This fine essay on preaching should give anyone who climbs into the pulpit ample food for thought:

I taught a class on preaching last week. As we began I said, “Good preaching begins with good listening.”

I think of preachers, the good ones, as scouts and watchmen, poets and explorers. They’ve been given the work of listening. Listening deeply in a world where mostly we don’t. We seem often like the flocks of starlings that descend periodically on my backyard. They clack and yammer, strut and preen, then hurry off en masse to their next stop.

A good preacher is like an owl who sits quietly, turning his head this way and that, listening to catch the slight sound of the broken twig, the turning leaf.

I understand that this is not the way most people think, if they think at all, of preachers or preaching. The more common notion would, I expect, be that a preacher is someone with a gift of gab; someone for whom talking comes easily, who can’t stop talking. I distrust such preachers.

I trust the ones who don’t speak easily, the ones from whom words are wrung like so many drops of blood. Their need to get the thing straight in their heads before they presume to say it is the people’s best assurance.

There’s much more, so be sure to read it all.

And then: listen.