Pastor Keith Battle: Now, we don’t… We don’t wanna be outta order. I would need to introduce myself to Zion Church wearing this suit. (crowd laughing) Y’all can know it’s me. (crowd cheering and applauding) It really is. I got two badges.

Crowd Member: Yes, sir!

Pastor Keith Battle: I had a regular badge, then Claire got me a speaker’s badge.

Crowd Member: My-my-my. Amen. You know that’s right.

Pastor Keith Battle: I just need to know, am I supposed to start? (crowd chattering)

Crowd Member: Yes!

Pastor Keith Battle: Just go?

Crowd Member: Yep.

Pastor Keith Battle: All right. Well, let’s pray. Father, we thank You for this day. Thank You for this time. We thank You for this conference. And we pray that You would give us the things that we need to better serve You. To have greater clarity, stir up gifts in us, stir up vision in us. Whatever our assignment is, we pray that we would hear things in this conference that would make us better. And we thank You for… We pray Your protection upon this property. Upon, we thank You for Pastor Jenkins, Lady Trina, their family. We pray for Your blessing over them, and for this… For this whole Converge organization, we pray Your blessing upon it. And we pray for this session in particular that You would bless us now and give us Your guidance, Your direction, Your light, Your life. May people who enter this room get exactly what they need from You, in Jesus’ name, amen.

Crowd: Amen!

Pastor Keith Battle: Amen-amen-amen. All right. I don’t have a fancy topic. Pastor Jenkins asked me if I would come to the conference and talk about preaching. I didn’t name it. I didn’t… I don’t have any… I don’t have no slides or nothing. I ain’t that cool, I guess. But I hope… What I do wanna ask you, if you would… If you wouldn’t mind telling me, what do you hope to get out of this? If you would say, “I hope to get… What I wanna take away from this is blank,” and why? If there’s something you’d be willing to share, “Hey, I would hope I would get this out of this,” and why. Anybody wanna raise their hand and say that? And do we have… Will we be able to… If somebody does ask a question, will we need… Will we be able to give ’em a mic? All right. Anybody got anything they wanna… Yes, sir? Right here. And I don’t know if it’s being recorded, but if you just ask a question, I’ll repeat it till they get you a mic.

Paul: Okay. I’ll try to speak up. My name is Paul. I’m always sharing with my ministry leaders, that we always need to be striving for excellence, that there always must be something that we can improve in our ministries and our programs. And then I hold the mirror up to myself and say, “There must be something I can improve in my preaching.” And so, I think the reason I’m here today is because sometimes you fall into the same patterns of how you’re preparing, and it’s helpful to just talk about the practice of preaching, to try to identify those areas where I can grow and improve.

Pastor Keith Battle: All right. So, he says, “I’m Paul.” (crowd applauding) And that’s… (crowd laughing) So he has a mic, but that’s all right. Paul wants to improve in the practice of preaching, so that it doesn’t become stale, or you don’t plateau, right? So that we’re growing in this area. Good. Who else wants to say something? Thanks, Paul. And where are you from, Paul?

Paul: Poconos.

Pastor Keith Battle: The Poconos? Nice. That’s where people go for the honeymoon. (crowd laughing) Amen.

Crowd Member: They used to.

Pastor Keith Battle: Oh, no more? It ain’t that- (crowd member speaking softly)

Deacon: I’m… (deacon laughing) I just got called back up there, but I’m a… I’m just a deacon. Just a deacon. But you know, the most important thing? I’m a Christian, and I gotta tell the world about Jesus.

Pastor Keith Battle: Yeah.

Deacon: You know? And that, this is what I want. I wanna gain from the power and strength, and more courage. I was an army recruiter for 12-years. I’ll talk to any… Anytime. And the most thing… Important thing that I can talk to you about is Jesus.

Pastor Keith Battle: Amen.

Deacon: And sometimes you know, I… It’s knowing how to talk to you, a stranger, in a way that I can introduce you to Jesus-

Pastor Keith Battle: Amen.

Deacon: -you know, without offending you. So often we offend people with a… And it’s the way that we present ourselves, on so many times, we’re not prayed-up enough, I believe, or whatever it is. I don’t know. But I want… I want more power. I want more courage. I want to see more people come to know the Lord.

Pastor Keith Battle: Amen. Amen. (crowd applauding) Somebody over here, I think? (crowd applauding) (crowd chattering)

Crowd Member: Well, we’re going to ask the question now since the mic’s on.

Pastor Keith Battle: Okay. (pastor laughing) There’s our teacher right there.

Crowd Member: Pastor Battle. So since Pastor Steph don’t wanna to ask the question, I’ll ask the question for him.

Pastor Keith Battle: Yeah. (crowd laughing)

Crowd Member: So, the approach, your preparation.

Pastor Keith Battle: Mhm?

Crowd Member: I would really love if some point you can get into how you go into it. How do you… How do… I remember one time you said, “Don’t put the illustration before the message,” and things of that… How do you let the Holy Spirit move before you start titling things, coming up with illustrations, and things of that nature? So your foundational approach would be great to hear.

Pastor Keith Battle: Great. Great, great. Anybody else? Yes, ma’am? We just… And the question is, what do you hope to get out of this time, and why?

Crowd Member: Keith Battle, Pastor Battle, I just love you. I listen to all your messages on success and, you know, how to have great relationships, and how to get along with people, and how to manage your money. And you know, how to… You had that book on The Sidechick. I read all of that, and I understand it. So today, I just want you to take me higher in the Word. I want you to just let the Holy Spirit use you, so that I can grow, and I can be more like God, and receive from you. Amen.

Pastor Keith Battle: Amen. Amen. All right. I think we’re good. Let me start with what you asked, Minister Dumasani. Let me talk about… I was at a conference one time and Dr. Bobby Manning, it was his conference called “The Mantle Conference” and he interviewed me, and one of the questions was, “How do you go about preparing a message?” And that’s not where I was gonna start, but since you raised that question, let me just tell you my process. Now, every process is different. I’m not telling you… This is a way to do it. It may… Sometimes you get something that could color what you’re doing. It just adds maybe some flavor to what you’re doing, or another way of doing it. The way that I… The way that I get a message from God, comes from multiple things. One is my life. As you pay attention to what’s going on around you, you know, God will speak to you if you let Him. Like, “God, what are You saying? What am I supposed to learn from this?” Another way that God speaks to me, most of the time, is through my personal quiet time, through my devotional time, through the time I spend alone with Him in His Word. And sometimes, sometimes I get messages because I’m forced to get ’em, because I’ve accepted a responsibility, like doing a eulogy, or doing something like this. Like, I wasn’t told, “Come here and give us what’s on your heart.” I was told what to talk about. And so because I was told what to talk about, I had to… I’m now responsible to prepare, and sometimes they’ll give you a scripture, they want you to teach on, and a theme. So in those contexts, you don’t have to pray about what the subject is, it’s already been given. And for me, the subject is the hardest thing for me to come up with. In fact, let me go to this one. The subject is usually the last thing I come up with. The next to the last thing I get when I get a message, is a subject or a topic, and the final thing I get is an introduction, and I’ll try to explain that now. How do I wanna go with this? So, the way I know that God has given me a message, is the best way I can describe it, is I have what are called… What I might call “Writing Burst”. A Writing Burst is when… When you start getting an insight, and your pen can’t keep up with your thoughts, anybody ever had that? You just gotta pull over, you… And you don’t know where it’s gonna happen. It could happen in the car, you be like, “Oh God, He gave me a Word, He gave… I got an illustration.” Anybody ever had that happen? And it just, when I get those bursts, I know I’m onto something. It’s sort of like if you go fishing, and you get… You get something… I’m not a fisherman, but, when I’ve seen people do it, when that thing is… You know something said, you stay with it, right? So I know I got something, but I don’t label it yet, because that’s just… That’s just the initial seed that he plans in you, right? Now the reason why I don’t give message as topics, before I understand what the text is saying, is because if you label a message before you study a passage, you’ll silence the text. You’ll only see in the text what you want it to say about that topic. And then when you do that, you actually do what Dr. Joel Gregory says, “You do violence to the text.” Because it is more important to let God speak to you, and explain what He’s saying out of His Word, than your little cute idea or subject, or topic. And then it compresses everything, and then you can’t see anything else, right? And then, the reason why I get the introduction last is because I wanna finish the message before I know how to start it. Sometimes if you don’t finish your message, and you don’t know where God is taking you through it, if you… If you write out an introduction, then you have to build the message around it. Again, it’s backwards when it comes to preaching the Bible, because our text should govern the whole… The whole conversation.

Crowd Member: Yes, sir.

