The Pastor Theologians Podcast
A theology podcast for the church. The pastor theologians podcast consists of conversations and teaching resources at the intersection of theological scholarship and life and ministry in the local church. The vision for this show is to help equip pastors to be theologians for today’s complex world.
The Pastor Theologians Podcast
Preaching as Theology | Nicole Martin (Preaching and the Pastor Theologian Episode 10)
In this final episode of the Preaching in the Pastor-Theologian series, Joel Lawrence and Matt Kim are joined by Nicole Martin—pastor, preacher, and President/CEO of Christianity Today—for a wide-ranging conversation that brings the series’ central themes into sharp focus. Drawing on her own preaching journey and her book Nailing It, Martin reflects on preaching as a theological act of proclamation rather than performance, emphasizing surrender, simplicity, and a God-centered vision of the pulpit. Together, they explore the difference between preaching and teaching, the dangers of human-centered and culturally driven sermons, and the urgent need for theological formation shaped by the cross rather than triumphalism. The episode closes with a candid and pastoral word to preachers: true faithfulness lies not in success or spectacle, but in dying to self, trusting the sufficiency of God’s grace, and letting the Word of God do its work among a listening church—and a listening preacher.
Hi everyone, and welcome back to the Preaching in the Pastor Theologian podcast series. I'm Joel Lawrence here with my co-host for this series, Matt Kim. Matt, good to see you again. Good to see you, Joel. On today's episode, we're speaking with Nicole Martin, who serves as the Chief Operating Officer at Christianity Today. Nicole is a pastor, a preacher. She has degrees from Vanderbilt University, where she was a triple major in uh human organizational development, educational studies, and French. So pretty serious for her undergrad.
Matt Kim:Slacker, slacker.
Joel Lawrence:Absolutely. She worked as a business analysis before she went to Princeton Theological Seminary and received her MDiv, where she also received the uh David Hugh Jones Award in music and the John Allen Swink Award in Preaching. She also earned a demon from Gordon Conwell Seminary, where uh she also taught. And Matt, you were uh you were teaching in Boston while she was teaching in Charlotte, right? That's right. Yeah, yeah. She has a new book that's recently been published called Nailing It: Why Successful Leadership Demands Suffering and Sacrifice. And uh this is our final episode in this 10-episode series, and we're just so excited to have Nicole on to kind of help us bring together some of the themes as we talk about uh preaching as theology. So, Matt, as we began this podcast series, uh, we did it with the framing of preaching God, listening church. Those themes have kind of been tracking through the various different conversations, I think have emerged in different ways. Now, as we're we're coming to the conclusion of the series, I would just be curious how our conversations have been shaping your thinking of preaching, particularly as this act of theology. Uh how have how have you been learning and been been shaped in your thinking about this theme?
Matt Kim:Yeah, that's great. If we were to frame it as preaching God, listening church, uh, I would insert into this listening preacher. And that seems to be one of the themes that has been coming up over and over again. And and that's a good thing. And in particular, I would say that it would be about the the preacher listening to the to the voice of God.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Matt Kim:The triune God. Yeah. Um, and being attentive to the Spirit and being led by the Spirit. And so, yeah, it this has been so rich for me and just learning new things, meeting new people, it's been wonderful.
Joel Lawrence:Yeah, I I I think the thing that has emerged for me in it and um it comes up in this conversation with Nicole, but it's we we have to depend more upon the word of God and the grace of God. We say we're doing that, and then we do so much of the work. I do as a confession, so much of the work in our own strength, and so much we think so much is dependent upon us. And yet, if the word of God is living and active, and if it is the word of God, it's not mine, it's his, he maintains his freedom to accomplish his purposes with it, through it, then the surrender and the belief that God has to act. Just that is something I think that has been challenging me and I hope been challenging the folks who've been listening to this. And that challenge will come through again in this conversation with Nicole. So encourage people to be thinking about this theme as they're listening to this conversation and prayerfully reflecting on what God might be teaching them. So let's go ahead and enroll the conversation with Nicole. Nicole, it's so great to have you on the podcast. Thanks for joining us.
Nicole Martin:Thank you so much for having me. I'm glad to be with you guys today.
Joel Lawrence:So, uh, before we dive into our conversation today on preaching as theology, we've we've had you on for the 10th and final episode to kind of help us bring it all together. Um, but before we jump into that, I'd love just to invite you to introduce yourself to those who are listening. Just love to hear about your faith journey, educational journey, pastoral experience, what you're doing today.
