How can pastors improve the tone of their preaching? In this episode, Matt Woodley and Dr. Hershael York, Senior Pastor at Buck Run Baptist Church set the record straight.

Tone can be communicated through your pace, pitch, volume, and even body language. Sometimes a person’s tone doesn’t match the content, of what they’d like to convey. And that’s often what can be harmful, in a conversation with a spouse, a friend – or in a sermon.

Dr. York said “I always need to grow in delivery, passion and getting rid of verbal bridges. Those things are incredibly challenging for me, even after all of these years. I have much room to grow.”

He warns pastors of preaching the emotion you feel, instead of the emotion of the Biblical text. He said “Your tone has to match the content of the text.”

Check out what was referenced on the podcast:

The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary by Robert Altar. W.W. Norton & Company, 2018.

Matt Woodley is the pastor of compassion ministries at Church of the Resurrection in Wheaton, Illinois.