Preaching a sermon is a lot like taking a wedding: the minister is not the main event – the focus is on the bride and bridegroom
Tag: Preaching
How do trends in mental health, wellness and well-being set challenges for churches and preachers? Let’s ask ChatGPT!
What happens to our Christian pastoring, and our own Christian discipleship, if everything is filtered through a film of glass?
The expectation I struggled with is that I ought to be praying as I preach. Not simply praying as I prepare. Nor simply praying as I land the sermon. Not simply praying afterwards, that God will water the seed. But pray as I preach. Before, during and after. Not to do that is to fail as a preacher.
Our brains seem to be creatures of habit by lazy preference, but notice something new straightaway. What does that mean for good preaching?
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
Can you preach, with that curse ringing in your ears? You must.
I’m delighted that The Gift is now available to buy. I wrote it because decent, biblical leadership is a deep need in our churches, and one we are failing to meet. Had working pastors are preaching good sermons – and leaving the teaching there. Or, knowing that there’s work to do, they reach for the
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.
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?
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.
By the time I put my pen down I have rarely felt so flat and uninspired in what I had planned to say. Do you ever feel like that about your sermons? Thought so.
There is a small but astonishing exhibition at the British Museum at the moment, Scythians: Warriors of ancient Serbia. The Scythians were a wide-ranging group of aggressive tribes, nomadic because of the inhospitably of their land, and superb with horses. They were also astonishingly artistic and superb at their craft: their abilities with gold and
I took the passage to a local coffee shop, and watched the customers. What does this passage have to say to 21st century urbanites, most of whom gave up on the god-idea years ago? How does this prise open their questions, address their fears and hopes, shift their distracted focus onto Christ?
How I learnt to write in six different drafts.
