The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2013 annual report for this blog. Here’s an excerpt: The Louvre Museum has 8.5 million visitors per year. This blog was viewed about 89,000 times in 2013. If it were an exhibit at the Louvre Museum, it would take about 4 days for that many people to see
Month: December 2013
A ministry apprentice once asked me a really sharp question. After meeting a number of pastors, all of whom paid particular attention to preaching, he asked, “Are all preachers introverts?” It’s a good question because it seems so counterintuitive at first. The last person he had met was well-known, with a large church and an
The easy way to plan your sermon series is to open your Bible, mark up your main section divisions, and go with those. But that’s letting someone else plan your series for you. So here’s what you can do instead. First, get to know the book well enough that you get a feel for its
“And today, we have a guest preacher….” ….you’ve probably had weeks where you wished you could say that on Sunday. And you’ve a speaking suspicion that your church has Sundays where they wished you could say it too. Over the years I’ve come to admire a wide range of preachers, some well known and many
We had a really encouraging and enthusiastic afternoon with Matt Chandler. Here are my top takeaways:- Parents – We need to keep articulating the gospel, otherwise our kids will believe that either legalism or licence is the way to go. The gospel must NOT be assumed Otherwise we, and they, will continually want to get
Well, that was interesting. My piece on introverts and preaching generated more hits than any other piece on this blog. What does that tell us? That lots of introverts use the web. Nothing to see here, move along please. Or, that lots of us find ourselves caught in the odd place of being happy in
Two new Bibles have just thumped onto my desk. They are both handsome specimens of their kind, and I thought it would be worth reviewing them side by side. The Proclamation Bible (PB) is produced with the aim of equipping preachers. It is based on the 2011 NIV, and a magnificent range of practising preachers
So, sitting with a group of pastors, we were discussing how we can improve as preachers. The generally agreed first thought is that we are not in the best position to assess our own preaching: our sinful selfishness and blindness mean that we are either too harsh or too lenient on ourselves. What to do?
I don’t think anyone became a Christian that night, and it’s not that surprising. The passage was unusual, certainly, and I doubt if more than a handful of people there were familiar with it. But that shouldn’t really have been an issue because a good biblical theology would have been able to travel from there
I don’t mean the oddities of the people who turn up, or lack of prayer – but the clue’s in the title. When we come to a group Bible Study, what should we be expecting? 1. Bible It should be obvious that this is the centre – but my experience is that all too easily
I nearly drowned this week. Not physically, but mentally. I’d started work on a talk, and pulled four commentaries off the shelves. A couple of hours after I started using the first one I realised that I’d hardly begun. This commentary was B-I-G, with well over a hundred pages on my passage. Should I spend all
As Christmas comes round and carol services appearing the diary, I’m always reminded of one particular conversation, and of the reasons I’m a preacher, and a passionate evangelist. The church I was brought up was always packed for its Christmas services, and it did them well. There was a big choir, properly trained, and it
You do still have them in your diary, don’t you? Those regular pauses in your ministry life that make it possible to breathe, sink in God’s Word, and regroup your plans. Once a month, perhaps, taking a couple of hours for you, a Bible and a notebook. Once a quarter, perhaps, taking a day for
Here’s a free gift to help you develop as a preacher, or to help you help others. Compare two preachers I heard recently. One had been to college and the other hadn’t, but that wasn’t what we noticed. One was more confident than the other, one gave us too much information while the other weighed
I think the shortest time I ever had to prepare a talk, was around five minutes. It was all down to a blissfully simple misunderstanding. A friend was arranging an evening on world mission, with a variety of speakers from around the country, key folk from local churches, and a number of mission agencies. Quite