Pastor Keith Battle: Now. Now, let me say this too, I think it’s important. When I build the message, so… So remember, when you first get a Word from God, it’s just a seed, but it’s gotta… You gotta do prenatal care with it, it’s… I liken it to this, one of our pastors who here… Who was here one time, talked about, after preaching on Sunday, he said, “Man, I need a day and a half to recover.” And I was like, “Yeah, welcome to preaching, right?” ‘Cause if you preach four times on a Sunday, you don’t just bounce back from that, right? But I told him, it’s… It’s a labor that’s underappreciated. It’s almost like giving birth to a baby. I’ve never done it. I’ve just seen it. And the way it happens is, the way you get the baby is, is you get this, in your intimate time with God, He impregnates you with a message, but He doesn’t give you the whole message. He gives you a seed that you have to… You have to work on the… The organs of it, and the limbs of it, and you… And it may… You may spend weeks working with it, or days, or however much time you may have to develop it. And the reason why it’s so difficult to be a preacher is because after you’ve done all the work to prepare this baby, then you drive to the church, maternity ward, to deliver it. And on the way to deliver it, the production team wants to know the name of the baby, and all the points, and all the features of the baby, even before you have ’em all. And I get that, but it ain’t as easy as you think it is, production people. And the people want your slides, and they wanna know all that, but you just happy to have something to deliver, even if you don’t know what to call it, you just glad… Getting a Word from God is so precious, you understand? And then you go to the church, and you deliver… And you… You’re in labor. (crowd chattering) Preaching is labor. And it may be 40-minutes of labor or more, and then you give that thing out that God had put in you.

Crowd Member: That’s good.

Pastor Keith Battle: And here’s where postpartum depression comes in, after you’ve carried this thing for days, or weeks, or however long you carried it, and you give it out? And you don’t even get to take it home, the other people took it, and left with it. (crowd chattering) And there you stand with an empty womb.

Crowd Member: You gotta preach.

Pastor Keith Battle: And when the cord is cut, and the lights are cut off, and the microphone is off, and the lights are cut off, and the parking lot is empty, you walk home with an empty womb. And realize, that wasn’t your baby, you were just a surrogate to deliver it for somebody else. (crowd applauding) And if you’re pastoring, you gotta turn around, and do that same thing again, in another seven-days. This ain’t no joke. (crowd chattering) That’s what you do. And it’s not that you don’t build… And let me tell you how I know… How I know it wasn’t your baby. If anybody asks you to preach the same message 24 hours later, and you don’t have your notes, you can’t give them 10 minutes of it.

Crowd Member: That’s right.

Pastor Keith Battle: It wasn’t your… It’s gone.

Crowd Member: That’s right. That’s right.

Pastor Keith Battle: People walk up to me and say, “Do you remember what you said in pathway that says part 17?” (crowd laughing) I don’t even know what verse it was. (crowd laughing) I know it was Joshua 1:8, ’cause we did it every week.

Crowd Member: That’s real. It ain’t yours.

Pastor Keith Battle: And you have to be willing… Can you imagine delivering baby after baby, after baby, that other people take home?

Crowd Member: Lord. Lord.

Pastor Keith Battle: It’s not that you don’t benefit from it. I hope you understand what I’m saying. What I’m… What I’m talking about is the emotional rollercoaster that is preaching.

Crowd Member: Yes.

Pastor Keith Battle: And so… And so when you… The work itself is draining. So, you started with that question, I wanna… I wanna… I wanted to maybe spend some time there. Now let me talk about this, because there are costs involved in being engaged in preaching, and preaching is such a broad topic that I certainly don’t wanna be the only one talking in here today. There’s too much wisdom in the room that we can’t benefit from each other. So, I wanna do some lecturing, but also some facilitating so that we also get to hear the wisdom in the room. But there will be a cost associating with preaching, because there are emotional costs, there are physical costs, there are social costs. There are things you’re just gonna miss out on. How about weekends? What is your weekend like, if you had to preach on a Sunday? (crowd chattering) What cookout are you gonna be at? (crowd laughing) If you’re gonna… Now you… You can go and it will show. (Pastor and crowd laughing) Bars. (crowd laughing) Sometimes you gotta be at your child’s football game. There are places you have to be because of your responsibility, but there are some places where people are having a good time, you wanna be, but you can’t be there if you’re gonna prepared.

Crowd Member: Yeah. Yeah, that’s right.

Pastor Keith Battle: Are you understanding what I’m saying? Like there’s a sacrifice you’re gonna have to make, and a lot of it is about your social life that you have to be willing to give up, and it… And even though it costs, it’s worth the cost.

Crowd Member: Yes, sir.

Pastor Keith Battle: Let me talk about… Let me talk about this… This is one point. I believe preaching is a sacred trust. And I didn’t have slides, but somebody called me and said, “If you give me some slides, I’ll put ’em up on the screen.” So thank the… Thank the production team here, ’cause these are last-minute slides. So I just want you to know at Zion Church, y’all not the only people that have to deal with me at the last-minute. (crowd laughing) I didn’t ask them to do it. They asked me, so I said, “Sure, okay.” 1st Corinthians chapter 9 verse 27. “Preaching is a sacred trust.” In 1st Corinthians chapter 9 verse 27, Paul says, “I discipline my body like an athlete, training it to do what it should. Otherwise, I fear that after preaching to others, I myself might be disqualified.” Like, one of the important pieces about preaching is your life.

Crowd Member: Yes.

Pastor Keith Battle: The consecration of your life, that we are to be set apart. We are not supposed to live normal lives, particularly as preachers. As Christians, period, we’re not supposed to live a normal life. But if you are God’s representative, you ain’t supposed to live like everybody else. Your life is supposed to be consecrated to God, because it’s a sacred trust. Look at 1st Timothy chapter 4 verse 16, where it says, “Keep a close watch on how you live, and on your teaching. Stay true to what is right for the sake of your own salvation, and the salvation of those who hear you.” There’s a lot at stake. There are people watching. And this verse says, “Keep a watch on how you live and your teaching.” The word “watch” there is a Greek word, “episkopos”. It means an “overseer”. The Bible is saying… Paul is saying here, “You gotta be an overseer over your life and your teaching.” Now, a lot of preachers are really good at overseeing their doctrine, and their theology, because there’s such a microscope that we all preach under, that we don’t wanna say anything that’s theologically gonna get us in any kind of trouble, and we’re under some kind of doctrinal dominion or whatever. So we keep a close watch on our doctrine, but Paul says, “Also you gotta keep a watch over your life.” And the word “watch” means to oversee your life. You gotta watch what you watch. (crowd chattering) You gotta watch what you listen to. You have to watch what you think about. (crowd chattering) And here’s it… It’s literally saying that the higher version of yourself, the disciplined disciple version of yourself, has gotta keep a watch on the immature, undisciple part of you that wants to look at stuff it shouldn’t be looking at, just ’cause you grown. That wants to listen to stuff that doesn’t… That doesn’t serve you well. He says, “You gotta watch over your life.” Now that’s a full-time job. (crowd chattering) What am I talk… Watch what you say. Watch your mouth. What comes out of your mouth has a lot of power and influence, because it usually will manifest into your life. So there’s a lot of watching that has to take place, because this is a sacred trust. Watch over your life. Ephesians 5:4. Let me see Ephesians 5:4. This is talking about the sacred trust. “Let there be no filthiness or silly talk, or coarse, obscene or vulgar joking, because such things are not appropriate for believers, but instead speak of your thankfulness to God.” Now, I believe it’s great to have a good time and to be… Have a good time and laugh. Like, laughter is good. It is fun. It is… It has medical benefits. But you shouldn’t be joking all the time, about everything, because everything’s not funny. And when you get in the flow of always joking, that’s carnality, because everything’s not always funny. So, part of this is the sobriety of the work that we’re doing, we need to watch our lives. Now again, I’m not saying we shouldn’t have a good time, but when is enough enough? Enough is enough when it turns into coarse joking and vulgarity, and inappropriate humor, and we laugh at stuff we shouldn’t even be talking about. And that stuff can also lead you into other stuff, like flirtation, and all kinds of corruption. So all of this is important for those of us who do this work. Amen?

Crowd: Amen.

Pastor Keith Battle: The next thing I wanna point out is, when you’re gonna preach, here’s the good news, that if God has assigned you to preach, He’s gonna be with you when you preach. And if you stay close enough to you, He will give you the content to preach. So give me… Give me Exodus chapter 4 verse 12. Here’s a promise He made to Moses, that’s a promise that all of us can hold onto. Now, Moses did not want to be God’s spokesperson. How many of you in here, God called to preach, and there was some resistance on your part at some point? Like you did… “No, not me.” “Well, welcome to Mosesville.” That’s what He said. “Nah, nah, you got the wrong one.” (Pastor student/stuttering) You already know I got… I can’t even get the words out. So which is God says to him, He says, “Now go, I will be with you as you speak, and I will instruct you in what to say.” Think about that. How can it get better than that? “I’ll be with you when you speak and I’m going to instruct you on what to say.” That’s a package right there, because… Because preaching is… Preaching is a act of faith. It is an act of faith that God is with me. So even though Moses said, “I’m not enough,” He says, “Here’s your answer. I’ll be with you. Now you’re enough.” (crowd chattering) “You’re enough because I’m with you. Not because you went to the right schools, not because you grew up in the right neighborhood, not because you have this great pedigree of preaching, ’cause none of that matters if I’m not with you. If I’m not with you, you’re in trouble. But here’s what’s going to make you qualified to do My assignment. I’ma going to be with you. And here’s what’s even better, I’ma tell you what to say.” Now, when God says, “I’ma tell you what to say,” that does not excuse you from research and study. (crowd chattering) Some of y’all like waiting ’til it’s time to preach and you go up there and say, “The Holy Ghost gon’ to give it to me right here on the spot.” There is a scripture where Jesus told His disciples, “Don’t prepare what you gon’ say. I will give it to you King James version in that self same hour.” That’s not talking about preaching, that’s talking about when you go to court.

