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 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.
Find New Sermon Ideas by Thinking Like a Reporter
Preachers and reporters often face the same challenge: to tell the same story in a new way. By thinking like a reporter, we can find dozens of ways to share the Good News from a fresh angle.
Preach Like an Amateur
To be an amateur means you do what you do for the love of it. Not because you have to. Not because you get paid for it. And not because you have a deadline to meet. You do it because you love it. The “greats” in any craft become great because they’re amateurs first. They pursue their craft with joy, zest, and fascination.
Learning to Read the Untold Stories of Scripture (A Guest Post)
Scripture—lectio divina, the Daily Office, biblical scholarship, and community study—has been a passion of mine before I knew the words to call it. This part of my life has held a privileged place in my schedule for so long, that I came up surprised and saddened to begin to realize just how much of our scriptures I had been neglecting.
"Why Do You Want to Preach?"
If someone asked why we’re called to preach, we’d likely have a ready answer. We’re practiced in the art of the spiritual answer, abdicating the role of our “self” in arriving at ministry’s doorstep, preferring to lay responsibility at the feet of a divine, outside call. And that’s true. But perhaps not complete.
Epiphany: How Science Teaches Us to Preach Through the Season of Light
To help us grasp the nature of epiphanies, it helps to go deeper into the myriad ways God sheds light on our understanding through the lens of other disciplines. For each concept, I offer a brief overview, a suggested reading, and ways to connect the concept to preaching so you better “see” how to guide your listeners to see the light of Christ in our midst.
A New Year's Challenge for Preachers: Reset Your Calendar in 2019
When we keep piling on the responsibilities without consideration for the prep time involved, the investment of energy required to engage, or the precedent it might be setting—then our calendars rule us instead of us ruling our calendars. That’s when preaching gets stuffed into the cracks and margins of ministry, and we end up feeling overwhelmed and exhausted by our self-defeating Sisyphisian attempts to “get on top of” our responsibilities.
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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.
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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.
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