Advent-Christmas Sermons: 5 Steps to Preach the Sermons Your Listeners Need
Whether you’re preaching once or at every service the rest of December, exegeting your congregation and determining the preaching “voice” that will best serve them can make your sermon prep more efficient and relevant. Consider this 5-step process to craft Advent-Christmas sermons that bring good news to your listeners’ contexts.
Christmas Quotes for Reflection and Preaching
The Advent season is filled with preparation, talk, and often the stress of gift-giving for Christmas, so this year’s collection of Christmas quotes focuses on gifts, and THE gift of Emmanuel that puts all other gifts into perspective.
Sermon Themes for Advent & Christmas
This guide to potential Advent and Christmas sermon themes will jump-start your sermon prep inspiration for the Advent season.
A Sermon Message for Christmas and 2022
If you’re feeling at a loss about how to preach into this weary world, perhaps you can simply help listeners feel the problems we face together. Without denying any part of their pain and complexity. While also holding up the grace of God.
Christmas Quotes for Preaching and Reflection
You've heard the wisdom "When the student is ready, the teacher appears?" When our hearts and minds are noticing, seeking, yearning, and paying attention, the Spirit sees all that openness and provides just what we need to know, see, or understand. It's a moment that presents like serendipity, but there's too much grace behind it. The right word, insightful phrase, or vivid image leads to a face-palm moment of recognition: "There it is! That's the sermon!”
To that end, I’ve compiled for you a collection of quotes about Christmas in hopes that the teachings of others might spark an epiphany of your own. Request your free copy here.
Ten Christmas Preaching Do's and Don'ts for 2020
It’s been quite a year. And yet, Jesus came for a time such as this. Consider these ten dos and don’ts as you prepare to preach this Christmas.
Eight Do's and Don'ts to Write a Better Christmas Sermon
Your Christmas Eve sermon is one of the most important of the year, providing an opportunity to share the revolutionary Good News with those who may not frequent our pews the rest of the year. Here are eight things you should do and not do to ensure your Christmas sermon does its intended job: celebrate the birth of Jesus while helping listeners experience the wonder and implications of the Incarnation.
5 Questions to Guide Your Christmas Sermon Prep: How to make the classic story new again
Preaching an original Christmas sermon is challenging.
The Christmas story has been preached so many times, we're tempted to believe there's nothing new to say. The Scripture, the music, the movies, and the sermons we've heard or preached year after year seem to sum up the season quite nicely.
Or do they?
Our Christian story has unfathomable depth.
AS WITH ANY GOOD STORY, EVERY RE-READING AND EVERY RE-TELLING OF SCRIPTURE HAS THE OPPORTUNITY TO OFFER SOMETHING NEW.
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I participated in the Lectio study today with a complicated and double-speak Gospel (John 17:6-19) and WOW! I received so much great insight and am headed in a direction I feel really good about. Thank you to all my colleagues! If you are wondering if this is worth it, wonder no more. It is.
—Donna G.
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