Crowd Member: That’s right. That’s what it’s talking about.

Pastor Keith Battle: “I’ll tell you what to say in court. Not in church.” In church, God rarely, sometimes He will give you what to say in the moment. He will tell you what to say in the moment. Most times, He will show you what to say during your preparation.

Crowd Member: Amen.

Pastor Keith Battle: I need to say that again, don’t I? I said, sometimes He’ll tell you what to say in the moment, but most times, He’ll show you what to say during your preparation. And if you miss your preparation, you will stand unprepared. And you cannot fake being unprepared. You can cry, you can speak in tongues, you can run around the church, you can tell the choir to sing another song. You can do whatever you do, but you cannot hide being unprepared, amen?

Crowd Member: That’s right.

Pastor Keith Battle: Amen. So these are things we need to keep in mind as we walk into this sacred trust that is ours. Make sure you depend upon God. John the Baptist, last example of somebody who… You think about John the Baptist, the way he dressed and where he lived. He lived in the wilderness. He lived in isolation. John the Baptist was different, not because he wanted to be weird, but because he wanted to be used. His isolation made him effective, because he spent time alone with God. Some of you are just out too much. And you can’t be everywhere and be effective. I’ma say that again. You can’t be everywhere and be effective. And people can say, “I see you everywhere, everywhere…” Is that Jeptha?

Sidney: Yes, sir!

Pastor Keith Battle: What’s up, buddy? I see you everywhere. No, I’m joking. (crowd laughing) This is Sidney Poitier.

Sidney: My brother.

Pastor Keith Battle: My brother. We went to Bible college together. He is a legend in Haiti. Pastors 42 churches you oversee?

Sidney: 148.

Pastor Keith Battle: 140?

Sidney: 148.

Pastor Keith Battle: 148 churches he leads in Haiti. Amen. I love you, man. Hey, so… And we support them, right? Amen. Zion Church supports their work there. Jerusalem Baptist Church of Haiti and Pinyon, I think. Amen. I’m just saying more than I should. But anyway, what was I saying? John the Baptist, “You can’t be everywhere and be effective. You just out too much. Be still. And know that He’s God.” You can’t… You know what that means? You have to get good at saying no. Nicely say no. Bob Bill taught us this. Bob Bill’s a mentor from Phoenix Arizona that I met through Pastor Jenkins, and he says, “You say no like this, it’s a nice no. You start off with when somebody invites you to something, and you know you’re not supposed to go, you said, ‘Thank you for having me. Oh, that you even thought of me’.” And he said, “Unfortunately I won’t be able to make that. But then you close it up again and say, ‘But thank you so much for thinking about me’.” Somebody asked you to come and do something. “Can you come and do the prayer?” ‘Cause they know you’re the Christian in the family, so they want you to pray at everything. “Can you come pray over the food at the family reunion?” And you know you don’t have time to do that, ’cause somebody else can pray, the food gonna be the same whether you go drive there and pray over it or not. I can pray from here. Amen. And you say, “You know what? Oh, thank you so much for thinking of me. I’m so sorry. I can’t add another thing to my schedule. But you know what? Uncle Henry can pray. You want me to call him?” Sometimes you wanna give somebody an alternative in your place. That’s a part of saying no. You understand what I’m saying? But if you don’t learn how to say no, people who are out everywhere can’t be effective when it’s time to… When it’s time to minister, because you’ve been everywhere but in the presence of God. And you have to give up your social presence, your social popularity, and being everywhere, and you can’t support everybody. Every request is not a requirement.

Crowd Member: That’s right. Yeah. Yeah.

Pastor Keith Battle: It’s just respect. People invite you ’cause they respect you, all right? Now, speaking of John, John the Baptist, one thing I learned from John the Baptist, and I’ve shared this before with some of the leaders in Zion Church. In Luke chapter 1 verse 80, I want you to understand that you don’t… Here’s what I want you to understand. Don’t rush into the light. A lot of people who are in ministry really want that light. But, but what happens if you get into the light before you’re developed is, the light will expose things in you that God’s trying to protect. (crowd chattering) (Pastor laughing) (crowd applauding) The Bible says, “John grew up and he grew up, and became strong in spirit, and he lived in the wilderness, until he began his public ministry to Israel.” He lived in the wilderness. God was developing him in obscurity. In verse 24, that same chapter, when his mother, Elizabeth, became pregnant with him, the Bible says he… “She went into seclusion for five-months.” When she was pregnant with John the Baptist, she was in hiding for five-months. This John the Baptist was in hiding before his natural birth, and he was in hiding before his ministry was birthed. Because before he came out of his mother’s womb, before he came… Became popular, popular because of his public ministry, he was being developed in obscurity. This is very important because prior to going into the light, he needed things… You know what God does for you? In the wilderness of your life, in the place where you have no notoriety, people don’t know you, you don’t have a big following. When you walk in the room, they don’t say, “What’s up, doc?” “Hey, can you take a picture with me?” “Oh, I just love your ministry.” It doesn’t mean that your ministry doesn’t have quality and value, it just means it’s being developed in the wilderness. And during that time where you don’t have the notoriety, what He’s developed in you is the habits and routines, and identity you need, because if you don’t develop those habits and routines, and identity when you’re in the wilderness, the light will confuse you. God wants you to be so solid about who you are when He brings you into the light, you don’t get… you don’t get conflicted. (crowd chattering) I’m still who I was when you didn’t know me. (crowd chattering) I just said something for somebody who’s trying to rush into the light, because you have to… you have to develop… Some of you still don’t know who you are yet, and who God’s called you to be, and what your thing is, what your voice is, and how you’re supposed to operate and move. And He will develop that before the stage gets so big that you don’t have the time to back up off that. That you know. And this is how He… this is the stage, this is the way He… this is the way He transitions you from obscurity to notoriety. The stage that He uses is always a crisis. Crisis brings you from obscurity to notoriety. Let me give you an example. Your content doesn’t change, you’re quality doesn’t change, just who gets to see it changes. (crowd chattering) How many of you have ever seen somebody in ministry, and it seemed like they came outta nowhere? “Man, I just… When did this guy show up? Where is he from?” And everybody, “They went viral.” Or, “This person went viral, and we never heard of her.” Well, it’s not that he or she came from outta nowhere, it’s not that they weren’t around, they were… Watch this, they were being developed in the wilderness. Other people… people knew John the Baptist before he went public. His mother knew him. The people in the ministry that he was… He was baptizing people before he even became public. But what happens is, if you have a YouTube video and it gets 100 views, and 90 people like it, if a popular person repost it, and it gets 100,000 views, and 90,000 people like it, guess what? It’s the same video. The content just didn’t change. What happened was, the video went from obscurity to notoriety. It went from the wilderness to the light, ’cause somebody… Watch this, you go from the wilderness to the light, because either somebody… Somebody who’s in the light brings you in, or a crisis brings you in. Joseph. Nobody in Egypt knew who Joseph was, ’til a crisis happened. (crowd chattering) When crisis happened, the gift he had been using, became manifest with the crisis. What gift? He was already interpreting dreams when he was locked up. He was interpreting dreams… When he was 17, he start… He started getting dreams that told of his destiny. But when the crisis hit Egypt, his gift walked on the stage of crisis. That’s why you can’t run from crisis, when you’re running from crisis, that’s just stage fright. Crisis is your stage to show what you’ve got, that God has been giving you answers to problems that people have been waiting on solutions for. (crowd chattering) (crowd chattering and applauding) So the light shouldn’t intimidate you, but don’t run into it. Don’t force your way into it. Let God bring you into it. Because sometimes you’ll start comparing, “Yeah, I mean I can do that. Psh. I can do that.” You don’t know what it cost the person to do that. (crowd chattering) I was… I remember Kurt Franklin came to our church during the pandemic, and I was talking to him about, you know, when people go to concerts to see different artists, or you go to a show, you have to pay to get into the concert, to observe what’s happening from the stage. So you have to pay to watch what’s on the stage. But what I was telling him, what I realized is, is that people have no idea what it costs people like you to be on it. It costs to be on every stage. What, the… I’ll tell you one of the hardest things to deal with in ministry, is the warfare and the life you gotta live. (crowd chattering) Like, she just stood up and said, “You done taught me how to love people and like people.” I said, “I have never taught something that it didn’t take me through the crucible of learning myself.”

