I planted a church in Phoenix and led it for fourteen years. Twenty-five years in ministry, all told, and preaching most weeks. By most standards, I was doing ok in the pulpit. No heresy, just trying to preach faithfully.
But somewhere in those years, I noticed something. It was hard to get the truth about my preaching. Not because the people around me didn't care, but because they didn't want to discourage me. And frankly, the people closest to a preacher are sometimes the worst-positioned to critique him. The congregation loves their shepherd. The staff work for the senior pastor. Is it really fair to ask an associate pastor to deliver hard feedback to his boss, when his job might be affected?
In 2009, we were a church plant, scrambling to get things off the ground without staff and without seasoned elders, and we never built a real mechanism for feedback on sermons. The other leaders gave generic encouragement along the way and I'd wonder: are they just being kind?
I'd preach a message I thought was good, and a few days later I'd talk with someone who'd been there and they couldn't tell me what the sermon was about.
Keep in mind, that wasn't their fault. It was mine. I hadn't been clear about the main idea of the sermon. I hadn't tied it to the need they were facing. I didn't give specific enough application. I'd lived in the passage all week, but they'd only heard it once. And nobody told me (because the people who love you don't walk up after the service and say, "I'm not sure what that was about").
If you preach, you know what I'm describing. I longed for someone to walk alongside me, coach me, and help me develop as a preacher.
The Sermon Coach is my attempt to provide that for you.
This is not an AI sermon writer. I don't want a machine writing sermons, and I trust that neither do you. Preaching is a sacred task and a privilege reserved for real-life human beings.
But in the world of analytics, I wanted to build something that would take what I'd written and run it through the wisdom of the literature from people I already trusted on preaching: Chapell's work on the fallen condition and the redemptive arc, Robinson's focus on the single idea, Keller's emphasis on getting to grace, Piper's aim for gospel clarity, the Simeon Trust's method on staying tied to the text, and 9Marks' value of preaching that builds a church. I wanted a tool to ask the same kind of questions a sharp friend would ask (if you happened to have one with the time to read every sermon before Sunday!)
I've run my own sermons through The Sermon Coach. It has caught things I've missed, helped me clarify the main idea and guarding me from drifting before I got into the pulpit. And yes, over time and by the grace of God, my preaching has gotten better.