Interview With Pastor Joey Kennedy On Preaching, Burnout, and Advice For Young Preachers

Recently I had the opportunity to interview Pastor Joey Kennedy. Joey is the Pastor of Trinity Baptist in Logan, West Virginia. Pastor Joey has been in the ministry quiet a while in the Southern WV area, and has been a great encouragement to me in my own personal walk. For this interview, the topics were preaching, burnout, and advice for young preachers.

Me: How long have you been in ministry? 

Joey: I have been in the ministry for a little over 10 years. 

Me: Pastor Joey, you've spent a lot of time preaching in the Southern WV area. You've preached lots of revivals, and you've shepherded two churches. How do you avoid "ministry burnout"? 

Joey: I don't think that it's possible to avoid "ministry burnout" from time to time. We work, work, work; prepare, prepare, prepare; and preach, preach, preach.

At times, I all of a sudden find myself just needing to get away from everything and everybody. We shouldn't look at this as strange. We can find times in Scripture where Christ would go off to Himself and pray, and seek the Father. 

Me: If you have been through these seasons of burnout, what is your routine during these times? Do you have places in Scripture that you like to meditate during these times? 

Joey: [Personally] I like to just get off to myself where it's just me and the Lord. I like to take my Bible and go to the hills, and find a rock to rest on and read in the Psalms until I begin to feel encouraged. 

Me: How do you go about preparing your sermons? 

Joey: My preparation for a sermon always starts with prayer. Not just normal prayer. I like to call it "hunger prayer". What I mean by this is, I pray for God to give and show me what He wants to be delivered to His people that they may be fed to the point of satisfaction in their spiritual walk week after week, year after year. 

Me: What advice would you give toyoung men feeling called to ministry? 

Joey: The advice that I would share with young men feeling led to be in the ministry would be: 

1.) Be sure of your calling. 

2.) Only preach what you find as truth from the Word of God. Leave your opinion out of it. Your opinion doesn't matter, only God's truth matters and that's what we must convey to God's people. Although we have nothing but good intentions when sharing our opinions, at the end of the day, they are just that; opinions. God's truth is all that will bring light to the darkness in peoples lives. Our opinions can't do that. 

3.) Never let who is in the congregation dictate what you preach. Your job is to show up with the message that God has given to you. Example: you may show up at church with what we would consider a "salvation" message, but as you look around all you see  is professing Christians. You may say, "there's not a lost person in the house". Sometimes when this happens, we begin to question if we have the right message or not. But remember, God knows what the people need to hear. What message your bring is God's business. Your business should always be to deliver only what God has given you to share. 

I want to thank Pastor Joey for taking the time during his vacation to conduct this interview. I look forward to conducting more with him, and others around the state of West Virginia in the future.