Crowd Member: That’s good.

Pastor Keith Battle: And anything you teach, you will be tested on it. I’ma say that again. Anything you teach, you will be tested on it. Amen to that.

Crowd Member: Yes, sir. That’s right. That’s right.

Pastor Keith Battle: You might as well just teach something easy. Yeah, ’cause the enemy’s coming over to you, because your name keeps coming up. See, the Devil’s not omnipresent, but he can hear. And your name keeps coming up. Your name came up in 39 households this week. “Oh, Pastor David.” “Oh, Brother Jim.” “Sister Mary is just changing my…” “Who is that? Let me put an end to this.” (Pastor chuckling) Yeah, so let’s keep going. This is… Let me… This is one of my favorite verses on preaching in the Bible. It’s Ezra chapter 7 verse 10. I love this verse of scripture. Ezra was a scribe in the Old Testament, and he gives us a model that I think is good. This is good preaching material. Look at what it says. “This was because…” Now, first of all, in verse nine, I don’t have that verse up there. It says, “The good hand of God was on Esther…” “Was on Ezra,” I’m sorry. It was probably on Esther too, right? But the good hand of God was on Ezra in verse nine. And then it says, “It was because Ezra had determined…” Everybody say “determined”.

Crowd: Determined.

Pastor Keith Battle: “He determined to study and obey the law of the Lord, and to teach those decrees and regulations to the people in Israel.” Now, watch the pattern here. Before he taught, he obeyed. (crowd chattering) And before he obeyed, he studied. And before he studied, he was determined. You see that? There was a determination to even study. Do you have a… If you’re gonna be in ministry and preaching, you gotta have a desire to study. Like, when you don’t study, you don’t… Jimmy Sturdivant used to say, “When a preacher doesn’t study, he shames his calling.”

Crowd Member: Wow.

Pastor Keith Battle: The first thing I see there is his longing. Watch this. He had a longing… Put the verse back up for me. He had a longing that led to his learning, that led to his living, before he did any lecturing.

Crowd Member: Amen.

Pastor Keith Battle: How you like the L’s? (crowd chattering) His longing… He was determined, led to his learning, which is study, and then he lived it. This is why this is so important. The power of your preaching will come out of your life, not just out of your lecturing. Now, do we have to cross every “t” and dot every “i”? Of course not. We’ll never do that. Somebody asked me one time, “How long does it take you to prepare a sermon?” And I said to them, “All my life.”

Crowd Member: Wow. Wow.

Pastor Keith Battle: ‘Cause all my life is in my messages. And you wanna know technically, it just… It depends. It depends on how much time I had to prepare. I used to be at a church… If you think… I used to be at a church, and this is a true story, when during the praise and worship, or the sermonic selection, that’s in church, the song before the message, that the pastor would send a message, hit the other preachers on the pulpit and say, “Tell Keith to come here.” And sit me beside him. I knew when he would call for me that it was about to happen. Say, “I’ma need you to preach today.” That’s during the song. Well, I need one pretty rapidly right here. (crowd laughing) It just depends. The Lord knows which… He knows the constraints up under which you must minister. He understands. He understands that you had to do it with a sick child, and an unavailable spouse. He understands what you have to do when you gotta take care of your parents, and you still gotta teach the Word. He understands. Amen. There is grace that’s sufficient for your assignment. But there is consequences that will match your triflingness. Is that a word, “triflingness”? (crowd chattering) Amen. You can’t put God on the spot like that. You gotta be… Do your best to prepare. Now, Ezra, this is the blessing of God. Make sure you take time to study. Make sure you have a desire like I… Does anybody have a desire? Like you get excited about researching scripture, studying it. The book is so deep, you will never hit the bottom of it. Amen. Amen. The reason why you can’t hit the bottom of it, ’cause it’s living.

Crowd Member: Yeah, that’s right.

Pastor Keith Battle: It’s living. It’s living. In fact, it’s so deep that… That you can… You can study a passage… You can study the 23rd Psalm when you’re 21 years old. Come back to it when you’re 41, and it meets you at 41. And the revelation you get at 61 is different than what you got. And you go back to what you saw at 21, He said, “That’s all you saw in that?” The thing is alive. There’s no other book like that. You can’t go back and read a newspaper article and get life out of it, and transform your life, and make you wanna do right, and give you goosebumps, and all that other kind of stuff. It’s just… It’s a powerful book. So, you should have a desire to do that. That’s one of the signs that you have a call on your life to preach that. “I desire this Word. I wanna get in this book. I wanna study it.” By the way… By the way, I am… I guess I should say this, in light of my good friend who’s here, Pastor L. Wood Matthews, that I am a fan of the AI tools. I was scared of ’em when they first came out. I was thinking, “The Devil’s… That must be the Devil.” (crowd laughing) But when you… But I was using Google. What I’m saying. I was using Wikipedia. (crowd laughing) So I’m big on commentaries. I’m big on… On the concordance. I’m big on Thesaurus. Now, a Thesaurus, that’s about… That’s about the homiletics of it, not the hermeneutics. (crowd chattering) I just believe that you should be… When you… If you’re gonna be a speaker, you need to have… You need to have a great… A great quality of words. And sometimes you need to be able to say things using more words. Don’t just limit it yourself to the words you know. Find a better way to say it, another way to say it, because it expands the audience that you can talk to. Because whether you like it or not, regardless of your education, if you’re preaching in the church, you might have people who are highly educated listening to you, and people who may have no education, and you wanna be able to talk to all of ’em. Amen. Amen. That’s important that we do that. But I’m… I use all of those platforms. I use Perplexity. I use Claude, talk to him, I use ChatGPT, and all them people. Amen. All of it. All of it. If I can get there faster, I’ma get there faster. I can go look it up myself. I can go look up, “What does… What does this person have to say about this?” Or I can type it in and get it faster. Why would you not use what’s available to you? Now, if you feel like that’s an unspiritual thing, then here’s the thing. Research is research.

Crowd Member: Yep. Yep. Yep.

Pastor Keith Battle: And if you could speed up your research and maintain the quality, and integrity of biblical texts, ’cause all of it needs to be checked. And by the way, the Holy Spirit, if I don’t… We tend to deify, you know, like Matthew Henry, or we… Charles Spurgeon, or we’ll deify people who were listening to the Holy Spirit when they did their research. But we don’t trust the Holy Spirit to talk to us without checking in with people who are dead. (crowd chattering) I’m just saying, go to them for backup, but don’t make them the Holy Spirit. (crowd chattering) ‘Cause the Holy Spirit knows your audience. He knows the people in your congregation and what they need. And your relationship with Him will empower and anoint your message too. So don’t leave Him out of your preparation. Amen. How y’all doing so far? (crowd chattering) Anybody got a question right now? (crowd chattering) You do? Yes, sir? We got a… It’s a mic right here. Thank you, Chris. Deacon Chris, you take him to mic so he…

Crowd Member: My question is, what happens you-

Pastor Keith Battle: You sound like a preacher. (crowd laughing)

Crowd Member: My question is, is when you have a desire to preach the Word, but you struggle with it, and you become idol.

Pastor Keith Battle: You said you have a desire to preach the Word, but you struggle with it, and become idol?

Crowd Member: Yeah, I… That’s why I become idol with it.

Pastor Keith Battle: Are you-

Crowd Member: So how do I overcome that?

Pastor Keith Battle: Do you… Are you pastoring?

Crowd Member: No, not yet.

Pastor Keith Battle: Okay, so… So you don’t… You’re not… You don’t have to preach, you want to?

Crowd Member: Yeah, I have a desire to preach.

Pastor Keith Battle: Huh?

Crowd Member: I have done a sermon a long time ago when I was in the another church.

Pastor Keith Battle: Say that one more time.

Crowd Member: I had preached a sermon once before, a long time ago.

Pastor Keith Battle: Right.

Crowd Member: But I have a desire to preach the Word of God, and to teach the Word of God, but I struggle with studying the Word of God.

Pastor Keith Battle: Yeah. Yeah. If you study, if you… So see it like this. One of the things that would probably… Like where… Where do you live, right? Where you live?

Crowd Member: District Heights.

Pastor Keith Battle: District Heights?

Crowd Member: Yeah. I’m a member… Yeah, I’m a member of the River of Life Church.

Pastor Keith Battle: You’re a member of what?

Crowd Member: The River of Life Church. The River of Life Church.

Pastor Keith Battle: River of Life Church? All right, so if Pastor…

Crowd Member: Whitaker.

Pastor Keith Battle: Pastor Charles Whitaker said to you “I need you to preach this Sunday.” What would happen?

