In this episode, Brandon Hays continues his monthly conversation on preaching with Jay Strother, senior pastor of Brentwood Baptist, this time zeroing in on application: the moment a sermon has to leave the worship center and start showing up in someone's Monday morning. Jay walks through the "hook, book, look, took" outline he's used since seminary, and the head, heart, and hands framework he writes out before he ever starts a sermon, to make sure a message doesn't just inform people but moves them to respond.

The conversation also gets honest about where application goes wrong. Jay talks through the temptation to turn a text into a moralistic checklist, using the David and Goliath story as an example of application that misses the gospel underneath it, and shares Charles Spurgeon's image of every village road eventually leading to London to explain why every passage should lead somewhere near the cross. Jay and Brandon also swap real stories, from a whole church setting phone alarms for 1:14 as a daily prayer reminder, to a Revelation 4 sermon that ended not with a to-do list but with a room full of grieving people standing to worship because God is still on his throne.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

Why preaching information without transformation leaves people with knowledge but not wisdom
The hook, book, look, took outline, and how "took" is where most sermons run out of time
How the head, heart, and hands framework shapes application before a sermon is even written
Why application built on moralism instead of the gospel eventually falls apart, using David and Goliath as an example
How to write application for a whole spectrum of listeners, from the person new to church to the retired pastor in the back row
Practical ways to make application memorable, including a citywide prompt built around one verse and a phone alarm
Simple habits, like a running story file and a nightly journal, that help a pastor build a stockpile of application over time

Meet the Guests

Brandon Hays is the Campus and Teaching Pastor at Harpeth Heights, one of Brentwood Baptist's nine campuses.

Jay Strother is senior pastor of Brentwood Baptist, where he's served for 24 years across churches of every size before leading the congregation's nine campuses today.