Every once in awhile, someone will ask me how I prepare for a Sunday message. Over the years, I have used a lot of different approaches; but the one I prefer is to work inductively from the text. I work slowly, and it usually takes me about 25 hours per week to prepare for a… Read More »
Preach As If the Scriptures Mean Something
James MacDonald recently posted “Five Things We Do Instead of Preach.” I won’t reiterate the points he made, all of which are valid. I once had a pastor tell me that he was too busy to prepare sermons, which was why he bought and borrowed series from well-known ministries rather than write his own. Sure, he… Read More »
The Sad State of Biblical Literacy
I was once told by a fellow pastor, “I don’t teach deep stuff. I just preach Jesus.” That sounds great on a surface level, doesn’t it? Let’s just preach Jesus because He is after all the Savior of mankind, right? If people believe Him, then they can sort everything else out eventually, right? Wrong. Jesus… Read More »
Effective Communication
Michael Hyatt recently posted a summary of what he believes is the four keys to effective communication: Effective communicators know how to prepare a message with a singular and crystal clear focus. If you know where you are going, you can take anyone with you. If you aim at nothing, you will hit it every… Read More »
Viciously Contend for the Faith?
My friend and brother in Christ, Eric Davis shares some thoughts on the way extreme fundamentalism often becomes exactly what it was started to oppose. Check it out here.
IKON
At Bedford Road, we finished up Luke 5 yesterday. To be honest, I am still a little surprised that it took me so long to work through the chapter but there is just so much depth to these first encounters with Jesus. The way Jesus turned these people’s lives around, and then he encounters a… Read More »
How to Listen to a Sermon
This morning, I want to encourage you to head over to Justin Taylor’s blog and read on “How to Listen to a Sermon”.
Irreverent Homily
This is a repost of an article I wrote back in 2009, addressing the problem of preaching. Since I grew up in a pastor’s home, I got to hear a lot of good preaching. Unfortunately, I heard an awful lot of terrible preaching as well. My dad and I would often analyze a preacher’s approach… Read More »
Check What the Preacher Says!
Hey, I’m a preacher. But I’m also a human being, and sometimes I make mistakes. I am not going to get into a long-winded diatribe on everything that can go wrong in extreme fundamentalism, but I happened to watch one of Pastor Scott Anderson’s videos. Pastor Anderson is the pastor of Faithful Word Baptist Church… Read More »
Thinking about Preaching, post 1
My co-laborer and friend, Darin Shaw, has started posting a series of thoughts called “A Preacher on Preaching” highlighting some of his thoughts on sermon preparation and delivery. (You can catch some thoughts here and here.) I thought I would do a sort of parallel series of posts from my perspective on the topic. Diversity… Read More »