Crowd Member: I wouldn’t be able to do it because I’m unprepared. It’s Tuesday. (crowd laughing)

Pastor Keith Battle: If he says, “I need you to preach.” How much time do you need?

Crowd Member: Really, you don’t… You really need one day, really.

Pastor Keith Battle: No, I’m just asking you, how much… What would be ideal for you?

Crowd Member: About a week.

Pastor Keith Battle: About a week?

Crowd Member: Yeah.

Pastor Keith Battle: All right. So the first Sunday in July, he wants you to preach. What are you gonna do?

Crowd Member: Prepare myself to study.

Pastor Keith Battle: So you don’t really have a problem studying what you’re missing is the regiment of having to do it.

Crowd Member: That’s correct.

Pastor Keith Battle: So what I would suggest you do, is create opportunities for yourself to study. Like, don’t wait ’til the pastor asked you to do it. Get a group of people that will listen to you, go online, just go Facebook live, ask one of your children and say, “Let me talk to your friends about Jesus.” Like, you need a rhythm.

Crowd Member: Okay.

Pastor Keith Battle: Yeah. If you don’t have a… If you don’t have a study habit, you need… Sometimes what happens is, the demand will bring out the habit. Who understands what I just said? (crowd chattering) Some of us don’t need a… We don’t need a lot of downtime. You taking a month off, two months off, what you gon’ do? You gonna… You gonna rest that whole time? What you gonna do? You have to… You have to make sure that one of the reasons why God gives us a responsibility to do things, is to keep the habit in place. (crowd chattering)

Crowd Member: Yeah.

Pastor Keith Battle: When somebody’s a professional boxer and they saying, “Well, I don’t feel like working out.” You got a fight coming up? You gotta make weight? You gonna be in there. We just talking to a bodybuilder earlier. Do you gotta do a show? “I don’t feel like working out. Don’t feel like eating right.” You got a show coming up? Amen. You wanna come up and do a pose? I’m just joking. So, that’s… That’s what I would encourage you to do. Don’t be discouraged. Amen. Create an opportunity. Let me talk about… Anybody else got a question before I go to the next thing? Go ahead. Deacon? (crowd chattering)

Crowd Member: We only got so much time and there’s so much to say.

Pastor Keith Battle: You say time management? Say it one more time. He gonna give you the mic so you can say it.

Crowd Member: Okay. Yes. I’m concerned about… There’s so many things I need to say, and I only got so many minutes to say it in. How do you… How do you manage that?

Pastor Keith Battle: When do you do this? You gotta… When you’re talking to people? Or you got a presentation of it?

Crowd Member: Well, a lot of times I’m asked to speak in church at the beginning of the church and so forth, but prior… Prior to the pastor and so on. And they want me to give scripture, and some lessons or something. And there’s so much I wanna say, and I’ve only got a few minutes to say it, and it’s hard for me to get it condensed in such a way that it’s gonna still have the power that I want it to have in the hearts of the men.

Pastor Keith Battle: So, I… When you’re in a situation like this, one is, if they tell you how much time you have, respect the time. Always respect the time. It’s not cute to not respect the time, even if you’ve got a lot of say. One of the things you should do is rehearse. Time yourself on your presentation, and rehearse it, and say, “If they give me…” “If they gave me five-minutes, what can I get done in five minutes?” “Well, God I rehearsed it, it went 12. I gotta cut half of this. Show me what to cut. All right, I rehearsed it again, it went down to eight. Still got some cutting to do, but it’s some good stuff. Ooh, it’s some good stuff. What can I cut out? Oh, I can cut out my introduction. I don’t have to say that. I don’t have to say that part of the story. Let me get it down.” Because if you keep disrespecting the time you’re given, you won’t be given it much longer. So you gotta respect the time. And sometimes… Rehearsing, let me say this to people who preach. Rehearsing is not evil. If you ever preach more than one time on a Sunday, like let’s say your church has multiple services, two services, three services. You ever notice the second time you preach it is better than the first one? And then the third time, you’re like, “Oh, I really know…” It’s because you’re more and more familiar with the information. If you preach and you pastor a church, and you only got one shot? Do not make that the first time you do it. Your people owe the best version of that sermon you can give ’em. If time permits you, there’s nothing wrong with you going somewhere, driving to your office, going in the woods, whatever you gotta do, and practice that sermon. Here’s what practicing do. Practicing your sermon out loud, I’m talking about doing it out loud, will allow you to hear where the mix up is. When you practice it, you will hear stuff that say, “This don’t even make no sense. Let me clean this up right here.” Do not practice on the people. Do not practice on the people. Practice in your home. (crowd chattering) Come as prepared as you are. Why is it that the music department, they do rehearsals, can’t you tell when they haven’t rehearsed? (crowd chattering) Everybody’s rehearsing but you. The soloist rehearse. The organist rehearsed. The drummer rehearse. The background singers rehearse. And here come you. (crowd chattering) Lost. “And where was I?” You could have been “where was I” at home. And by the third rehearsal, you clean that thing, how many… You know what I’m saying? This is a ministry of excellence. We talked about excellence. One of the ways you get to excellence is practicing. (crowd applauding) Amen. I write my sermon out word for word. There’s not a word, unless God gives me a word in the moment. There’s not a word I say that I haven’t written. Even right now, I wrote down everything I was gonna say. And then I kept reading it. I kept reading it. Now, I… At my age and my voice, I don’t have what… I don’t have enough left to preach as hard as I preach when I preach, but I read it so much, and I hear it in my voice so much, that I’m familiar with it when I get up. I don’t come up not familiar with my information. Amen. You have to know what you’re talking about before you get there, and the better you know your… Know your content. The more prepared you are, do not be unprepared. And don’t be over-prepared. That’s another problem. Just because you know the Greek word, don’t mean you always have to tell everybody what it is. (crowd laughing) Because people are more interested in the application of the word, than what you had to do to do the interpretation on it. Now you’re showing off. “You coulda save those two-minutes, just tell me what to do, bruh. The fact that I’m listening to you mean I trust your study. I don’t need to know what you had to go through, and then Paul was in the era’s tense, in the perfect and particular circumstantial dichotomous.” You got a question?

Crowd Member: You mentioned AI before, and since technology and everything is pushing in that direction, can you speak into some of the pitfalls that we’re probably walking into over the next several years? I mean, most of us already get emails from a company called “Sermon AI” where they’ll do everything for you, but there’s a balance between research and using that as Word. So, can you just speak into some of the pitfalls we might be facing?

Pastor Keith Battle: Well, it sounds like you wanna respond to that, Paul? Yeah.

Paul: I was gonna raise the same thing, and comment on what you had mentioned, because I too use some AI tools as a research companion.

Pastor Keith Battle: Yeah.

Paul: But pastors, we have to guard against the AI being our writing companion. I think all of us who have used AI at some level to find some research, will go down through and at the end of it, it will say, “Would you like me to write all that out for you?” It will write the whole thing for you. And I appreciate everything. Yes. I appreciate what you shared pastor, about this preaching task being a sacred trust. And that it is something that God has entrusted to us, to shepherd the people of God in the Word of God. And, you are the one that, as you quoted from Exodus, is instructing the people of God with God’s words. Not AI writing the message for you to deliver. It will do a sufficient job of giving us content, but it won’t do a sufficient job of shepherding. So, but I’m with… I’m with Pastor Nick, and I’m very interested to hear what your perspective is.

Pastor Keith Battle: Thank you, Pastor. From pastor from the Poconos. You know, here’s the… Here’s the reality about it in my opinion. Our concerns about AI 10 years from now won’t even be the same. We look at everything new with suspicion, we just do. When somebody told me… I remember it was Ted Cook… This not my phone. When he first showed me an iPhone in 2007, right? 2008, before he died? I said, “What’s so big?” Well he said, “I can do anything in here. I can do my email in here. I can pay my bills out of this. I can do all that out of there.” People like, “Oh, Lord.” You take this away from us now, we don’t know what to do. We don’t… Our schedule is in it, we do the calculator, all our apps are in it. I just… I understand the pause and the hesitation around it, and I totally agree with him. This cannot replace your office and your labor as a pastor. But use whatever’s available to you to do research. You filter it through the Spirit of God, and make… You have to compare things. So what becomes a trusted resource usually becomes trusted over time. It’s just like some people don’t wanna have… They don’t wanna hear CCM music, they don’t wanna hear elevation worship, they don’t wanna hear Maverick City, they just wanna hear the… They just wanna hear a hymn. Well, when the hymn came out, people probably were saying, “Well, what you singing?” Remember, people didn’t wanna hear the… The Hawkins family. Now that’s like, “Oh man, we got to go all the way back to that?” We tend to be intimidated by things that are new, and that’s understandable. I’m not saying, “Just embrace it.” But I’m saying, we’ll have a whole different conversation about that in 10-years, trust me. It’ll be something new we’re dealing with. Yes? Oh, this AI stuff is kicking up, isn’t it? Yes, ma’am?

