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"I learned to preach like I learned to swim. I fell in the creek and you gotta swim."

In Episode 26, Jonathan sits down with Jerry Jones — author, professor, and one of the most respected voices in Apostolic preaching — for a conversation about how preaching is actually learned, why theory matters as much as experience, and what happens to preachers who try to do this alone.

What this conversation covers:

The genesis of We Preach. Jerry started preaching without Bible school and without formal training — eight sermons a week as a young evangelist, learning by experience what worked and what didn't. But years in, he realized something: he had the feel for it and no theory behind it. Until you understand why something works, you really can't teach it. That gap became the book — now required reading for general licensure in the UPCI.

Why preaching matters more than we let on. Romans 10 was the subject of his master's thesis: preaching plays a role in the salvation process. You can do a lot of good things that help people here and now, and they are all worthy. But preaching affects people's eternity. Greeks want a seminar and Jews want a sign — but we preach.

The dissertation that's taking on a widespread academic claim. Jerry found a nationally recognized church-planting author advising readers not to include preaching in their paradigm, because persuasive rhetorical preaching supposedly didn't exist in the first two centuries of the church and was a later borrowing from pagan worship. He calls it bad theology and bad history. His doctoral work will argue the case using Hebrews and 1 John as sermons, and a remarkable text — a sermon by Melito of Sardis, discovered in 1939 and published by 1960 — written by a pastor roughly sixty years after John's death, who likely knew Polycarp. It's powerful, fiery, and persuasive. If the apostles didn't practice this, we shouldn't be doing it. I think we have to settle that.

Teaching preachers, and what it actually looks like. Nineteen students, three sermons each in sixteen weeks. Students who have never stood behind a pulpit sitting next to students who have preached for years. Why a purely evangelistic sermon is so hard for a young preacher, and how sixty to eighty percent make discernible progress by the last sermon.

The finding every isolated preacher needs to hear. Jerry describes a study of ten years across ten districts, examining every church closing and every church that left truth. The vast majority of closures traced back to the preacher — and not for lack of calling or love for people. They got isolated. They got out there by themselves. Most of those men were no longer in ministry. Many were no longer in the church.

"That first step by yourself is critical. Because if there's not someone, there will be someone."

And the line that closes it. "I'm touching a generation I will not live to see. I'm teaching students that will one day teach preachers that aren't even born yet. I'll be forgotten, and that's the way it works. That's okay. But God doesn't forget."

📚 We Preach is available on Amazon and at pentecostalpublishing.com