’s just go through the Old and New Testaments and pick out 10, 12 leading passages that are absolutely senseless without an understanding of substitutionary atonement.
So we did that, and then Michael and I just did expositional sermons on them where we were answering that particular question, what does it have to do with substitution? But because that was the point of these passages, it fit well. So that was a kind of different expositional topical kind of series.
Jonathan Leeman:
And that book, well, that’s now a book called It Is Well.
Mark Dever:
That’s right.
Jonathan Leeman:
And available on the 9Mark’s website or elsewhere. Okay. You’ve done gender, atonement, discipling
Mark Dever:
A topical series over the years.
Jonathan Leeman:
Can you think of a few more
Mark Dever:
Prayer?
Jonathan Leeman:
Prayer
Mark Dever:
Mark’s Healthy church?
Jonathan Leeman:
Yeah,
Mark Dever:
No, I’d have to go back and look
How Do You Divide a Book?
Jonathan Leeman:
Back on the expositional side of things. How do you divide up a book if you’re going to go through say, the gospel of Mark and you are like 15 weeks based on these other considerations?
It’s not like though there are, well 16 chapters in Mark, it’s not as if it breaks neatly section by section as chapter by chapter. How do you not know the book as well as you will by the time you finish preaching, how do you decide on where you’re going to cut off?
Mark Dever:
Well, outlines and better commentaries are useful. So I will compare multiple outlines and if I look at six commentaries they’re all agreeing on these 14 divisions, but then it’s interesting, there are two divisions that they disagree on. I’ll spend my time looking at those two divisions and trying to make my own decisions about where I think things had best fall.
Jonathan Leeman:
Presumably, you have times where it’s like, okay, this book easily falls into five, but I’ve allotted seven. And you make adjustments accordingly. Yeah,
Mark Dever:
That’s right. Yeah. Yeah. Matthew would be a good example of that. People refer to the five books of teaching in Matthew, but you can always, cover the narratives along with them, but then you can always have one at the beginning and one at the end. So things like that are easy to do,
Jonathan Leeman:
Presumably, whether you’re going to skip a section like the end of Mark or what you’re going to do with John eight, kind of some of the ones where there’s manuscript tradition controversy
Mark Dever:
And skip a section. Like we have 50 of these things or 112 of these things. I can think of two
Jonathan Leeman:
Whatcha are talking about? I just gave two.
Mark Dever:
Are there any others?
Jonathan Leeman:
No, there’s only,
Mark Dever:
Well then let’s not talk about it. It’s a big category. So we don’t believe the Bible is the inherent word of God,
Jonathan Leeman:
Presumably when you’re preaching, presumably.
Mark Dever:
Oh my goodness.
Jonathan Leeman:
Come on now,
Mark Dever:
Here are some doubts we could sow.
Jonathan Leeman:
Presumably when you’re preaching Mark 16 or John eight,
Mark Dever:
Yeah, I understand very differently.
Jonathan Leeman:
You’re going to have decided ahead of time whether or not they’re going to be included in your series. Of course, you’ve already done all of that work.
Mark Dever:
Right. And what would be some other examples of texts like that in the Bible?
Jonathan Leeman:
Acts 29,
Mark Dever:
There’s no such thing.
Jonathan Leeman:
Revelation 30,
Mark Dever:
There’s no such thing.
Jonathan Leeman:
The Apocrypha,
Mark Dever:
There’s no such thing in the Bible.
Jonathan Leeman:
No, those are literally the only two I got.
Mark Dever:
Okay.
Jonathan Leeman:
Now I appreciate your calling out my over-categorization.
Mark Dever:
Okay,
Jonathan Leeman:
That was useful.
Mark Dever:
So basically through
Jonathan Leeman:
Just those two texts,
Mark Dever:
Through all of scripture, there are two texts that sometimes people would have extra questions about. Their question would basically be, are they part of scripture, the end of Mark’s gospel and the story of the woman called adultery at the end of John seven, the beginning of John eight? And I think those are two pretty different examples.
Jonathan Leeman:
No, I agree.
Mark Dever:
I think there’s no early manuscript evidence for the longer ending of Mark’s gospel. So when I preached through Mark, I finished with Mark 16 verse eight, and then the next Sunday, I had another topic. As I recall, I didn’t even address it, just addressed it at the door for anybody who had questions. I noticed it.
Whereas with John seven and eight things, that was much more difficult because I think because that story turns up in early manuscripts, sometimes there sometimes the end of John, sometimes the end of Luke. So hi, you can go back and listen to it.
I haven’t listened to it in a long time. I probably never listened to it, I just preached it. But I very deliberately watched my verbiage in that sermon and I preached it all as an illustration.