Crowd Member: Hello? Can you hear me now? Okay. Most of the… Of the preachers now, or the pastors are requesting that you learn or know how to teach how to preach expository preaching. And that’s a certain type of style. Can you tell us more about that, and tell us maybe some of the ways in which to utilize the skill of preaching an expository sermon?

Pastor Keith Battle: Well, first of all, I’m under the impression that that’s not the only way to preach a sermon. I think you can preach a sermon through narration, and you can… (Pastor chuckling) You can do a topical sermon too. I just think your sermon content needs to be biblical and scripturally accurate. And if you’re… If you’re under a ministry where it’s required to do expository preaching, then you should research that, and be an expert at doing it that way. I would do whatever’s required under the leadership I’m under. That’s what I would tell you about expository preaching. Yep. So if that’s your requirement… In fact, if it’s a requirement of the church that you’re under, my guess is that that church is providing some type of training on how to do it that way. So that’s what I would go with, all right? Yes?

Crowd Member: So Pastor Battle, I know you said that you write your whole sermon word for word. I’m just curious, how does your notes look on Sunday? I know you write it word for word, but I know you’re not reading it.

Pastor Keith Battle: Speak up a little bit.

Crowd Member: I’m just curious, I know you said you write your sermon word for word. But on Sundays when you preach, I know you’re not reading, so how… I wanna know what your outline look like on a Sunday when you preach your sermon, or do you memorize your whole sermon?

Pastor Keith Battle: Yeah, it depends, but I don’t bring… I have it on my laptop. I don’t print it out. And, what does it look like? It’s just… Just looks like it’s still on my laptop. (crowd laughing) It’s in my phone as a backup. Sometimes I might have a piece of paper that has the scriptures that I’m gonna use, and the scriptures usually trigger my mind about what I’m supposed to say about that. And here’s the thing, I’m not making a guide out of preaching without notes, but I will say, it’s more effective to look at people than to not to. And if you get a AI sermon that’s been written for you? I guarantee you’re gonna be reading it. It’s gonna be harder to memorize something you didn’t write. Now, the reason why I’m okay preaching without notes is because you don’t know what I forgot. (crowd laughing) I think when people forget something, they be like, “Oh, God.” They don’t even know what you wrote. They don’t know that you did a U-turn and went back to something that was in point two, you already in point three. They don’t have to know. And I think the more you can stay connected with your audience, the more better a communicator you can be. So, I just try to write out everything I wanna say, and when I rewrite it, the more you… So, if you write a book, a great book is not written one time, it’s rewritten over and over, and over, and over, and over again. A great song is not just written the first time, you find a way to… It, “Should the vam go here?” Should the… Should the chorus come in here? Should we go three-part harmony here?” Like, you gotta keep perfecting everything you do, and the more I read it, the more I’m like, “I can say that better.” So, that’s… That’s just the way I do it. I’ve been doing it… But I’ve been doing it for 41-years, all right? Somebody else got something? Yes?

Crowd Member: Hi, Pastor Battle. I guess my question would be for young, just starting out, up and coming preachers, what I guess… What advice would you give? What’s something you would’ve wished you would’ve known when you first started out? Or some advice you would’ve liked to receive? Young… Some advice for young up and coming preachers?

Pastor Keith Battle: Yeah. I used to say this to preachers back in the day. I would tell them to do four things. I’ma tell you to do these four things. One is, make sure you listen to good preaching, and at the same time, try to avoid listening as much as you can to bad preaching. Just don’t let it get in your system. Let’s just stand it. If y’all were here, ’cause I didn’t get here on time today, but I got here in time to hear Priscilla Shira. That’s flawless preaching from top to bottom. (crowd cheering and applauding) Just listen to it. You have to be like it. That’s the story, the setup, the circle, the pictures, the painting, the clothes, the passion is a masterpiece, listen to good preaching. The second thing I used to tell people to do was get on Twitter, because at the time you could only use 140 characters, and I did it for what you mentioned. I want you to be able to say things good and say ’em fast. And what Twitter made people do, is come up with what Andy Stanley calls “sticky statements”. They’re called hashtags. The more statements that stick with people you can come up with, the better. So, posting on Twitter at one time was a thing, but I don’t know, they let you… You can do pages on X now. It’s called “X”. Another thing I’ll tell you to do is listen to C-SPAN Radio. This is gon’ sound strange, but in a C-SPAN Radio, what you wanna listen to, is when congressmens… And congressmen and senators argue on the floor of the house around legislation. Good preaching also makes arguments about the text and debates sides of it, and makes a point. I just think that’s some of the greatest… Listening to lawyers who present cases, ’cause it’s all public speaking in this communication, that’s great. And another thing I would say, which was masterfully done by Priscilla Shire, masterfully done by you on Sunday, is storytelling. And you can’t find better stories told, than by comedians. Now, you wanna listen to clean comedy, so that it doesn’t pollute your mind. But, have you ever noticed a comedian… We all went to the same cookout, but the comedian came from the cookout, and told the story about the same cookout, and had you fallin’ out… You saw it, but you didn’t see it like that. Comedians are great storytellers. I would study great communication, great storytelling, great arguments, being able to say stuff that’s concise, and listen to great preachers. I would say that. There are three words I want y’all to write down, Fruit, Faucet, Fountain. Fruit, Faucet, Fountain. This is dovetail on that. When Jesus says in John 15, “I am the vine and you’re branches.” Now get that picture. “I’m a vine, you’re a branch.” “I’m the vine, you’re a branch.” “Without me, you can do nothing.” Doesn’t that make sense? “But if you abide in me and my words abide in you, you can bring forth much fruit.”

Crowd Member: Yeah. Yeah.

Pastor Keith Battle: So, the amount of fruit you have, is connected to how vitally connected you are to the vine, right? When you preach, people are coming to you as a tree looking for fruit. And if you are not connected, you will leave them dissatisfied. So it is important that you stay connected enough, so that you have something to feed people. Ecclesiastes… No, Ezekiel three. Give me Ezekiel chapter three. Ezekiel three, verses one to four. This is a… This is an amazing passage. So this is God talking to Ezekiel the prophet, and, the voice said to me, “Son of man, eat what I’m giving you. Eat this scroll!” “Eat this scroll.” He’s talking about the Word of God on… on papyrus sheets. He says, “Eat this scroll, then go and give its message to the people of Israel.” Look at that picture, verse two. “So I opened my mouth, and He fed me to scroll.” Verse three, “Fill your stomach with this, ” He said. “And when I ate it, it tasted as sweet as honey in my mouth.” Verse four. Then He said, “Son of man, go to the people of Israel, and give them my messages.” (crowd chattering) You can only feed people what you’re full of. He says… God says, “I’ma feed you my…” “I’ma feed you my Word.” “Eat my Word, and then take what I put in you, and give it to the people.” You can’t feed if you haven’t eaten, because you will always give what you got. And if you’re not getting something fresh, you will serve stuff that’s spoiled. (crowd chattering)

Crowd Member: That was good, PB. That was so good. (Pastor chuckling)

Pastor Keith Battle: I don’t remember what I said, so. (crowd laughing) (crowd chattering) Faucets. How many of you remember when we were in, like, I don’t know some of those different ages, when you were in elementary school or in junior high school, and they had water fountains, right? Well, there’s a difference between a fountain and a faucet. I mean, when a fountain, you push the button, the water comes up, a faucet, water comes down. So let’s talk about faucet first. A faucet is what pours into you, and it’s what you use to cleanse yourself. And some of us are parts, because we don’t sit under the right faucets. Who do you turn your cup up under? (crowd chattering) Where do you go to be poured into? Sometimes we don’t know that the person we blessed by coming to something like this, was ourself. ‘Cause it gave me a chance to be poured into, because, from what I’ve received now, now I can be a fountain. Now somebody can push on me, and I got something to give them. Now, if you ever seen a fountain that said “out of order”, it doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with the fountain. Sometimes it means there’s something wrong with the connection. See, you can’t see where the water’s coming from in a fountain, but I promise you, it’s not coming out that thing, it’s coming out the tubes, and the stuff that’s connected to a water source. And if there’s ever a disconnection between the source of water, and the fountain is now out of order, or it may be bringing out unclean water. And if you drink out of something that’s out of order, you’re drinking at your own risk. And when you listen to a preacher who’s not connected to God, you’re listening at your… (crowd chattering)

Crowd Member: Yeah! (crowd chattering)

Pastor Keith Battle: That’s why, at the end of the day, our relationship with God is everything to this work. You can’t do this… He says, “Without Me… You can do nothing without Me.”

Crowd Member: That’s right. That’s right.

