5 Preaching Lessons For Pastors To Learn From Music

About a year and a half ago I entered into a scenario that I never planned on.

In an organizational restructure, I got a new boss who is a former professional musician.

To my knowledge, he’s never preached a sermon in his life. But, in spite of this, he gives me incredibly helpful preaching feedback, often from the perspective of his background in music.

This got me thinking about the connections between preaching and music.

I think there are quite a few. Here’s what I mean:

1. Practice

When I was 18, I settled on my career trajectory: youth ministry.

I filled out a few college applications and bought a guitar.

Yes, a guitar.

Everyone knows that every youth pastor plays guitar. Well, that’s what I thought anyway.

So, I picked up a guitar, without having a clue how to play and with absolutely zero music background. But, I practiced and practiced and practiced until my fingers practically bled and eventually I mastered a D chord.

What does this have to do with preaching and speaking?

Both require practice in order to gain mastery.

And, the funny thing about learning guitar, it did me absolutely no good to practice in my head. I had to actually pick up the guitar and play it. One mistake I made for the first ten years of my ministry career was practicing sermons only in my head. When I made the jump to practicing out loud, I began to improve dramatically. These days, I practice each sermon out loud three or four times, once on the stage with slides and everything.

You see, speaking and music are actually quite similar.

If you want to improve as a speaker, try practicing out loud.

2. Repetition

Another lesson that I’ve learned from music is that structure enhances the message.

Have you ever heard a new song and then had the chorus of that song stuck in your head for hours and hours? Part of the reason songs gets stuck in our head is the repeating structure of music.

Verse, chorus, verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus and if it’s a worship song add seven more choruses at the end.

HEY-O!

Anyway, you probably see where I’m going with this.

Repetition is impactful when it comes to music and also preaching.

The truth is, you can’t expect your audience to remember your key points unless you repeat them throughout your message. Sometimes it sounds well…repetitive, but what I’ve learned is that if you do not repeat, your audience will not remember.

So, let’s learn from the structure of music and repeat what’s important when we speak and teach.

3. Story

You know you’ve stumbled onto a good song when you are captivated by the story. When you find yourself saying, “I know exactly what that feels like,” the songwriter is telling a good story.

It’s the same with good teaching and preaching.

My senior pastor has a saying,

“Don’t kill the characters.”

It’s impossible to teach out of Philippians without talking about Paul, the Philippians, prison or anything from the story. The Scriptures are loaded with narrative and all too often we fail to capitalize on the natural tension and drama. Storytelling is one of the most underrated skills in preaching and teaching.

And, what I’ve learned from music is that story moves us. It connects with us.

If you’re interested in developing this skill, try asking these questions when studying a text:

What’s going on here?

What’s it like to be them?

Where do I do that?

Asking these questions as you study and then weaving them into the sermon are great ways to connect with the original story as well as the audience we are teaching.

Great music tells a story and so does great preaching. The beautiful thing is, it’s all there in the Biblical narrative.

4. Dynamics

Once after delivering a sermon, my former professional musician boss challenged me to speak with more dynamics.

At first I thought he was talking about more power or something.

“Does he want me to yell?”

But then he explained dynamics like EQ in music.

He explained to me that great music mixes highs and lows through volume, speed, swells and fades, melody and harmony. Great music doesn’t stay at the same level throughout a song, it moves up and down. It fills and empties.

He then said, great preaching is the same.

There should be moments when you speak softly and others where you speak louder.

There should be moments when you speak rapidly and others when you slow down to emphasize a point.

There should be moments when you plod along at an even pace and then a few moments of silence.

And, instead of staying in one place on the stage or wandering aimlessly, use your movements strategically as dynamics. Can you see what he meant?

Great teachers vary their delivery to emphasize what they are trying to accomplish. In this way, teaching and preaching are very much like music. If you want to grow in your ability to speak, try utilizing dynamics for greater emphasis.

5. Lessons

After I had been playing my guitar for about six months and had learned all the basic chords, I ran into a wall. I had taught myself everything I could teach myself. That’s when I called up my friend Eric who is basically a guitar legend and asked him to teach me some stuff.

I started informal lessons with him. He showed me tricks, better form, open power chords, new songs and all kinds of stuff.

I quickly became a much better guitar player because of spending time with Eric.

Listen, speaking and preaching are a lot like music.

If you want to grow as a communicator, find someone who is farther along in the craft and hang out with them. Study their methods and practices. Ask them for their tips and tricks.

Even if you’ve already been preaching for 20 years, there’s always something that you can learn.

Wrap Up

So there you go.

It turns out teaching and preaching are a lot like music.

Practice, repetition, story, dynamics and lessons all matter. If you’re interested in growing as a public speaker, teacher or preacher, I would suggest choosing one of these ideas and running with it.

We’d love to hear your thoughts on this post. Feel free to leave us a comment below.