Easter Retreat for Preachers (Free Download)
After you’ve poured yourself out through Holy Week and Easter, here’s our guided retreat for you and the Risen One. You don’t even have to leave home to enjoy it. It’s structured for your choice of ninety minutes, three hours, or six. Enjoy every slow, quiet minute of it.
Easter Inspiration to Guide Your Eastertide Preaching
What might happen were we to learn a few more notes of God’s song of resurrection? What few notes might we add to our own song of being healed, set free, unafraid? And then, what might happen were our new notes to be sung from the pulpit?
Holy Week Sermons: Choose Your Words Wisely (A Guest Post)
There is a temptation, I feel, during seasons like Lent, Holy Week, or Advent, to lose our own way of communicating God's truths, in favor of covering all of our theological bases. We sometimes wish to be right more than we wish to be ourselves in the pulpit. One can do both. But it all depends on the words we choose.
Lenten Preaching: Why Change is So Hard
We preachers often wonder whether our words have any effect. The people we preach to and the world around us pretty much look the same week after week. It doesn’t often look like the Good News has caught fire in people’s hearts. It doesn’t look like the reign of God is being built. For all our efforts to preach the Good News, how come it looks like nothing much is changing?
Lenten Sermons: Before You Preach, Mind the Gap
Preaching through lent requires significant theological knowledge. What do you know? What don’t you know? How do you know? Using this 4-step process, discover your gaps in knowledge so you can prep more efficiently and effectively for honest sermons that capture the true nature of God.
Five Ways to Preach a Countercultural Lent (A Guest Post)
Let’s be honest: The observation of Lent is often reduced to artificially somber and ritualistic practices of self-denial without an honest, whole-hearted attempt to genuinely experience the flow and meaning of the season. The “practices” undertaken involve simply giving up chocolate or wine. That’s suffering for Jesus, for sure, but what does it accomplish if we’re not focused meaningfully on what we should be? So I’d like to suggest that in our preaching, we shake things up a bit. Let’s preach a countercultural Lent.
A Lenten Preaching Series on Fasting
Fasting at lent can seem rote or compulsory or just a convenient way to drop a few pounds. But Jesus has bigger plans for our lives than watching the scale drop. In this post, I offer a 6-week lenten sermon series for your use. But before you dive into its structure and content, let’s take a moment to consider Jesus’s why and how for fasting.
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.
10 Unique Gifts for Preachers This Christmas (2018 Edition)
Our 2018 gift guide for preachers is here! This list is sure to delight preachers and their congregations alike, as listeners are the ones who truly benefit from inspired and productive preachers. What would you add to the list?
Advent Sermon Inspiration to Help You Discover New Themes
With Advent season around the corner, you may be wondering if you’ll have anything new to say in your Advent sermons this year. Is it possible to find new insights in a season you’ve celebrated and preached many times before?
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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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The Gospel People Don't Want to Hear: Preaching Challenging Messages was written to aid preacher’s in understanding what’s at stake for their listeners so they can craft sermons their audience can receive, even if they challenge cherished beliefs.
I just have to say WOW. I'm so grateful that I made the investment and joined The Collective. These Thursday [workshops] are a game-changer for me.
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