Pastor Keith Battle: “Without me, you can do nothing.” I like… I like in preaching, I never know… I think preaching is like… It’s like cooking. I tell people, if you can cook, you can preach. Because cooking requires a lot of… See, in order to cook, you gotta first of all get your groceries, and you know what you want, you got your peppers, and you got your vegetables, and you got your stuff, and you got your meat, but you also got your spices, and all that stuff. Any cook, there may be chaos in the kitchen, but what’s about to come out is gonna be amazing, right? (crowd chattering) And then you gotta have… You gotta have an understanding of the people you’re feeding. ‘Cause everybody in your house can’t eat that without some… There’s some allergies. You understand what I’m saying? And you know what… You know what they… You don’t just know what they not like, you know what they need. And you already got a vitamin D deficiency, so we gonna put you some greens, and all that. So, when you cook… So preaching is just like that. Preaching is putting together ingredients. It may be Claude, it may be Logos, it may be your commentary, it’s prayer, it’s research, it’s writing, it’s walking with God, it’s interpreting the scripture, it’s examining it, it’s explaining it, it’s illustration. All these are the ingredients that you put in, it could be a mess, but God’s gotta help you put it all together. Now. Now watch this, watch this. In the African American community, when somebody cooks a good meal, we say? (crowd chattering) “You put your foot in that.” (crowd laughing) I don’t know why we say that. But how many know I ain’t lying when I say we say that? “You put your foot in that.” The white people was like, “Why would you say that?” We say that, “You put your foot in it.” Now I’m going to use this for every culture. When you put a sermon together, you need to put your foot in it, your foot, your story, not AI’s story, your testimony, your missteps, your victories, your accomplishments, your weaknesses, your wins. Stop hiding behind biblical texts and come out of hiding, and tell us who you are, because people can’t trust a preacher who’s hiding. Give me 1st Thessalonians 2:8. 1st Thessalonians 2:8, Paul says, “We love y’all so much. We didn’t just give you the Word. We shared our lives with you too.” First Thessalonians 2:8. Y’all got that verse? I want ’em to see that. He says, “We love you so much that we shared with you not only God’s good news, but our lives too.” “We didn’t just share the text with you, we shared our testimony with you.” There are a lot of preachers that like just giving you the Word, give you the Word, give you the Word and let you find out. But, who are you? Paul we know. (crowd laughing)

Crowd Member: Yeah. Yeah.

Crowd Member 2: Come on now.

Pastor Keith Battle: Jesus we know. Who are you? What have you been through? What have you overcome? I’m not saying be lewd and tell all your business, but there should be some level of transparency that builds trust, that I can trust you with this message. Not because you… I love… Pastor Darren gave a talk earlier, and just repeatedly talked about his failures. He made me feel so good. (crowd laughing) He is the Chairman of the Board of Converge, and talking about road rage and everything. Like, did y’all hear him? He said, “Man, I’ve…” Yeah. I love that. Because you know where he ended it? You know what I’m saying? “But I’m still here. By the grace of God. Amen. God is still using me.” He didn’t make… He didn’t celebrate his failure. He made us understand it. Pastor Charles, that’s you, right? I don’t have my glasses on. He wants to preach first Sunday by the way. I don’t know if you were in here. (crowd laughing) He said he needs some reps, Pastor Charles. He said, you got to get him out the bullpen. Yeah, you a Cowboy fan, shouldn’t matter who playing quarterback? Amen. (crowd laughing) All the Cowboy fans stand up. (crowd laughing) I’m joking. (crowd laughing) All of them from DC too. It’s a shame. Paul says… Why did Paul say, “I showed you my life, and the Word.”? Go back to 1st Thessalonians 2:8. Why’d he say that? “‘Cause we loved you.” (crowd chattering) Love must drive your ministry.

Crowd Member: That’s good, man. Man, that’s good. (crowd chattering)

Pastor Keith Battle: You remember Jonah? Jonah, first of all, don’t wanna preach, and he sure don’t want to preach in Nineveh. (Pastor chuckling) God was clear. God says, “All right, Jonah. I want you to go down to Nineveh, and tell them people to repent.” Jonah said, “Yep, I’ll be right back.” (crowd laughing) Hey Vima, he went on a cruise. Didn’t even like cruises. Jonah went on a cruise. And I won’t bore you with the story ’cause… But let me tell you, when he… When he got his miracle, and he got another chance? He’s like, “I’ll preach now.” Some of y’all, that’s what you gonna have to do. You wanna preach now? Amen. I did that. When Jonah walked through Nineveh, this Joker didn’t even… When he preached that message God gave him, he went through, he did a drive-by sermon. He ain’t even looking at the people in the face. He said, “Yeah, y’all going to hell, all y’all. This whole joint gonna blow up.” That’s all he did. He ain’t even looking no one. He ain’t stop and say, “Brother, please. You got five minutes or you going to hell.” He just say, “Y’all going to hell! Everybody around here, God doth saith the Lord.” (crowd laughing) He did a walk-by sermon, and the whole city got saved. ‘Cause God can use you with your bad attitude, ’cause it’s His Word that saves. Now, having said that, what is he missing? His Jonah, he don’t love the people, he’s called the minister too.

Crowd Member: That’s right. That’s right.

Pastor Keith Battle: Some of y’all are scared to preach to people. You know why you scared to preach to ’em? You don’t love ’em. There’s no fear in love. Perfect love cast out fear. I ain’t scared of y’all, ’cause I love you. Most of these people listen to me all the time. This… I’m trying to come up with something new for ’em. (crowd laughing)

Crowd Member: It’s all good.

Pastor Keith Battle: Oh, I’m scared. I’m scared. I’m scared. You ain’t… You know why you scared? You’re more concerned about your reputation than you are about helping the people you’re talking to. That’s Jonah. Jonah was so mad Pastor Joe, that when his prophecy didn’t come about… So Jonah prophesied, like God told him, “Y’all gonna be destroyed.” They all repented. And he got mad, ’cause his prophecy was wrong. ‘Cause he was more concerned about his reputation and you know, “I got 100% prophecy rate, and what they gonna say online about me? How many likes did I get?” He does not care about the people. If I prophesize that something bad gonna happen to you, and God turns your life around ’cause of that? I should be glad that I love you enough. I’m so glad he didn’t let that happen to you. (crowd applauding) John chapter 21 verse 15 to 17. Post resurrection Jesus after Peter said, “I’d never deny you. You talking to somebody else, you ain’t talking about me.” Jesus said, “One of y’all tonight gon’ sell out on me.” Jesus said, “You must be talking about one of them, ’cause I’m ready to die for you. Ready to get locked up.” He led… He wrote the hymn, “You can count on me.” Jesus said, “Peter, tonight before the… Before the cock crows, you gonna deny three times you even know me.” People were asking Peter, “Do you know him?” “Who?” Just that quick, he switched up. He just switched up real quick. He started cursing. “I don’t know who you talking about.” Jesus comes across Peter. John chapter 21. Give me verse 15, watch this. After breakfast, Jesus asked Simon Peter, “Simon, son of Jonah, do you love me more than these?” “Yes, Lord.” Peter replied, “You know I love you.” He says, “Then feed my lambs.” Next verse. Next verse. Jesus repeated the question, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” “Yes Lord, you know I love you.” “Take care of my sheep.” Verse 17. A third time he asked him, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” Peter was hurt that Jesus asked the question a third time, he says, “Lord, you know everything.” Verse, keep going. What’s the rest of the verse? “You know that I love you.” Jesus said, “Then feed my sheep.” You know what Jesus saying? This is a love work. If you don’t love me, and you don’t love the people, you’re no different than Jonah. What’s driving your work? If it ain’t love? Amen. Go to Mark 6:34. I’m almost done. Give me about 60… 60-minutes. Mark 6:34. Mm. Give it up for the people who put these verses in at the last minute. They probably back there saying stuff about me. (crowd laughing) Jesus saw the huge crowd as He stepped from the boat, and He had compassion on them. He had compassion on them because they were like sheep without a shepherd. So He began teaching them many things.” He had compassion on them. So He began teaching them. He had compassion on them. So He began teaching them. When you talk to youth, and you talk to children’s ministry, and you talk to your seniors, and you talk to the people, your teaching will erupt from you when you have compassion. (crowd chattering) But if it’s all about you, “How did I look?” “How did that go, Doc?” “How was that Word?” Love must be your motivation. I got one more thing. I got one more thing. I’ll share this, and then I’ll open it up again for questions. There’s this thing that I call a gap between calling and competency, and I see it in Psalm 37, and I want you to see verses 4 and 5 of Psalm 37, and verses 4 and 5, and then, we’ll be done. So in Psalm 37 verse 4 it says, “Delight yourself in the Lord. And He will give you your heart’s desires.” Now… Now what that means is, the key, don’t… Don’t miss the point where it says, “Delight yourself in the Lord.” This doesn’t mean that God gives you whatever you want. What it means is, because you delighted yourself in Him, He gives you what He wants. And you actually want what He wants, because of where your heart is. You got that? And one of the things He’ll give you desire for, is to serve Him. That desire is your calling. You delighted yourself in the Lord, and He birthed into yourself that He wants you to do. Let’s say it’s preaching. So whether you’ve started preaching, you never preached, or you ready to quit preaching, the desire came from Him. Now I hope you get redesire to preach and study. But look at verse five, He says, “Commit everything you do to the Lord, trust Him and He will help you.” Now when God says He’s going to help you, He just said, “I’ll give you the desires of your heart.” Now, if we’re… If we’re using that to say, when He says, “If you delight yourself in Me, I’ll give you your heart’s desire.” But then He says, “You gotta commit everything to Me, trust Me and I will help you.” What I’ve discovered is, is that between the thing you desire to do in ministry, and you actually doing it, is a gap called “incompetency”. Between your calling and your competency, there’s a gap, because God will call you to do something that you don’t have the competency to do it. He’ll give you the desire to do it, but you don’t have the dexterity to do it. That’s one of the ways you know He calls you to do it, because He’s gonna have to equip you to do it. And that gap between what He calls you to do, it could be, He calls you to build something, build a ministry, build a building. That gap between what He calls you to do and your competency to do it, is a strange land. (crowd chattering) And when you walk through a strange land, you have to hold His hand. And the way He bridges the gap between your calling and your competency, is through training and development. Because in order for you to do what God calls you to do, it’s gonna require a better version of you to do it. That’s why He called you. You cannot… The thing you’re doing now? That you’ve done so well so long? The place He’s taking you, is gonna take a better version of you to go there. Now you can stay where you are ’cause it’s comfortable. But He’ll put a desire in your heart as you delight in Him, and say, “I want you to do this.” Well, now you have to start the… You gotta deliver the competency gap. How many of people understand what I’m saying? But He says, “If you trust me, I’ll help you.” (crowd chattering) How does He help you? There are several things you have to have if He’s gonna train and develop you. One is, you gotta have an eagerness. Remember Ezra? He had a desire. You have to be teachable. You have to be humble. You have to be hungry. I’ll say those four words again. Eager, Teachable, Humble, Hungry. Eager, Teachable, Humble, Hungry. Eagerness comes… The desire makes you eager like, “I really desire to do this. I don’t know how I’m gonna do it, but I can’t shake it. I can’t let go of it. God’s called me to do this. I don’t even know who to… I don’t even know where to start.” Then, being teachable is necessary because pride will keep you stuck. In the middle of pride is the word “I”. “I don’t need help.” You have to have a level of confessed ignorance in order to be educated.

