My Job as a Pastor Is Not to Entertain You, It’s to Prepare You for Eternity

Someone recently told me they didn’t like the way I preached. They said it wasn’t “encouraging enough.” I get it. We live in a culture where church is often treated like a show. People want to be entertained, amused, or patted on the back with positive words that make them feel good for the week. But here’s the truth: my job as a pastor is not to entertain you on Sunday, it’s to prepare you for eternity.

When I stand in the pulpit, I am not performing. I am proclaiming. I am not up there to tickle ears. I am there to preach the truth of God’s Word, whether it comforts you, convicts you, or confronts you.

The Danger of Soft Preaching

Paul warned Timothy about this very thing:

“For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance with their own desires, and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths.”
(2 Timothy 4:3–4, LSB)

The danger of soft preaching is that it lulls people to sleep while their souls are on the line. If I only tell you what you want to hear, you may walk out encouraged but unchanged. You may feel better about yourself, but remain unprepared for eternity.

My Job Is Not Always to Encourage You

I want you to hear this: the gospel is both encouragement and warning. It comforts the broken, but it also confronts the rebellious. It lifts up the weary, but it also tears down pride. Sometimes, the most loving thing I can do as your pastor is not to cheer you up but to scare the Hell out of you.

Hell is real. Sin destroys. Judgment is coming. Eternity is not a game. My job is to remind you of that every week until you grasp the urgency of the gospel.

Why I Preach This Way

Because I will give an account one day for how I shepherded you (Hebrews 13:17). If I soften the truth to make you like me, then I have failed you, and I have failed God. But if I preach the Word in season and out of season, even when it’s unpopular, then I have done what the Lord called me to do.

Encouragement has its place. But encouragement without repentance is empty. Hope without holiness is false hope. Grace without truth is not grace at all.

The Bottom Line

I don’t step into the pulpit to make you comfortable. I preach to make you ready, ready to stand before the Lord, ready to battle sin, ready to endure trials, and ready to see Christ face-to-face. My hope and prayer is that when you walk into church, you come hungry and expectant, and anticipating the move of the Spirit.

So, if you walk away from a sermon sometimes feeling uncomfortable, convicted, or even shaken, that means God is working. That means the Word is doing its job. And that means I’m doing mine.

My calling is not to entertain you for an hour on Sunday. My calling is to prepare you for forever.

In Love,

Pastor Jody