Welcome to the Preach360 Community! It’s a huge honor to have you here. Our goal is to help you preach grace as fuel for new life so that your people come alive to the wonder, beauty, and transforming power of the gospel. ☕️ A Community vs a Library Preach360 is designed to be a pastoral community, not just a personal library. Real growth happens when we learn together, share wins, acknowledge challenges, and genuinely engage with one another. To encourage participation, I'm going to use the "gamification" features built into Skool's "leaderboard," not to pressure anyone, but to facilitate connection in a fun way. How to Level Up on the Board. It’s simple. Introduce yourself, ask questions, and encourage others. Engagement is our way of ensuring this remains a vibrant, supportive fellowship of pastors, rather than a quiet library. 👋 In case you don't know me. My name is McKay Caston. Over 30+ years as a pastor, author, and seminary professor, I've served different-sized churches in urban, suburban, rural, and college town contexts, with my last pastoral call as a church planter in Dahlonega, GA. My life mission is to help pastors preach cross-tethered sermons and live cross-tethered lives. I've been married for almost 35 years, with three adult children. When not here, I enjoy time at home and hiking the mountains of north Georgia. 🚦 Basic community "guidelines." 1. This is a safe place. 2. This is not a place for political rants. 3. Be constructive. 4. Honor confidentiality. 5. No solicitation or spam. Here are your next steps... ✅ Step 1: Introduce yourself in the comments section below 1. Who are you & where are you serving? (City/State/Country) 2. What is your current preaching context? (Solo pastor, church planter, staff, student?) 3. What is your biggest challenge with sermon prep right now? 4. Drop a link to your church website and/or sermons (optional). ✅ Step 2: Comment on at least 2 other people's introductions or posts ✅ Step 3: Explore the Classroom

With a thousand different ways to outline the text, I used to rewrite my outline 10 to 15 times before I landed on a final version. I think I spent more time re-outlining than actually working on sermon content. Everything changed when I decided to toss my conventional main point outline and narrow everything down to one word. I called it a keyword. Not a phrase. Not two words. One word. I was stunned. It not only provided expository focus but also led to homiletical clarity. My study was far more profitable, and my message was far more focused. Here’s how it works. Once you have your keyword, use it in the answer to these questions: 1. What is true? 2. Why do we resist what is true? 3. How does Jesus redeem our resistance? 4. In union with Jesus, what change is now possible? Suddenly, the sermon writes itself. Your exegesis has a target. Your applications become "get to’s" instead of "have to’s." But here's the best part. Your people start to see the same gospel pattern every week. They begin asking these four questions on their own. Your preaching becomes a discipleship tool, not just a Sunday event. Now, I know what some may be thinking. "Won't this be too limiting?" "What if my text has multiple themes?" "Doesn't this oversimplify Scripture?" Here's what I discovered. A single keyword doesn't limit your sermon. It focuses it. You're not ignoring the richness of the text. You're tethering it to one central idea. Think about it. When someone asks a congregation member on Monday, "What was the sermon about?" they're not going to recite three points and multiple sub-points. They're going to say one word. Or maybe a short phrase. So why not give them that word from the start? Why not make it easy on your listener—and on yourself? 🙂 The question to discuss: How have you experienced using the keyword as you build PPGR sermons? How has it helped? Where have you run into challenges?

I think Derwin Gray is credited with that statement. I needed to hear that gospel truth this week. Maybe you do, too. Eventually, you will. Most likely it will be a Saturday. The problem is that I try to curate an image in public, while possessing a deep sense of hypocrisy. But Jesus didn't die for my potential. He died to give me his potential. To put this another way, the only thing I contribute to my justification is my sin. Jesus provides the righteousness. And by grace through faith, I am covered—even the absolute worst version of myself. If you needed that, you're invited to believe it, boast in it, and magnify the grace of Jesus with me.