Janette H. Ok on Giving and Receiving Sermon Feedback

Janette H. Ok is a pastor, author, and New Testament scholar. She serves as associate professor of New Testament at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California. She is an ordained minister who serves as a pastor at Ekko Church, an Asian American congregation in Anaheim, California. Ok is a coeditor of and contributor to The New Testament in Color: A Multiethnic Bible Commentary (IVP Academic, 2024). In this edited conversation, she explains how giving and receiving feedback helps preachers prepare and deliver better sermons.

What piqued your interest in the topic of giving and receiving sermon feedback?

It springs from my conviction that sharing the pulpit is good for both pastors and congregations. Right out of college, I was teaching full time at a high school and serving part time as the pastor for elementary students at a local church. I understood how overwhelming it can be to preach every week. Then I met a pastor in a second-generation Korean American church who said, “I don’t preach every week because I can’t do it well along with all my other responsibilities.” But I think there are even more reasons why pastors should share the pulpit. The congregation receives a more diverse diet from the pulpit while also helping develop preachers.

Seeking feedback from worshipers helps solo preachers write and deliver better sermons. Sharing the pulpit involves gathering a group of five or so pastors, lay leaders, seminarians, or retired pastors from your congregation. They meet weekly to study the passages for a sermon series, pray, brainstorm, and choose who will cover which text. They help each other improve through mutual feedback on each other’s sermons. This relieves the pressure on pastors expected to preach every week.

How do you get good feedback from worshipers?

People are often naturally deferential to preachers, so it’s important to invite honest feedback on your sermon beforehand. Seek input from a diverse cross-section of your congregation or preaching team—perhaps two or three people per sermon. Be clear and specific about what you would like them to evaluate in addition to asking for their overall impressions. This helps them offer concrete, constructive feedback on particular strengths and weaknesses.

For example, if you struggle to “land the plane,” as I do, ask for targeted feedback on how effectively you conclude your sermons. You might also ask whether your explanation of the text is sufficiently substantive, whether your main claim is well supported by your exegesis, or whether your analogies and stories genuinely strengthen and clarify your central message. After the sermon, follow up with two or three preselected individuals and ask specific questions, such as: What did you hear me proclaim about God and about our life together? Did the story, anecdote, or image help illuminate the point, or did it distract from it? In what ways did I use my voice and body effectively, and where could I improve?

When you ask specific people specific questions about your sermon ahead of time, they tend to offer more constructive and helpful feedback. And be sure to thank those who have taken the time and care to offer you feedback, regardless of whether you agree with or appreciate what they say.

What kind of feedback happens within preaching teams?

I led the Ekko Church preaching team for several years. I’ve learned how important it is to share feedback within your preaching team. Ask each other, “Why did you do this or that in your message?” or “Help me understand how you got from this scripture text to that sermon point.” Maybe you need to encourage a preacher to let go of their manuscript (something I have often been encouraged to do!).

Senior preachers need to model a dynamic culture of giving and receiving feedback. Being willing to change your sermons helps you model to others that you trust God to speak through many voices. You want to aim for a culture where people say of the senior pastor, “She takes feedback really well.”

Being willing to change your sermons helps you model to others that you trust God to speak through many voices.

How can feedback help preachers who haven’t been to seminary?

I really believe that a seminary education can be so good for preachers and congregations. You’ll run out of things to preach on if you don’t know how to engage disturbing and difficult texts that are unfamiliar to the congregation. In general, I find the lectionary helpful because it’s a “canon within the canon.” It reveals possibilities for sermons texts from most books of the Bible.

Yet the Roman Catholic and Revised Common lectionaries don’t include biblical texts such as the story of Jephthah’s daughter (Judges 11:34–40). For me, the best sermons often come from problematic texts. You have to desperately depend on prayer. And if you’re praying together with a preaching team about how to address such passages, God may reveal insight through the voice of another.

Have you ever changed a sermon or your preaching style because of what others suggested?