Nicole Martin:Awesome. Thanks, Joel. Um, it's always easy to easier to start from where I am and go backwards. I'm currently the chief operating officer at Christianity today, um, which has just shifts since uh last year or earlier this year. So I oversee our operational elements at CT, which I thoroughly enjoy. It's a wonderful opportunity and challenge. And then prior to that, I served as the uh chief impact officer at CT. And prior to that, I was at American Bible Society, overseeing our domestic and international ministries. Before that, I was serving as an executive pastor at um a church in Charlotte, North Carolina, where I started as the Minister of Singles and Discipleship. And then before that, it was like seminary, and I thought I was gonna be a consultant until God rocked my world and I realized what I loved most in life, what I wanted to spend my life on was studying the Word of God. So I am uh married to my husband Mark Martin. It'll be 15 years on May 1st. We have two amazing daughters, Addison and Josephine. They're 10 and 12, and every day just trying to press toward clarity on calling and context and just excited about this conversation about preaching and the theology of it because I think that's something I wrestle with at CT, as a mom, as a wife, as a preacher, and even in my life as a member of a church.
unknown:Yeah.
Matt Kim:Great, Nicole. Thanks so much for sharing that. Talk to us about your journey uh as a preacher uh in particular. How have you grown over the years? What is God doing in your life as a preacher? How are you thinking about it these days from prior years?
Nicole Martin:Well, you know, I it's an interesting question for me as a woman. When I first started in ministry, my dad was a pastor, and I had seen maybe one, two women preaching in in my life. Um, I wasn't necessarily in an egalitarian context nor complementarian one. It just kind of happened we would have one or two women. So I always grew up thinking I'm not a preacher because I don't preach like a man, because I don't have that kind of authority, because silly things, I like to have fun. And I just assumed if I like to, you know, have fun and tell stories, then surely I can't. I can't be a no, preachers are very serious people. Um, and so I think when I first started my initial sermon, this was 2001, um, the feedback was good conversational style. So I thought, surely I'll never be a dynamic preacher like the people I've seen. But I think the slow process, it's funny because as my skills grew in preaching, I think the strength of preaching came from my surrender. So it's like this dual thing, the building up of skills. And for me, skills were uh getting better at storytelling, getting better at making complicated text simple and easy to digest, getting better at not writing for the eye, but writing for the ear. As those skills got better, I think the strain came from you know what to do, now let God do what only God can do. And the more I grew, the more I surrendered. And I think that's the biggest change today in my preaching. I am now at a place where I realized the skills are helpful, but nothing helps the anointing of God that comes from full surrender.
Joel Lawrence:So I I'd love to pick that up. You're just talking about storytelling, simplicity. I this theme has come up a number of times. Simplicity in preaching. And um, just a couple ways it's come up is has been um, you know, one person saying, just gotta quit thinking about will this sermon go viral? Yes. And just preach the word. And someone else is talking about, we're not here to offer our opinions, we're here to proclaim the gospel, and that just keeps us grounded. And I think in this conversation where that can where that can lead us to dialogue a little bit is about this kind of sense of preaching as theology, preaching as a theological act, in that storytelling, in that simplicity, in that surrender, what from your perspective is the place of the sermon informing the theological vision of the church? I think it's easy for a lot of us to think how we can form the moral vision of the church through preaching, how we can inspire people through preaching. But in terms of like building the theological framework, the theological vision of the church, what's the role of the sermon on that? Are there ways you think the sermons are uniquely able to do that kind of formational work?
Nicole Martin:Yeah. So I wrestled with this. I I remember I went to preach at a church in Maryland a few weeks ago. And, you know, I'm I'm kind of praying over the sermon, and at this point, the sermon is completed. It's just a matter of me being surrendered to God in that moment and praying that God's word would do what God intended. And so I walked into the church and the pastor's son said to me, I don't know if I believe in the preaching ministry of the church anymore. This is right before I go out. I'm like, great. Wonderful things to say to the preacher before going out to preach. So I asked him what he meant, and he said, you know, I just feel like we need to do more teaching, we need to focus more on service, we need to focus more on prayer, but I'm not sure that preaching from the pulpit matters much. And I remember going out in that service and wrestling, like, God, does it matter? If we were to have an entire worship service where there was no preaching, but we just broke out into small groups and then started serving the community, would that matter? And I thought, yeah, I think, I think I can see that. There's obviously a powerful message that he was trying to convey that we put so much emphasis on the pulpit and we don't put enough emphasis on the people. But then my grieving moment was if there is no proclamation of the word, then the church doesn't really get to see the embodied power and authority of the word as the center point. And I know that that probably depends on denominations. Um, but in a Baptist context, in a Pentecostal context, and in um, you know, in even in my AME context, there's a centrality of the word of God that comes not from the expert, but comes as proclamation. Hear now the word of the Lord. That should be the center point, the calling card for all of us to come together. And if we were to remove that center point, then we would so democratize the church, not in a negative way, but there would not be a central rallying point where we would have to heed the word of the Lord, where we would have to still our lives and our hearts to hear it, where we would not be able to say, I think, and I think there's a space for that. But there's something about preaching that forces us to say, when God speaks, we must listen. Even the preacher must listen.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Nicole Martin:So it's just, it's really rest. I've been wrestling with it ever since. Is there such a thing as a church with no place for preaching? And I think the answer is no.
