I am new to DnD and being a DM and I am running a game for my friends. I feel like I might be doing things wrong. Looking for advice.

I’m preparing to send them on a quest to a temple controlled by a religious sect from our story. I have the quest giver located in the tavern then he sends them to the market to meet a second NPC for additional information, who then sends them to the church for the final piece of the puzzle. 

it feels cool while I plan it out, getting to showcase more of the town I created. While also providing backstory for the quest and why they need to complete it. But I’m afraid when it comes time to play it’s just going to be me narrating descriptions and dialogues, with little input from the players. Which is not what I want.

i feel like as dm I’m either not doing enough leaving the players feeling aimless asking ‘ok what do we do now’.  or I’m saying too much and it becomes a novel I’ve written and their characters are just along for the ride. 

I’d love to hear people’s thoughts on how to not tell a story while also helping the players tell a story. 

thanks!! 

Rather than forcing them into this narrow path, give them options. Take a murder mystery for example: you can usually talk to law enforcement, talk to friends and families of the victim, talk to witnesses, and investigate the scene of the crime. You can also make it interesting by limiting how many they can do. In your case, maybe you could give them the option to talk to the leaders of other religions or sects. As a side note, you should try to make it clear what parts of dialogue are more important, either by speaking with a different tone, or just ending on it.

I would also offer the advice of instead of having an NPC monologue a huge chunk of info to the characters, only give them a piece, and make them ask questions for the rest (in other words, turn it into a conversation instead of a monologue). If you find that the players are treating it more like a video game (not showing initiative by asking questions or talking to random NPCs), you can have random NPCs come up and start conversations with them as well.

If a player isn't talking, have an NPC bump into them at the market, then strike up a conversation with them. Or ask them directly, "what is [insert character name here] doing while this is going on?"

The key is to keep track of how much each player is participating. If you notice one is getting less 'talking time', use the vast NPCs of your city to interact with them. Also keep track of which players are interested, and which ones are zoning out. If someone is starting to zone out, change tactics to snap their attention back into focus. If you have ever taken a public speaking course, use what you learned from it.

I find that a good mix is for the DM to talk no more than 50% of the time. Better yet are when you can get the players to talk amongst themselves in character, then just sit back and enjoy the fun. 

I’d love to hear people’s thoughts on how to not tell a story while also helping the players tell a story.

A couple tips:

1. Figuring stuff out is fun, getting told stuff is not fun. As much as possible have backstory and lore be something players can figure out through contextual hints or something they can seek out if interested rather than something forcibly narrated to them. So for instance, for your quest in the church maybe the first NPC has all the information that is strictly necessary for the quest, but also mentions the 2nd NPC if the party wants more information. You can also have lore clues scattered about the church itself for them to find - e.g. rather than an NPC tells the party who founded the church instead put a statue or plaque about the founder of the church inside the church for them to find, instead of an NPC telling the party the church has a past of cult--ish activity put some cult-ish gargoyles on the roof, or have some cult-ish books in the library, or a cult-ish symbol carve into the wall hidden behind a tapestry or hidden within a painting or mosaic on the floor.

2. Rather than planning out stories, I suggest planning out conflicts and obstacles that the players can choose to resolve however they like. So instead of planning out: they will talk to NPC 1 get told X then NPC 2 and get told Y then go to the church then find a trap door into the basement and fight some ghosts then some cultists. I plan out: There is a cult in the basement of the church, they are waking up undead to scare people away / defend their hideout -> the priest of the church and some of the choir boys have seen some of these undead and.the priest is looking for materials to perform a rite to exorcize the undead and protect the other dead from being raised, the priest also knows there used to be a cult associated with the church long ago, they are also looking for bodyguards to protect them while they do this -> the bartender agreed to help the priest find some bodyguards and will approach the party if they stop at the tavern. + The cult has been kidnapping homeless kids for their evil blood magic rites -> a few have been reported to the local guards but they don't care to look into it -> some beggars in the market know about the missing people and may approach the party if the party is kind to them or if they overhear that the party is investigating the church. So now I have at least 3 different ways the party could find out about the quest from different NPCs each with different information and different goals that the party could investigate / figure out, or not. 