Yes, I have. I’m more a writer than a speaker. People told me that my sermons were rich and substantial but not easily accessible. I learned that my on-ramps to sermons can be too academic and too long. I had to learn to write for the ear, not the eye. I tend to find the text so engaging that I don’t always feel the need for stories. But I’ve learned to become a better storyteller.

At the 2025 Calvin Symposium on Worship, I preached from Luke 11:1–13 about intercessory prayer. I opened with a story from COVID-19, when we were all at home all the time. I had told my children not to bother me because I needed to work. Yet I sensed someone hovering outside my door. Right before I was going to shout, “Go away! I need to work. See you in two hours,” my son Theo slid a note under my closed door.

In my sermon, I showed a photo of his little fingers under the door and the note. It said, “I need help.” Even in my stressed-out, overwhelmed, irritated state, my heart melted. Then I explained that the prayer Jesus taught his disciples invites us to ask our Holy Father to meet our most basic needs.

What preaching advice have you given?

When we think about forming preachers, we often think about how to study and preach the text. However, I’ve found that lay preachers or new seminarians often need to be coached on how to use their bodies. We need to be aware of how we carry ourselves. Maybe we need to broaden our shoulders or stand straighter to take up more space in the pulpit.

I am not a very tall person. Sometimes I need to ask for a step or a different lectern so I’m not so diminished in that space. It might help for a young woman to wear a suit, even if she prefers casual dress. At first it might feel to her like artificial performance, but it can help translate to the congregation that you are qualified. Right out of college, when I was teaching high school in Compton, California, I showed up formally so that students would take me seriously—and so that I could show respect for them as students.

Is that advice on how to carry or dress yourself the same for men?

Not necessarily. For some men, showing up too formally can create a sense of distance between them and the congregation. Being called by their first names or not dressing up can help some male preachers seem more informal and accessible. Consider the unnamed woman who came into the house of Simon the leper to pour expensive perfume on Jesus’ head (Matthew 26:6–13; Mark 14:3–9). She must have had so many judging eyes upon her. But something about Jesus’ body language, eye contact, or tone of voice must have helped her dare to come to him.

How else can preachers improve their craft?

As a college professor, I know that good teachers frequently attend workshops to improve their teaching. Even senior pastors need constant learning to become more professionally effective. That’s why I love preaching conferences. It’s also why I like shared pulpits. Learning from new and diverse voices forms the preacher, the preaching team, and the congregation. Seeking and giving feedback reinforces and models an eagerness to learn and humility.

It’s so important to keep listening to and learning from other preachers. This might be through your preaching team, at a conference, on YouTube, or by reading commentaries like The New Testament in Color: A Multiethnic Bible Commentary. Can you imagine being a musician who never listens to other musicians? Don’t be like that. The need to listen to others is why I challenge my students to engage with five critical sources from a diverse range of scholars, including premodern, BIPOC, and women scholars.

Can you imagine being a musician who never listens to other musicians? Don’t be like that.

How has learning from someone different from you shaped your preaching?

I remember hearing an African American woman preach a narrative sermon from John 4. She wasn’t in costume, but in that sermon she was the Samaritan woman at the well. I was mind-blown, taken into another world. It was so effective and powerful to see that woman encounter Jesus. I wondered whether I’d ever have the guts to do that.

After that I preached some narrative sermons. One was on Good Friday from the perspective of Peter. Doing so was humbling, scary, and exciting. It was an example of how learning from other preachers helps mature preachers dynamically edify themselves and their congregations.

Anything else you want to say?

I have cotaught college and seminary classes. I have friends who have prepared and preached a joint sermon. I would love to do that. It requires preachers to choose and study a text together, take feedback from one another, and decide who does which part of the sermon. It takes more preparation than a solo sermon does, but it models something so powerful. Say you have someone the congregation doesn’t know well. That person could earn congregational trust by sharing the sermon with a senior or more frequent preacher.