Joel Lawrence:Let me ask a quick follow-up and then Matt, you can you can take us from there. Uh uh so one of the questions that's come up through, as the CPT has been doing our uh preaching conversations over the last couple years, uh, it's come up on this podcast, and it it relates to what you're just saying. What in your mind, what is the difference between preaching and teaching? Like when you go from a and we've all done this probably, you go from a Sunday school class. Yes, and then you go into the pulpit on the same day. Yes. Right? One hour is in the Sunday school class. That's right. What's different there? Like theologically, what's happening that's different in those places? What what are your thoughts on that?
Nicole Martin:So um I think there's always there should be an element of teaching in preaching. We should people should be learning something. But when the teaching moment becomes preaching, then there's no didactic exchange. So for me, teaching, um, especially for adults, requires some type of processing. It requires that you apply together. It reply it requires that we create some practices and some principles to help you internalize what you've heard and to practice it. And while that is also true of preaching, the element of proclamation um doesn't make room for that didactic exchange in the same way, where people can ask questions, where they can dig deeper, where they can wrestle. And I I think that's why you can't have one without the other. I I would always strive to teach in my preaching, but because I know there's no room for asking questions, it is up to me, at least to the best of my abilities and within my limitations, to explain the word in a way that people would take that home. I mean, I know there's I I think it's it's too hard to create a fine line. It's like, how do you take the miso out of the ramen? Like, yeah, I don't know. They they just go together. They just go together. Um, but they are different, they're very different and they serve different purposes, I think.
Matt Kim:Yeah, it's great. Thanks. Yeah. Thanks, Nicole. We're gonna go a little deep deeper into the educational aspect of preaching. And so uh think with us about your understanding of the preaching that's happening in the American church. Uh that's been viewed a lot as inspiration or education, as you just mentioned about the teaching portion, but not so much about theology. And so talk to us about what you see as some of the missing ingredients. Well, what's what's missing today in American churches today, uh, in terms of proclamation? How can we do a better job of bringing theology into the pulpit?
Nicole Martin:Yes. So obviously, if we if we consider theology at its core as the study of God, it seems to me that we have to do a better job of explaining what scripture teaches us about God, not what teacher what scripture teaches us about what we should do, not just what teach what scripture teaches us about who we are or how we can feel better, but we have to get to the place where we in the preaching moment can learn about God. When when I started preaching early on, this is fresh out of seminary, I think I was uh serving as a young adult pastor, so maybe one or two years into preaching at that time. Actually, no, I I by the time I'd graduated seminary, I'd had about five years of preaching. So I remember preaching, this was Ezekiel 47. And this is um the prophet is brought into the water. First it's ankle deep, and then it's knee deep, and then it's waist deep, and then it gets to the place where he couldn't stand. And I took that text and I said, I the whole question, my framework was built upon what we should do when we find ourselves in these places of depth in our lives. And my pastor at the time, and this I was preaching three services on this particular text. Between, I think it was a first or second service, he said, he was very quiet, he said, uh, you did a good job locating us in the text, but I wonder if you can do a better job locating God in the text. And it was in that moment that I realized this whole sermon, I was preaching about our role and going deeper. And I missed the fact that the prophet was brought by God, by an angel of the Lord into the waters. He did not step into the water himself. It was the act of God moving him. And it shifted my whole framework for preaching from that point on. So I've started to really try to dive into what does this text teach us about God? And if I can help people understand how God operates, then hopefully they'll have the tools that they need to figure out how they should operate based on their theology, not based on some kind of humanistic perception of, you know, you should always pull yourself up with your own bootstraps. But there's a God who works in you, through you, beyond you. And if we do theology right in preaching, then people should be in awe of God and not walk away thinking, oh wow, I did a good job.
Joel Lawrence:So yeah, I think this is this is another theme that that has emerged. And it's been something I've been thinking about a lot in my own, kind of looking back at my own journey of preaching. Um, and it and you you said, I think you said humanistic in that in that answer, or even human-centered.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Joel Lawrence:I do feel like this is something I've wrestled with. Um I think that's something that the broader evangelical church really wrestles with is how human-centered our preaching is. And we talk about God's God in it a lot, and we we but we pivot usually from, you know, what I've observed is oftentimes it's a a gesture toward God and then a pivot toward us.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, absolutely.
