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When you preach, is your delivery full of um’s, uh’s, and like’s?

These little flaws can quickly become big distractions to your audience. Fortunately, Mother Tongue Annoyances offers the following tip for ridding your sermons of these distractions:

Record yourself teaching or giving a lecture, and study your own speech afterward. After you have finished, observe your speech and study that thing. Over and over. Listen extremely closely to the dynamics of your language. When you hear how many times you use filler words, it will rattle you to your core, and you’ll develop a newfound self-awareness that will help stanch your subconscious desire to use these filler words during your next class or public speaking event.

You will not be the first pastor to review the quality of your preaching. Andy Stanley, the pastor of North Point Community Church (Alpharetta, GA), watches and evaluates his weekend preaching on video three times to look for improvements.

Ed Young Jr., the pastor of Fellowship Church (Grapevine, TX), will actually watch the videotape of his preaching from his first weekend service before he preaches the next service.

However you decide to evaluate your preaching, I think you will be pleased when you shed the um’s and uh’s and start experiencing steady improvements.

Special thanks to Lifehacker for highlighting the speaking tip and to Simply Strategic Growth by Tim Stevens and Tony Morgan for highlighting the techniques of Andy Stanley and Ed Young.