This article is for young men who aspire to preach but doubt their own abilities.

I have in mind men who have discovered that good preaching has changed their lives and fed their souls. Miraculously, you — one who was born in sin — have come to love the word of God, and the gospel of Christ, and the preached word, and in you is a growing desire to preach it yourself. But you’re not sure. You may even have serious doubts. Are you “gifted” to do the work of preaching?

First, let me say that such humility is a good place to start. I would rather take a preacher who started here, in self-doubt, than one with roaring, prideful confidence in his public-speaking abilities. If your head is on straight, and not swollen with conceit, you will have some doubts, holy doubts. You will doubt your own ability. Preaching is a high calling, and God uses this means so powerfully in his work in the world (Ephesians 3:8–10). And preaching is so personal, and personally revealing of the preacher himself, that you’d be a fool, sinner that you are, to not have hesitations.

So, some doubts are good and vital — and will be enduring, even as confidence grows over time. But other doubts God means to overcome in making you, in his patient timing, a preacher of his word.

Singers, Not Running Backs

The challenge is exacerbated in our times by our being raised in a youth culture that celebrates the strength and energy of young adults and devalues the maturity and wisdom of older adults. In a society preoccupied with entertainment and athletics, we make much of twentysomethings at the height of their strength and beauty. Unless we learn to think another way, we might naturally assume the same of preachers. It’s a prevalent misconception among young men today.

But the countercultural truth is that preachers are more like opera singers than like athletes. Depending on the sport, athletes peak in their twenties. For gymnasts, it might even be late teens. The professional lifespan of NFL running backs, say, is very brief. However, musicians and singers often peak far later, after decades of experience and honing their abilities — and particularly so with the human voice.

Most preachers, if they remain faithful and hardworking, will be at their best in their fifties and sixties, not in their thirties and forties. And watching John Piper makes me think, Maybe even in your seventies. Which brings us to the main truth to assert and clarify.

Not a Static ‘Gift’

“Able to teach” (Greek didaktokos, 1 Timothy 3:2) is not a static gift that one is either born with or not, or that falls fully formed from the sky in a moment or not. The way we use the language of “gifted” and “gifting” often gives the wrong impression.

Athletics offers a useful illustration. Some “gifted athletes” seem to have been born with strength and speed, balance and agility. Without much practice, they easily succeed. But this kind of “gifting,” this seeming knack from childhood, will take an athlete only so far. You will not find such “gifted” but undeveloped, unpracticed, untrained athletes in professional sports and the Olympics. Yet we also speak of such rigorously trained athletes as “gifted,” and in this case what do we mean? This is the kind of ability that’s relevant for aspiring preachers.

“Gifting is not static, but very much developed, cultivated, practiced, dynamic.”

Every world-class athlete works with some givens. Depending on the sport, height and body type can be significant. But that is far from the whole story. Their habits, patterns, rhythms of life, what they regularly ate and didn’t, how often they practiced and for how long and the quality of their repetitions — all of these prove consequential in their mature abilities. Their “gifting” is not static, but very much developed, cultivated, practiced, dynamic, the product of hard work over years.

So too with good teachers and preachers. Their abilities are cultivated and honed over years, even decades — on a much longer arc than the athlete’s. For sure, some men may have had an early knack, or been reared with better public-speaking abilities. But a man’s public-speaking ability in his early twenties has very little to do with whether he will be a good preacher in his sixties.

Preaching and teaching abilities are profoundly learned and trained. And then factor in the Holy Spirit, whose anointing typically works over the course of years in making preachers. He makes preachers not in surprise single moments but through habits over decades. The Spirit’s influence and guidance sow the seed of aspiration in the heart and lead the developing preacher into the modest regular patterns that make him into an effective voice, not overnight, but over a lifetime.

God may indeed make born-again Christians in a moment of regenerative eye-opening, but he doesn’t make preachers like that. He has plenty of craftsman’s patience for the making of his preachers, forming and shaping them over years on end, over decades of experience and private meditation and public practice.

For Those with Little Ability

The counsel I offer young men who want to preach but doubt themselves is, in brief, to ask for God’s help, take what opportunities you can (and take them seriously), and stay at it for the long haul.

For those with little ability in public speaking, start by praying that God would work in you, over time, the increasing ability to preach. And as you do, intentionally seek to develop a new skill. Take the long view. Visualize a long arc. Read books on preaching. Take every opportunity offered to teach the Bible in any setting: a small group, an adult class, a children’s class, family devotions. Seek to get “at-bats” and work to get better over time.

For each opportunity, prepare carefully and thoroughly, knowing that a frequent danger in thorough preparation is having too much material and speaking for too long. After you’ve worked diligently to prepare, then work ruthlessly to cut down what you have, leaving what you feel most compelled to say, and perhaps surprising your audience by finishing slightly earlier than expected, rather than later. Growing as a Christian and preacher includes discerning what not to say in any given opportunity.

For Those with More Ability

For those who have some ability by nature or upbringing, yet rightly feel inadequate for the task, bring the apostle’s word to his protégé home to yourself: “Fan into flame the gift of God” (2 Timothy 1:6). However “gifted” you might perceive yourself to be from birth or practice, the ability will do very little good, if any, for God’s kingdom if not fanned into flame — that is, if not trained, cultivated, conditioned. Work at it. Effective preachers do not minister without toil and striving. Not for long. So, Paul says to Timothy, the young preacher, “Train yourself for godliness” (1 Timothy 4:7). Which means, among other things, spiritual conditioning for public ministry:

Devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation, to teaching. Do not neglect the gift you have, which was given you by prophecy when the council of elders laid their hands on you. Practice these things, immerse yourself in them, so that all may see your progress. (1 Timothy 4:13–15)

That Timothy had received a “gift” was a good start. But he needed to work, to practice, to devote himself, to immerse himself, that he might not plateau in his teaching and preaching abilities but grow and mature and develop — so much so that “all may see your progress.”

What Would Ruth Piper Say?

Let me leave you with the long arc of the preaching life of John Piper, whom many consider one of the most effective and “gifted” preachers of this generation. For Piper, “gifted” clearly did not mean he grew up with a knack for public speaking, or that the ability fell from heaven in a moment. Piper, in fact, was unusually ungifted as a teenager — utterly unable to speak in public in high school and early in college. It wasn’t until he agreed to pray a short prayer in chapel, at age twenty, that he finally turned the corner and slowly began to develop the ability to speak in public, one little opportunity at a time.

While in seminary, he taught a boys Sunday school class, and after studying in Germany for three years (and doing very little teaching), he took a job in Saint Paul, Minnesota, teaching college students. He was 34 years old before he began preaching regularly as the pastor of a small, previously dwindling inner-city church in Minneapolis. There he faithfully prepared and preached and taught, on Sunday mornings and evenings and Wednesdays, and over decades he became the kind of preacher who was willing, and able, to speak to large gatherings with remarkable effectiveness in his fifties, sixties, and seventies.

John’s mother, Ruth, died when he was 28, and hardly a speaker at all. Sometimes I’ve wondered what she would think of these last fifty years. If you had asked her then if her son was “gifted” to preach, maybe she would have responded modestly at best, even if she could see potential in him few others did. Yet such is the grace of God, and the lifetime work of the Spirit, to make preachers even from the most unlikely of men.

So carry on, young aspiring preacher. Feed your holy ambition to preach, take what opportunities you can, and fan into flame what meager abilities you might have. Take the long view. And as you wrestle with doubts about your own “gifting,” have no doubts in your God who is able to use, and condition, the humblest of voices.