This is my new answer when people tell me they want deeper teaching

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There are two statements that pastors hear more than any others, and they are hard not to take personally.

They’re also difficult to really know how to answer, but first, let me tell you what they are.

The first one? “I’m just not getting fed.”

The second? “I wish the teaching was deeper.”

The reason these are so challenging is that they feel so incredibly personal, even though they aren’t always meant that way. Actually, I’d say that they are rarely meant that way (unless church people are as mean as unchurched people make them out to be). But the innocent statements aren’t heard that way by the pastor.

What the pastor hears is, “You preach bad, and you’re shallow.”

Just imagine pushing away from the table after a family meal and telling your mom (or even worse, your grandma) that what she made was terrible.

Or insulting the grill-master at the next family BBQ. Yikes.

But once we take the emotion out of it, the statements are actually a gift because we want people to be fed, and we want people’s faith to grow deep.

I’ll write at a later time about that first statement because it comes up more than the second, and countless pastors get hurt by it. Since it can hit so close to the heart, I’ll tackle it when I have more time to devote to it.

But the second is a little easier to answer, although I’m not sure people will like my new answer. From this day forward, whenever someone tells me they want to go deeper, I’m simply going to ask them if I can agree with them in prayer about it.

Since they want to go deeper in their faith, they’ll have to say yes. Then, I’m going to take their hands, bow my head, and pray, “Father, take my friend into a dry season. In Jesus’ name, amen.”

Can you imagine the face I’ll be looking at when I open my eyes? It’s possible I’ll see anger, but more than likely there will just be confusion, and I completely understand it.

In our podcast and YouTube culture, we’ve come to see depth as the result of learning more, not as the result of needing more. But the roots of trees only go deeper because they aren’t finding water at the current level, and so they do a deep dive searching for what they need.

We’ve come to see depth as the result of learning more, not as the result of needing more. Share on X

Now, it’s entirely possible for a pastor to stay so shallow that it feels as if we’re dying of thirst, but I’ve rarely found that to be the case. What I have found, though, is that when I seek to live out what I’m learning, more times than not, I am driven to a place of prayer, desperately asking God to give me what I need to live out what I’ve learned.

Want to go deeper? Stop trying to just learn more information, and get to know your neighbor. Step into a situation with a hurting person who will look at you and tell you that your God doesn’t work, and ask you questions that can’t be addressed with church slogans and bumper sticker theology.

That will send your roots on a deep dive, and in that place of drought, you’ll be amazed how much deeper the next sermon is that you hear.

Drought and desperation have a way of cutting us to our core, and that’s where the depth begins.

Information doesn’t lead to transformation, unless there is application in the middle. Said with smaller words, we learn, we do, and then, we grow.

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