There are some church leaders who only plan and prepare each sermon in the week before, being committed to the idea that God speaks in the moment, and they don’t want to silence him. I respect that, but my experience is that planning a sermon series ahead of time, doesn’t do that. In fact, if
When an art exhibition has long queues outside for months, it is worthy of our attention, as much as any blockbuster movie or best-selling book. And that’s been the case with David Hockney’s retrospective Drawing From Life.
Chris reviews a new book by the designer Thomas Heatherwick.
Can you preach, with that curse ringing in your ears? You must.
There comes a time when we have to discover our own voice, and I remember when I discovered mine.
I’d invested hundreds of hours in maintaining a useless system
There’s a learnt skill here, which is completely levelling.
Great chefs start each day in the kitchen will the simple discipline of cooking an omelette. We can learn from them.
I’m increasingly convinced that for lots of issues, the battle isn’t over whether people know they ought to do something; they frequently just don’t know how.
The Preacher’s Plateau. We’ve all seen it, heard it, smelt it. It’s the growing sense that the preacher has a style, a pattern, a groove. A default. I’ve seen it happen to preachers even in their late twenties: they get approval for preaching in a particular way, and they then assume that that is the
Let me make a prediction: if you read this brief book, and rethink some of your preaching and evangelistic conversations in the light of it, you will do yourself, the gospel cause, and the people you’re speaking to a huge service.
‘Lay out the phrases in a way that makes sense to you.’ Memorise that.
How one basic act opened up a well-known passage
Did I just stick Jesus onto a Christ-less sermon, to make myself feel better? Or did I actually preach Christ?
There are six questions for me to ask myself, with bite to them, which help me to focus as I prepare. They’re a test. If I can’t answer them simply, then I need to do some more work.
One of the great gifts that teaching at seminary gave me, was that I was forced to say out loud, in a copyable manner, the route I take from text to sermon. In fine detail. It forced me to become conscious of what I knew and did.
If this bible hasn’t been opened, I haven’t exposed my heart to God for myself that day, however much I’ve opened the bible for and before others.
If I write in my diary, ‘Sermon prep,’ and block in 2 hrs, I make progress, but it feels vague. I don’t really know how I’m doing, as I move towards Sunday.
It’s not hard for our folk to be fed by superb bible teaching from around the planet. Then they come to church on Sunday, and it’s plain old us.
It’s the old adage: if they’re not actually learning, then I’m not teaching – whatever else I think I’m doing.
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