Joel Lawrence:And then that's kind of where we spend the time as you're talking about it, which inevitably means I love what you're saying, because our theological vision of who God is isn't really being formed. Right. And what is being formed is a sense of what we have to do in order to please God or serve God, or you know, good things, serve our neighbor, and these kinds of things. So on that, take us a little deeper into that of um, like if you were to preach that sermon again, putting you on the spot here.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Joel Lawrence:Yeah. Like, what do you think you might do a little bit differently now that than you did at that time? How would you approach the text a little differently? Sorry to have you have you do some homiletics right here on the spot. Yeah.
Nicole Martin:This is on the spot homiletics. I mean, this is it honestly, every sermon feels like that in some way, even when we have ample time to study.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Nicole Martin:I think I would have put a greater emphasis on God's larger work through Ezekiel. What was God trying to show Ezekiel from Ezekiel one all the way through the end? God is trying to prove I am the one who's in control. I have a plan. It's what I have to say to the people is not going to be fun. It's not going to be pretty, it's going to be hard, but you have to trust me, I'm taking you someplace. So Ezekiel, Isaiah, Jeremiah, they're all, they're journey prophets in my mind. They are tracking God's movement through the rivers and the valleys. And I think what I would have done differently is to talk about how God leads us to these places where we don't always understand, where the vision isn't clear, where it's just, you know, where it's wheels and it's it's flying animals and it's it's wings and it's and you get so dumbfounded that you sit outside of the city gates and you don't even know what to say. But God also, you know, gives you, he fortifies you for that journey. So I think I would have emphasized God's ability to fortify us, to strengthen us, to make our foreheads like flint, to, to take us into these deep, expansive places, not because we feel we're ready or because we're so great, but because God has a journey, an expectation, a place where He's taking us. And I would love to. Now you're making me want to go back. I can study that text. But I would love to relate that a little to our lives, but make it more about God. Because at the end of that text, the prophet has to look to God. And when the prophet looks to God, then you get to see the trees on the side that are, you know, blooming with life and all of that. And what the the impact of the river that makes, you know, that makes all of these things grow. So it's actually not about us at all.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Nicole Martin:I'm I may have done a halfway decent job trying to make people, you know, in my context, give giving a good shout for better or worse can can you know make up for bad theology, which is horrible.
Speaker 2:Right.
Nicole Martin:Um but going back on it, like if we can't point people to God, then what are we doing? Yeah. What are we doing?
Joel Lawrence:Yeah. Yeah. I want to ask I want to actually ask Matt to jump in on this. Nicole, one of the secrets of having Matt as a co-host is that of also being able to have him as a guest and tap into tap into him as well.
Speaker 2:As you should.
Joel Lawrence:Yeah. So Matt, I would love like your how you have thought about this this kind of God-centered, human-centered. We we want to be attentive to the human situation, of course. I I just, Matt, would love to hear your thoughts about how you've you've grown in that, or maybe some of the things you see as you're teaching preaching these days about how you're helping students wrestle with some of these questions.
Matt Kim:Yeah, I mean, you Joel, you have to be have me back on a different podcast to start all that I'm learning. Because I I feel like that that journey never stops because we're so uh self-centered.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Matt Kim:You know, because we're so enamored, uh, I like to use the the phrase enamored by ourselves. We we just love to talk about ourselves um some more than others.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Matt Kim:And I I see that in preaching today because if you if you look at it, um one one student had a great observation that uh he called it time of possession. And basically, if you have a 30-minute sermon, how much time is spent talking about the Lord and how much time is spent talking about ourselves? And that was a great observation in that class. I was like, wow, that's really good. And so as you look back on your own sermons, you know, you could you could actually calculate how much time did I spent talking about the Bible and and the Lord, and how much of it was me telling my story about saving my cat. And so um I in general, I think we're weak in theology uh in preaching, we're weak in the text. Um and so we we as a culture need to do more study, uh, and not just more study, but more intentional teaching on the text and not make ourselves the center stage of the screen. And and so that's just a general observation, and that's not unique to our culture. It's been it's been like this for decades.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Matt Kim:The corrective is I think we need to model that the best we can. The next time I enter the pulpit, I need to do that calculation. I need to make sure that I'm doing my best in that area. So I can keep going, but we'll stop there.
Joel Lawrence:That's great. I I uh after we hang up here, I'm gonna work on a sermon I've got for this weekend. So I'm gonna do the time of possession test. That's a great helpful little metric to have.