Jonathan Leeman:
Okay. So you preached in order, you preached John. I
Mark Dever:
Did
Jonathan Leeman:
All of John seven or almost all of John seven, then the n and
Mark Dever:
Eight,
Jonathan Leeman:
And then you preached nine. But for the carefully listening listener, did you preach it as an illustration? I think so,
Mark Dever:
Because it’s somewhat speculative in my mind about whether or not, yeah. So okay. I have a sermon on John seven. Yeah, I kind of flew over it quickly in my John 8 sermon.
Jonathan Leeman:
Is it one sermon?
Mark Dever:
It’s part of my John eight sermon. Okay.
Jonathan Leeman:
And you say it’s as if this happened or this happened?
Mark Dever:
Well,
Jonathan Leeman:
Or let me give you an illustration. Suppose Jesus walks up to me,
Mark Dever:
In my conclusion, I say, now your translations will let you know that this story is missing from most of the oldest copies of John’s gospel. And then I briefly explained text criticism.
Jonathan Leeman:
So, Mark, you’re not necessarily commending your example in John 8
Mark Dever:
I’m not necessarily
Jonathan Leeman:
Commending John’s eight other brothers who handled it in more instructive ways.
Mark Dever:
There may have been other brothers who handled it in more instructive ways. You wouldn’t hear how I handled it. Just go to the Cat B website and listen to my sermon on John 8.
What Role Do Elders Play in Sermon Planning?
Jonathan Leeman:
There it is. Do you, last question, what role do you have for other elders in your church?
Mark Dever:
Steve Boyer preached last night
Jonathan Leeman:
Paid or unpaid preaching.
Mark Dever:
Steve Boyer preached last night, lay elder.
Jonathan Leeman:
Since this is a conversation about planning, do you deliberately look to involve them in preaching for the church?
Mark Dever:
No, not every elder wants to preach or should preach, but elders who do want to preach and particularly if they’re gifted at it, yeah, I’m quite happy to involve them. It’ll more likely be on a Sunday evening where we have brief sermons on a text I assign than in a Sunday morning slot.
Jonathan Leeman:
But you’ll do them on Sunday morning occasionally. You did more so previously
Mark Dever:
If we need to. Yeah. But by God’s kindness to us at this point, not the life of our congregation, we have enough men here who are on staff at the church and want to be the main preachers at congregations long-term that we are well-served by people who are clearly gifted to teach God’s word publicly.
Jonathan Leeman:
At the same time, I remember that when you went to a plurality of elders back in the late nineties, one of your arguments was you wanted to indigenize a leadership. And I assume that means partly the teaching ministry of the congregation in a place.
Mark Dever:
That’s right.
Let Elders Preach
Jonathan Leeman:
And so for the general person out there listening, having your elders preach, I would suggest is a good thing to do.
Mark Dever:
I don’t like it when you put it like that because that makes it sound like every elder should be able to preach. And I don’t think that’s true.
Jonathan Leeman:
I know, that’s not what I’m suggesting.
Mark Dever:
So if I’ve got six elders, I don’t want to feel I have an obligation to make sure all six of those are preaching. But if I’ve got three of those who are good or can be good at teaching scripture, I want to find appropriate slots for them to do that.
Jonathan Leeman:
Yeah. I guess I’m trying to introduce into the mind of say, many Southern Baptist churches where it really is all on the one guy and say, well, no, actually that serves the church to have other voices, including elders teaching in the church and preaching in the church even.
Mark Dever:
Very true.
Jonathan Leeman:
Anything else on this topic of sermon planning? Mark?
Mark Dever:
I do think the elders have an important role to play. If there is something that they think that the congregation needs instruction on that they’re not getting instruction on, please elders speak up to your main preacher dude about that. Let ’em know.
Jonathan Leeman:
So if there are hobby horses that he goes off on too often, or if he just keeps going over here and on this soapbox, is that a place for elders to talk?
Mark Dever:
First of all, I’m a little surprised that you see anything negative about a soapbox or a hobby horse
Jonathan Leeman:
Because my job has me,
Mark Dever:
Well, I dunno. One has one’s pets.
Jonathan Leeman:
My job is not to preach the whole council of God to the congregation. My job allows me to stand on a soapbox. But for the preacher,
Mark Dever:
The preacher needs to cultivate all of the scripture.
Jonathan Leeman:
And if you don’t see your preacher doing that, is that something an elder?
Mark Dever:
Yeah, but that’s also, you got to be careful. That’s a lot of matters of judgment. Some guys just may love Old Testament narratives and other guys may feel like, I dunno, really what to do with these very well.
So your preacher’s going to have certain gifts and strengths. You don’t need to make him always play to his weaknesses. That’s just not a kind way to use a brother.
Jonathan Leeman:
Thank you for your time.
Mark Dever:
Thank you, brother. Always good to talk. Yep.
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