3. Choices have consequences, to make the players feel like they are really driving the story rather than just going along for the ride you are presenting to them make sure they always have choices and that those choices make a difference - e.g. for the church/undead/cult above, perhaps if they don't bring the priest with them, the cult awaken an undead creature mid-combat making it harder, if they don't talk to the beggar / police to find out about the kids maybe those kids just run away without listening to the party or telling them anything about what the cult is doing, if they take too long to go to the church maybe more kids have been killed by the cult.

Well done on taking up the mantle! And also for getting yourself so prepared. As has already been said, noone likes to hear a monologue, so try and keep it short and sweet.

Let the story unfold by itself. By all means, give the PCs a brief introduction of where they are and what they say, and then leave an open ended question. I.e. "What would you like to do?". Then, whatever they decide, you can work NPCs, clues, information etc around that. 

It's great to have a story planned out in such detail, it means you can take bits and drop them in as necessary. But ultimately, let the PCs decide how they want to play it. 

Having your fleshed out town is great.  Just change how you present information.  Take a look at the free adventure Hold Back the Dead on DNDBeyond.  There's an NPC (Corlie) at the very beginning, that is delivering the hooks, exposition, and plot to the players.  It's presented as a short request for help, followed by a question/answer list that the NPC has available to the players.  Once a player asks one question and gets the answer to something they want to know, then it takes care of itself.

Next thing you know your throw-away named blacksmith has a family, a five year history of travels, and becomes that damned quest hub because the warlock decided to be a chatty Kathy.

My first advice would be to dispense with the concept of a quest giver. Not completely, as they can be useful at the start of a campaign, as (imo) a little railroad right at the star isn't a bad way to get things moving and get the players invested in the story. But after the first session or three, they should have some ideas all their own about where to go and what to do. In effect, they become their own quest givers. So rather than have an NPC lore dump and tell them to go to the temple, you think about the cultists. What are they doing, and why are they doing it? Then what impacts are they having around town? Are the kidnapping people for their dark rituals? Robbing people to be able to buy things they need for whatever reason, etc. Then, after they hear about the goings-on, let the players decide if they want to follow up on the missing people and string of robberies. If they don't, you do what others have said, and let the cultists do their thing, and now the town, world and PCs have to deal with the fallout.

The second thing I'd say really grabbed my attention was the phrase "getting to showcase more of the town I created." That can be an issue for anyone who homebrews. Yes, you put a lot of effort into it, and you want people to be able to see it. I can sympathize. But oftentimes, they don't see it. Either the players don't go where you planned or aren't interested. One of the great true-isms of world building is that players won't see a huge percentage of the stuff you made. So, when you're world building, it's really, really important that you are doing it for you. If you had a fun time making the town and the people in it, then the time wasn't wasted whether or not the players ever meet any of the people. You really shouldn't try and force them to engage with stuff just because you made it. That can be a bit of DM-side main character syndrome.

Ideally, the reasons for going to the town entice them to interact with the town and discover all the stuff you made. But sometimes, they'll stay at the inn and keep moving the next morning because they have other priorities. That's not really a bad problem to have; it just means they are interested in the story and want to keep going with it.

A little late to the party but a web of information givers is better than a line.

I reworked the chapter 2 of Waterdeep: Dragon Heist so that they party had to learn about how the inn burned down.  The "Quest Giver" was the guy from the city who wanted to repossess the inn and purge it of ghosts then tear it down and make it a park.  So the party wasn't TOLD directly to learn how to put the ghost to rest, they just decided it was better than the alternative.

Then I gave them 3 leads.  Some of those leads were actual feeds to other leads.  Some suggested talking to people in the vicinity of the inn.  That got them more leads.  And at each lead I had some NPC's with some flavor to make for fun RP.  For example, the "you can find out where the guy accused of arson lives" lead them to an apartment owned by a pair of newlywed Genasi who had literally NO information for the story.  But it was a nice little 10 minute RP encounter to let someone have some time shining in the game.

Finally all of the leads, however they followed them, would lead back to a single core challenge:  find the rogue who escaped and they decided to go do that.

It was 100% possible to skip some of the leads I had, but that's fine.  If the players had fun and to the "find the rogue" mostly on their own, I called it a win.