Speaker 2:That's really good.
Joel Lawrence:So so I want to um kind of take this conversation now, extend it a little bit further to living through some interesting times uh politically and and socially. Yes. I think in many ways, what we're seeing, and I've had lots of conversations with pastors who are wrestling with this of how the lack of theological formation in the American church and how it's playing out in lots of different ways, but it's become very apparent. Um we do want to be attentive to the cultural context and what's happening around us. But are there ways, Nicole, you think about how to be attentive to what's going on around us, but also be considerate that that culture isn't determining the way that we're preaching. So that are really a theological vision is what's leading us to engage the culture around us. How do you think about that? And and how we need to grow is that as pastors in order to shepherd the church better in these days. Yeah.
Nicole Martin:Yeah, I mean, it it at the at its core, it's kind of like the difference between exegesis and eisegesis. If if we really read the text, we will see lots of commentary. God is not ashamed to make uh cultural commentary at any point, politically or otherwise.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Nicole Martin:Our problem is I know pastors who say, today I'm gonna preach about um, you know, how the president is doing a terrible job and I'm gonna apply this scripture to it. If you would just preach the word of God, then people will make their own conclusions.
Speaker 2:Right.
Nicole Martin:Um, and and I I don't want to say that in a manipulative way, because again, if we come to the text with our own ideas, we will preach our own ideas. One of the hardest disciplines for me is to pray when I have an opportunity to preach, Lord, what text do you want me to preach? Because often when I get an invitation, it's come preach our women's day. Our theme is abundance. So no, no, no pressure, but can you preach on abundance? Or, you know, come do our conference and the theme is flourishing, and we're studying ways that people can flourish. So then you start to think, all right, what are flourishing scriptures? Or what are, you know, no, that's actually really bad practice. My discipline is Lord, show me the text that you want me to preach and let me wrestle with that text to pull out what is necessary for that moment. So it is not uncommon for me to say in the introduction, I honor your theme of flourishing, and I'm so glad that you are practicing flourishing today. Now for the text. And the text, let it speak for itself. Because Jesus is not ashamed of turning over tables and temples. He is not ashamed of saying, give unto Caesar what is Caesar's, and unto God what is God's, and y'all go figure out what that means for your own life. But people are actually really smart. Congregants are very smart, younger generations are very smart, and they can smell when you have an agenda, when you have something that you want to say, um, and you you're you're reading the text and then you never go back to it. My niece said that to me. She's in college and she went to uh visit a church, and she was like, you know, he read the scripture and then he never revisited it ever. He just kind of like ranted and talked about somebody in the congregation. But that's that's what we do if we're not disciplined.
Joel Lawrence:Yeah, yeah. I when when we uh invited you a couple years ago to speak at our uh uh preaching conference, uh I think we probably did the same thing to you, right? Come talk about preaching. Yeah, come talk about preaching. That's easier. And you brought revelation and like the the book of revelation and divine revelation, and the it was a very powerful thing. So I just say that to say, like I've benefited from from you doing that. And and I think that's uh again, a thing that I think has uh come up here is in as we've been having these conversations, is I think we expect very little from God sometimes.
Nicole Martin:Yes.
Joel Lawrence:And so we're not asking him for what we ought to be preaching about. Or we're not we're we maybe you know, we pray and then we do our preparation and then we pray and then we preach, but are we really in an integral, integrated life with God out of which the preaching ministry of the church can flow? So yeah, I just say that to say uh uh we we benefited as an organization from you being open and attentive to the spirit. And if I remember correctly, you hadn't really done a whole lot in uh preaching from the book of Revelation, but you felt prompted by God to do this.
Nicole Martin:Yes, right, we add to that with a ton of fear. I mean, whenever you say, Lord, what do you want me to preach, and God directs you to a text that you're wrestling with, yeah, it is just you have so much fear. Am I gonna pull out of this everything that needs to be pulled out? Am I gonna treat this text fairly? Technically, we should have that fear every single time we preach the word of God. Our words are just feeble for it. But you're right, when God puts a text on your heart, then there's a there's actually a stronger anchor. Yeah, I'm afraid, but I do feel confident that this is the word of God and not my opinion or you know, me venting about something that I don't really know that well.
Matt Kim:Yeah, it's great. Well, Nicole, as a friend of the CPT, we're we're so excited for your new book, uh Nailing It that's come out uh by IVP. And so uh as as we talk about the next question, uh, and that is what is uh uh in your life uh to this point, you've been um how have you been formed by preaching? Um and maybe you can w tie in some of the themes that you wrote about in your book here in this question, because I I think it might be uh r relevant to that. So would you mind sharing about what you're learning and then also uh share some principles from the book?
