How to Preach With No Seminary Experience

Pastors are the only ones allowed to get up in front of the church’s congregation and share a sermon or teaching, right?

That’s what I believed to be true before coming to YWAM Salem to do my DTS. When I found out my team would be going to Thailand on outreach, I expected to do some mercy ministry in the villages and help teach English classes in the city, but I never expected to deliver a sermon with the help of a translator in front of a crowded Thai village church. In fact, when our DTS staff told us we would need to write a 10-minute teaching and be ready to share it at any time while in Thailand, I felt a lot of anxiety and fear. After all, who was I to share anything? I had just graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Religious Studies from a Christian-affiliated college, but I was not a theologian by any stretch. And how were Thai people going to relate to me in any way?

Sharing your story is the most powerful thing you can do

The truth is, we could all think of reasons why we can’t do something like preach a sermon overseas. However, it’s not a matter of our perception of our own weaknesses or shortcomings, but what an almighty, all-powerful God can do through us when we surrender to Him. The Bible says that God is able to do immeasurably and abundantly more than all we can ask or imagine according to His power at work within us. Moses had a speech impediment, yet God used him to deliver His message to the ancient Israelites because God gets glory from using people that the rest of us might jump to discredit and disqualify. At the end of the day, we all may have different gifts and come from different backgrounds, but we all have a story and there’s someone somewhere in the world that needs to hear your story, so share it! We may not all be amazing preachers like John Piper or Louie Giglio, but we are all capable of stepping up and operating in the gift of teaching when God asks us to do so.

Truth will help you overcome the fear.

It may seem incredibly daunting to try and relate to someone who you’ve never met that lives in a country across the globe that you’ve never been to before; but part of what Jesus taught us is that humans share some things in common, regardless of what culture they come from. We are all broken and in need of a savior.

For my teaching in Thailand, I chose to talk about fear, something we are all familiar with in one way or another, which is why the Bible commands us to “Fear not” over 300 times. I simply talked about my own experience with fear and how God had delivered me out of it, and God used that to impact the Thai villagers in the congregation. I’m just one messed up person out of so many God has used to be a light to the nations, and He wants to use you too! The world is longing to know the freedom and true love that only Jesus can offer, and your story may be the thing that brings breakthrough in someone’s soul.