How to Write a Good Sermon: Your Guide to Transformative Preaching
Filled with practical advice you can apply right away, this guide will help you craft more compelling sermons that keep your listeners thinking and talking long after the benediction.
Preaching to Remove White-Colored Glasses
There are distinct stages of transformation, and our listeners are going to be somewhere on this spectrum, just as we are. Call them into work beyond their current stage, and they may resist change even more. Instead, we need to shift our preaching to meet folks at the stage they’re at in order to move them to the next.
How to Craft an Online Memorial Service
In the absence of traditional funerals and memorial services, how can we help those in mourning grieve well? What kinds of meaningful rituals and ceremonies can we create in the absence of in-person gatherings?
How to reach congregants who aren't online (+ a few best practices for serving those who are)
You’ve moved your services online and are finding your new rhythm. But how do you help those without the technology or tech savvy to participate in church from home?
How to Craft an Easter Sermon that Speaks to the Truth of Our Current Circumstances
This short video demonstrates in real time a brainstorming process—utilizing story structure—to craft an Easter sermon that will resonate with our present reality. Blessings as you preach this holiest of weeks, Dear Preachers.
The Simple but Misunderstood Key to Keeping Listeners Engaged: How to "Show" Rather than "Tell"
It’s often hard work for adults to get literal when it comes to using the five senses. We tend to leap from image to meaning so fast we don’t recognize what we did. But that leap fails to draw our listeners in, to make them feel something. And the more your audience feels, the greater the impact of the story and your sermon.
How to Improve Your Preaching: Learning from the Masters
One of the best ways to improve a craft is to study and learn from the masters in the field. This week, we introduce you to three respected preaching teachers and invite you to join us in learning from them over the next few months.
How Your Sermon Language Shapes Your Community (A Guest Post)
There may be more than one way you and your community relate to one another depending on circumstances. It’s likely that sometimes you preach as an authoritative teacher, and sometimes you speak from your position as a fellow Chirstian. But then ask yourself: how does the way I talk about myself and my community in my sermon signal those relationships?
Want to Preach Better? Write Better. (A Guest Post With a Giveaway & a Request)
As a writing instructor, I’ve discovered that preachers struggle with the things all writers struggle with. Purpose and audience, clarity and specificity, development of ideas, organization and structure. Planning their writing process. Generating ideas. Re-visioning their drafts. Polishing their sentences. And out of my experience teaching writers, I’ve created a free guide for preachers to help you generate more ideas and write more effectively.
Offer What You Know & Make Your Listeners Work: Lessons from Yo-Yo Ma & Bach
How can we, as preachers, approach our craft with the wisdom of Yo-Yo Ma and the genius of Bach in order to better engage our listeners?