Five years ago, my wife and I stepped out in faith to plant Living Water Church in Gladewater, Texas. Right around that same time I finished my DMin in Preaching at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, where God drilled into me the non-negotiable priority of text-driven preaching. We knew from day one that if this new work was going to survive, and thrive, it had to be built on the bold, unashamed proclamation of God’s Word.
Church planting is gritty work: casting vision, building a core team, forging partnerships, engaging a community, and launching with almost nothing. Most Sundays our crowd is a beautiful mix. Lost people who barely know who Jesus is, brand-new believers still figuring out the basics, and a handful of mature saints. That mix demands a very intentional kind of preaching.
Our five core values at Living Water shape everything we do, and “Bible preaching, defined and directed by Scripture” is right at the center. Here are the four principles I’ve learned are essential when you’re planting from scratch.
1. Preaching the totality of God’s Word must be a core value of your church.
New believers are often biblically illiterate. If the whole counsel of God isn’t ingrained in your church’s DNA from the very beginning, you’ll raise a congregation with shallow roots. They need a steady diet of Scripture. Verse by verse, book by book so they can grow into mature disciple-makers. Peter told new believers to “crave the pure milk of the word so that by it you may grow up into your salvation” (1 Pet 2:2, CSB). At Living Water, we plan our preaching calendar a year ahead and walk through whole books because we want our people to see the grand story of redemption, not just isolated topics.
2. Preaching must be text-driven.
Dr. Matthew McKellar says it best: the biblical text governs the substance, structure, and spirit of the sermon.1 We don’t impose our ideas on the text. We let the text impose its ideas on us. Dr. David Allen drives this home in Text-Driven Preaching: God’s Word must be at the heart of every sermon, giving the preacher authority that comes solely from Scripture.2 In a church plant, this is life or death. New believers need to see that it’s not the preacher’s clever words or stories that transform lives. It’s the divinely inspired, living Word (Heb 4:12). They learn early that the text is the authority, not the topic.
3. Preaching must be relatable and applicable.
Theological depth matters, but in a church plant it has to land in real life. If your illustrations are obscure, your applications abstract, or your rhetoric over the heads of baby Christians, you’ll miss the mark completely. We keep illustrations from everyday East Texas life, applications tied to Monday mornings, and language anyone can understand. Yes, we teach doctrine and even dip into Greek when it helps. But always with the goal that a new believer can walk out saying, “I know what God is calling me to do this week.”
4. Preaching must be evangelistic. Every single time.
Every Sunday in a new plant you’re preaching to unbelievers, new believers, and maturing saints all at once. That means every sermon must bring people face-to-face with Jesus. Charles Spurgeon loved to remind preachers that every text has a road to Christ. In one of his sermons, he recounted an old divine who said, “From every text in Scripture, there is a road to Christ… I have never yet found a text that had not got a road to Christ in it.”3 The whole meta-narrative of the Bible points to the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus for our redemption. I get to the cross as fast as I can and always give people a clear opportunity to respond. Faith still comes by hearing the word of Christ (Rom 10:17, CSB).
Brother, if you’re planting (or pastoring a young work), these four principles aren’t optional. They’re essential. They’ve kept us anchored through the hard days at Living Water,4 and they’ve produced disciples who are now making disciples. Let the text speak, keep the gospel central, and watch God do what only He can do: build His church from nothing.
Commit to preaching this way and you’ll see eternal fruit. The challenges are real, but the rewards are worth every ounce of grit: souls redeemed, lives transformed, and a new body of believers formed.
- Matthew McKellar, “The Source of Preaching: The Power of Text-Driven Sermons,” Equip the Called, June 9, 2025. ↩︎
- David L. Allen, Text-Driven Preaching: God’s Word at the Heart of Every Sermon (Nashville: B&H Academic, 2010). ↩︎
- Charles Haddon Spurgeon, “Christ Precious to Believers,” recounting the story of an old divine (see also his emphasis that every sermon should be full of Christ). ↩︎
- Living Water Church, “Mission, Belief, Values,” https://www.lwcgladewater.com/mission-belief-values. ↩︎