Nicole Martin:Yes, absolutely. I think the the what I am learning is in part what I've been writing about. And what I'm learning is I do I I feel and sense and see this great emphasis in preaching on resurrection. I mean, this is if there is a theology in preaching, in my context and in other contexts, it's this constant conquering king, it's this victorious, you know, we're more than conquerors idea. It's the every road goes higher and higher and there's greater glory and your better days are next ahead. Even in the altar calls that we do, it's always come to a better life, come to a better way, come to greater freedom, greater joy, in some cases, greater prosperity, greater health. But scripture never says that. Jesus says, Come take up your cross. You know, Paul says, I get to know him through his sufferings by fellowship in his sufferings. And I I really feel deeply that we have lost this discipline of clinging to the cross so that we can enjoy, appreciate, and understand resurrection. So, in order to get to the part of clinging to the cross, which is not fun, which is why the subtitle is Why a Successful Leadership Demands Suffering and Surrender, the reality is if we want to be successful, we must die. That is the call of faith today. Jesus says, come and die. Not in a martyrdom way that's just for vanity's sake because I like, you know, the pain, but in a way that says, you can find greater life when you're willing to let go. So as I go through the book, I'm talking about things that I'm wrestling with now. How do I let go a secular view of power that says I ought to have it and hoard it and keep it and let it, you know, inflate me so that I can be great? And and how do I surrender that view of power so that what is resurrected through me is the power of Christ, redeemed, power that empowers others, power that is meant to be given away. Um, in preaching, for example, how do I let go of this secular idea of performance? Um, one of the biggest laments I have over our high and holy days like Easter is it just feels like this overemphasis on performance. And that is a worldly thing. We want to perform, you know, we want to make this this is supposed to be the greatest sermon of the year, or the church's play is supposed to be the greatest performance of the year. The the choirs and the praise teams are getting ready for their quote gigs. All of that needs to be surrendered at the foot of the cross. And if we can really surrender performance, then what we can embrace is a sense of God's presence, which which supersedes our performance, which, if we want to say so, outperforms our humanity and our flesh. Um, so I think it's what I'm writing about is just a journey. And it came out of a frustration that I felt like, why is nobody talking about what this really cost us? Why is everyone saying leadership is about better platforms and better followers and better people? Why isn't anyone saying, you will suffer, you will be betrayed, you will be rejected, you will fail. But it's through the failures that you'll find redemption in Christ and you'll be willing to succeed. And I have seen the leaders that I admire the most, the people I want to be most like, are those who willingly embrace their weaknesses and their limitations through the cross. And I get to see a resurrected form of their of God's glory through them and not just some performative scaled version of what the world says we should be.
Joel Lawrence:I've got about nine different thoughts running around in my head. I you know, I think you've put your finger on something really important. In many ways, I think the American gospel is a prosperity gospel. It's not all it's not just financial. Yep. Right. There's that version of it, which is the most obvious version of it that we can all look at on certain TV channels and say, well, that's terrible.
Speaker 2:Yep.
Joel Lawrence:But this kind of up to the right success, pastoral journey, church journey, how we met all the metrics that we have. Yeah, there's a real retraining that has to happen in all of us. And it's a theological retraining.
Nicole Martin:Absolutely.
Joel Lawrence:Um, to go into a theology of the cross, leading a theology of glory. So as you think about this, as you wrote the book pastors in mind, leaders in mind, maybe if you could summarize like one thing you would want to say to American pastors. Now that's a broad category. We're all in lots of different places and experiences. But like if there's one thing you could say, if you had, if they were all listening right now, um what would you say?
Nicole Martin:I would say there is greater life, greater power, greater victory, greater anointing available when we lay it down. Um we have been holding so much. Pastors have been holding so much, they've put so much on themselves. And it's out of fear. If I lay down my role, my title, who will I be after this? We see this with pastors who struggle to uh build succession plans. They just, they've been called pastor and leader for so long, they don't know who they'll be if they lay it down. Pastors who have building plans and are building new things and are really business leaders, they're afraid if I let this go, will it all fall apart? Will the building plan crumble? Will the capital campaign fail? And and the reality is if we don't lay it down, those things will fail. We have, by all estimations, and this is a global, I've seen global reports on this. We have the lowest resilience now than we've ever had before across generations. We have greater levels of loneliness now than we've ever had. We have so many challenges and issues facing us. And I would say what the world needs is not a gospel that says things are gonna get better and everything is gonna be great. We need a gospel that says in these days you will have trouble. In this world, you will have trouble. But don't worry, I've overcome the world. We need a gospel that says the days will be dark. In these last and evil days, things will get worse. We need a gospel that points to this revelation chaos that says, expect that the government is gonna be absolute madness from here on out. Expect that you may not be able to trust your paycheck. You may not be able to lean on the things of this world, but there's a gospel that can sustain that. My fear is if we only preach resurrection and glory and triumph and victory, then we will never have a gospel to sustain us for the darkest of times. So this is the message I pray that pastors accept. Embrace your anxiety. Embrace the fear that you have over the capital campaign. Embrace the fact that if you preach the actual gospel, people might leave your church. Embrace those things. And when you do, you will find a savior who not only embraced it but took it all on. And I would rather, I mean, isn't this Galatians 1 9? If I were living to please the world, I would not be a servant of Jesus Christ. So I hope that pastors start to cling to Christ in a way where he becomes the only audience and we can release the performative and the scale and the speed and all of these principles of the world that are actually killing us and preventing us from being who God is calling us to be for now.