Crowd Member: Yeah. Yeah. That’s good. Yep.

Pastor Keith Battle: So teachability and humility go together. You gotta be humble enough to be taught. The hunger… This is so important. What I think is lacking, what I would go back to you, as… When you say about young preachers, any preachers, because whoever’s starting preaching, you’re young and preaching. What you need more than anything is a hunger. God give me a hunger for it. Because He says, “If you hunger and thirst for righteousness, you’ll be filled.”

Crowd Member: Be filled. That’s right.

Pastor Keith Battle: Hmm. I was recently… Somebody reached out to me on a Monday who was at our 9:45 service at our church, and that night he watched the Archive of The Message, which was of the 1:45 service. And he called me and said, “Hey, man.” He called me Monday, and said, “Hey, man, I was at 9:45, and you… You was all right at 9:45.” He says, “But you preached at 1:45.” And so, I… I just said, “I’m glad that… I’m glad you were blessed by that.” What I didn’t tell him, ’cause I didn’t know where he was, what it… What I didn’t tell him was, I actually preached at both services. What you saw, really saw, was the difference between one group was hungry and the other one wasn’t. (crowd chattering) I can’t control hunger. (crowd chattering) When you preach to people with their arms folded, who are satisfied, who are checking the box, and gotta get to their tea time, the Word… The food comes out different. But at our 1:45 service, them people come in there desperate. They’re like… They like, we… We on suicide watch for this Word. They pull on you different. It’s a different pull. I said it’s a different pull. They put a demand on what’s in you. (crowd chattering) Ooh. If you go into Philadelphia, any city that has a city bell, when they pull on that liberty bell in Philadelphia, the sound it makes, and the length of the sound, is directly proportionate to the the pull. (crowd chattering) The harder the pull, the louder the sound, and the longer the sound. You have to have a hunger to do what God’s caused you to do. Like, “I want this. I want this.” You know, when people… You actually catch athletes, you can tell the ones that want it. They stay after practice. “What else do I learn? How do I come out the blocks?” “It’s gonna be all right. Your father-in-law, he gonna be all right. Tell him he gonna be all right. When he wake up, he gonna be all right.” (crowd laughing)

Crowd Member: He was absorbing.

Pastor Keith Battle: Yeah, he was taking it in. (crowd laughing) Sometimes you gotta just… You gotta just let it simmer into your REM stage. When it hit that REM stage, you start dreaming dreams and seeing vision. Your old man will dream dreams. The young man was like, “That was biblical.” (crowd laughing and chattering) You know when people are hungry? ‘Cause they want more. (crowd chattering) You say, “Hey, let’s… Let’s just get together and talk about preaching.” “When? What time?” “Oh, we can’t start at 10:30 tonight.” “I’ll be there.” You ain’t hungry. You don’t want it. Anyway. Anyway, so this is… This is how this works. So you had this gap, and what God does is, He’ll also give you mentors to close the gap. The mentors are people who are already where you’re trying to get. Because what’s foreign to you is familiar to them. And they can close the gap. But here’s the deal. You want the relationship with the mentor for their content, not for their companionship. See, so many people want to be their mentor’s companion. They want to… If you got a mentor who’s doing anything of quality, they don’t have time to be your friend. Get the content and keep it moving. Because they have dedicated their life to their craft, and they’re not out and about doing a bunch of stuff, and stop taking it personal when they can’t respond to you all the time. Just get in their environment, or follow them. Get their content. Oh, you understand what I’m saying? And that’s how God will close the gap for you. I’m done. I’ma stop right there. Any questions before we go? ‘Cause we got four-minutes. You got a question? (crowd applauding) That’s the pattern. You gotta watch that pattern. Every time God calls you to something, there’s gonna be a gap between where you are and where He’s calling you. All right, right here.

Crowd Member: Your fourth-eighth… I mean, your fourth word. You had hunger

Pastor Keith Battle: I had eager.

Crowd: Eager.

Pastor Keith Battle: Teachable, Humble, Hungry. You got something? What you got? (crowd member speaking softly) “Can you talk about the fountain?” So, the fountain is who you are. There are people who come to you and they need something from you, but you can’t be a fountain unless you’ve first been a faucet. Somebody had to pour into you. All right. What we got? Yes? This is our teacher. Dawn Beckels, who taught us how to lead people to Jesus. I want you to meet with him right after service. No, he… She shares your heart for evangelism.

Dawn: Yeah.

Pastor Keith Battle: What you got, Dawn?

Dawn: So you mentioned… You mentioned following pastors that you love or that you’re inspired by

Pastor Keith Battle: Start over.

Dawn: You mentioned following pastors that you’re inspired by, and I had a twofold question. Who were yours? If you’re willing to share. And, how often did you find yourself listening to them, following them? Being moved by them?

Pastor Keith Battle: Oh, whoever I’m on at that time, I’m listening to them every day. It’s been different people over the years. For different reasons. Like my pastors for, since almost… Since we started Zion Church has been Pastor Jenkins. So I’m always locked into how he thinks, and how he moves, his wisdom and decision making. But, what I do is I listen to somebody on… I don’t listen to a lot of preachers. I can’t go to a lot of different… A lot of different faucets. I like listening to somebody who at this stage of my life, is giving me what I need to grow. Yeah, so…

Dawn: And I figured… I figured you didn’t listen to many… So, I figured you didn’t listen to many. That’s why I was curious as to who initially poured into you.

Pastor Keith Battle: Yeah, I don’t. Yeah. So, over the years it’s been… It just depends on what the season is. There’ve been times when it’s been Joyce Meyer. There’s been time when it’s been Bishop Jakes. There’s been times when it was Joel Ostein, depending upon, you know, if I need my faith. Just keep your faith up. (crowd laughing) I listen to a lady now that some of y’all probably can’t handle, ’cause she ain’t playing no games. Her name is Nancy DeFrain. That’s who I listen to. That’s who I listen to. Almost every day.

Crowd Member: I’m sorry. First of all, thank you for that. That was amazing. When you talked about giving birth, and what you do every Sunday, I think we all could feel it, right? Those birth pangs and then after labor, and delivery. So as a pastor, what do you suggest that people do to prevent the burnout? And to make sure that they’re taking care of self, because you are pouring out so much as a fountain?

Pastor Keith Battle: You gotta take breaks. You have to take breaks. So I have a rhythm now. I know how many babies I can deliver, and I need a break. That’s what I… So I don’t get sick, and overwhelmed, and you have to give yourself permission to break… Take breaks. All right y’all, we’re out of time. God bless you. Thank you so much for this opportunity. (crowd applauding) (audio silence)