I remember (though I cannot now find the reference) a comment that the American pastor Tim Keller made about the connection between preaching and conversational ministry.
His message was this. If preachers spend too much of their time engaged in conversational ministry, then their preaching will suffer – because they won’t have time to prepare properly. However, if they give too little time to conversational ministry their preaching will also suffer – because they won’t truly understand the people to whom they are preaching.
It is a striking observation. The first half of the statement isn’t hard to follow. Every preacher will know weeks when an overfull diary has pushed out proper time for prayerful preparation and they have arrived at Sunday with their sermon half-baked (or barely cooked at all!). While that can’t always be avoided – some crises rightly take much time and attention – we can, and should, be realistic about how much conversational ministry we commit to.
A joyful reset: What ReNew gave me this year
I’ve come back from the ReNew conference with a spring in my step. The evening I got back, I told …