Joel Lawrence:So before I'm gonna have Matt ask our final question in a minute, how has your preaching changed as you've been writing the book or reflecting on the book? How's that playing out in your own sense of your call as a theological preacher, as a communicator of the Word of God to build into the church this understanding of the cross?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Joel Lawrence:How have you how have you been growing wrestling changing as a preacher as you've been processing these things?
Nicole Martin:Yeah. I think I've just been brought more to my knees lately in the sense of I used to, again, as a woman preacher, I think this is unique in some cases to women, but really applies to all of us. There's a point, kind of an inflection point in your preaching where you start to realize you're getting good feedback, people are inviting you places, you know, you actually feel good about what you have to say. You start preparing sermons, you're like, this one's gonna be good. Um, and I think I'd gotten to that place prior to writing the book. And as I've been writing the book, I've realized I have a whole lot more to surrender. A whole lot more. I have a lot more throughout the preparation process to surrender. That when I come to the moment of Lord, what do you pre what do you want me to preach? I have a lot to surrender. I have to surrender my ego. I have to surrender, you know, my sense of performance. I have to surrender my speed. God, I've got three days. You gotta speak in three days. If you don't speak in three days, there is no word. Like I've I've had to surrender my timing to God. I've had to surrender the baggage that I bring to the preaching moment. I have to surrender how I felt on the last sermon, whether that was good or bad, and allow this sermon to be its own space. Like all of that is really hard. And I find myself not just surrendering in those few seconds before I get up and preach, Lord help me, Jesus, here we go. But you know, surrendering throughout the process, in the writing process. Is this the right thing? Have I done the right research? I have to vet a lot more things because I know I'm a sinful person and I can bring my ego and I can bring my issues into the sermon. And I want to make sure that I'm constantly dying to self. It is hard work, but it is, I feel like if I can just commit to the process of dying to self, then prayerfully God will be elevated in a way that people will say, Wow, that was the Lord, not oh, pat on your back. Good job, Nicole.
Matt Kim:Yeah, it's great. Thank you.
unknown:Yeah.
Matt Kim:Wow, Nicole, this has been amazing. Thank you so much for the wonderful insights you've been sharing with us uh in this podcast. Uh, we're gonna uh wrap up with this question. It's very broad, open ended. And is is this what is what is God teaching you these days? Maybe it's about preaching, maybe it's about your work as CT, yeah, as as a as a mom, as a wife, anything. What is God teaching you? Uh in this moment.
Nicole Martin:Yeah. What does God teach me in this moment? I think in this particular moment, He's teaching me that I'm enough. And um sometimes you don't know why you need to know that, but I I know why. I I have again part of this writing of this book was dealing with my own soul. And I've always been that person that works twice as hard. You know, you have to work twice as hard to be considered half as good. Um I've always been the overachiever and the one who wants to dot every I and cross every T. I've always had this inner drive that comes from a lack, a lack of opportunity, a lack of open doors, a lack of, you know, the perceived respect that I felt I deserved. And so I've always kind of driven myself and I feel like God is saying that classic Psalm 46, 10, like, be still, cease striving. You're enough. You can know that I'm God. And in knowing that I'm God, let me be enough for you. Let me be enough in your preaching. Um, you know, it's it's easy in the preaching moment to feel like an absolute failure because you sit down, you're like, oh, the things I didn't say, the things I should have said. There's always that one comment as you're shaking hands out the door, you know, the one thing that I didn't understand, or the one thing you could have done better. Why do people do that? So you start to like, that starts to pile up. And then, you know, you have this snowball effect of preaching, like, oh, let me remember what Brother John said as he shook my hand out the door and let me not make that mistake again. But I do feel like in this season, God is trying to say, you're enough. You don't have to overachieve being a mom. You don't have to uh, you know, dot every eye as a wife, you don't have to be perfect on the job. You don't have to fear this ousting of all of the places and spaces where you are because you haven't fit the bill. There's no imposter syndrome where people are gonna turn on the lights and be like, oh my God, it's actually Nicole. We thought it was someone different. Um, but I do feel like in this life, in this season rather, God is just trying to let me know. Like, chill out, man. You're good. I'm good through you. You're okay.
Joel Lawrence:Yeah. I yeah, I I what I'm hearing in all that is the grace of God is sufficient.
Nicole Martin:Yes.
Joel Lawrence:Right?
Nicole Martin:More than sufficient. Yes. More than sufficient. Yes, yes, yes.
Joel Lawrence:Just I think uh observing the church, observing our pastors, observing my soul. Uh we just have to rely on the grace of God. And I think in many ways in certainly my segment of the American church is being challenged deeply to release so much and embrace the cross, embrace the grace of God. And I'm just so grateful for you to remind us, call us, challenge us, encourage us all the things that this conversation has done. And uh, we're so grateful for you and uh really, really grateful to to be able to call you a friend of the center for pastor theologians and pray God's blessing upon you as you continue your work and that his grace would flow and be sufficient.
Nicole Martin:Amen. Amen. Thanks.
Joel Lawrence:Thanks, Nicole. God bless.
Nicole Martin:God bless.
Joel Lawrence:Well, what a great way to conclude this series. I I think in my mind that conversation did exactly what I I hoped it would, which was one, hear from Nicole, but but two, bring together some of these themes that we've been talking about. So, Matt, in particular, what stood out to you from that conversation?
Matt Kim:Well, uh, I think all of it was rich. Uh, toward the end, uh, when she was really unpacking the theme of we need to understand the importance of surrender as the preacher and just surrendering to the authority of scripture, surrendering to the Lord, uh, not so performative in our preaching, uh, getting hung up on that, making that an idol in many ways. Um it just gives us the ability to breathe as a preacher. Yeah, to say it's it's not all about me, it's not about all about what I've prepared to say. And maybe uh that could be just a regular rhythm of before we enter the pulpit, we just give it all to the Lord and just take a deep breath and exhale.
Joel Lawrence:Yeah, I I appreciated early in the conversation as we she was talking about how how she's grown in her communication, grown in preaching and the word that that she used was simplicity, right? That there's a simplicity to this. And again, I think that comes back to do we do we trust in the spirit of God and the word of God? Are we making it about our abilities to tell a story and we're getting this thing exactly right, we're getting that thing exactly right? And and of course we're agents, we're caught up in this work and we need to do it. But but I was resonating with that in my own journey as a preacher of of sensing that there is a real simplicity to this work. And I think I I know when I'm disconnected from the word and the grace of God when when it feels like I'm really trying to make it all happen. And kind of that surrender and that simplicity, I think, is is the goal. So um I just want to thank everyone for coming along with us on this on this podcast journey. We're we're grateful for all of the guests who have been a part of the this series. We do hope and we pray that this will have been encouraging to all those who are hearing it. Um, not just preachers. I certainly hope that some non-preachers have been coming along the way. Because I think one of the things that we wanted to emphasize is the preaching event is not just about the preacher, right? Preaching is not just about the preacher, it's about the word, the spirit, the preacher, the congregation. There's a whole dynamic life going on here as the people of God gather around the word of God. So I certainly hope it's been encouraging to preachers, but also more broadly to the church in all of our understanding of what's going on when we preach. So, Matt, thank you so much for uh co-hosting this and your wisdom, your insight along the way. It's been uh really joyful to have you uh participating in this.
Matt Kim:Well, I appreciate you inviting me, Joel, and thanks for your vision and and really your ability to lead us well as a society. So you're doing great work. Thank you. Thank you, brother.
Joel Lawrence:Appreciate it. Appreciate it. God bless. Take care.
Zach Wagner:Thanks for listening to today's episode of the CPT Podcast, a theology podcast for the church. If you enjoyed this episode, would you consider subscribing if you haven't already? You can also help us out by leaving a rating and especially a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you're listening. We love hearing from listeners in this way, and it helps others find out about the show. The Pastor Theologians Podcast is a production of the Center for Pastor Theologians. You can learn more about the CPT at our website, Pastor Theologians.com. You can also find us on Facebook, YouTube, and follow us on Mags. This show is produced by Seth Korch and Sophia Luke. The show is recorded and edited in partnership with Glowfire Creator, and editing is done by Seth Frequorn. Hosting duties are shared by Joel Lawrence, Ray Paul, and me, Zach Wagner. Thanks for listening.