We are well in the season of Advent. It is here that we look at the Coming Kingdom from three angles. First we look at it from the angle of Christ’s first…
Category: Preaching
Preaching To Your Demographic?
Today we live in an era that attacks the very idea of preaching to everybody. Our “church growth” consultants tell us to tailor our theology, worship, programs, and our community in general…
Let Your Content Shout
Great sermons will have increases in intensity. Especially as you near the end of the sermon, the intensity of the sermon causes the people to really get involved in truth of the Gospel.
Word Doesn’t Obey Us..We Obey The Word
William Willimon writes: Where we want the gospel to be gracious it is judgmental and where we want it to be judgment, it is gracious. Willimon is simply referring to the truth…
One Secret To Preaching Without Notes
When one thinks about preaching without notes, usually they think about memorizing a lot of data. This is not the only way to do it. In fact it is probably the one…
The Importance of Relating Doctrine to Experience
Most preachers are susceptible to either obliterating the uniqueness of our Christian teaching in relating it to humanity, or ignoring the practicality of the doctrines by preaching it in a way that…
Addressing Your Blind Spots In The Pulpit
We all have blind spots in the pulpit. We all have a tendency to migrate to a few themes. I critically listened to a preacher the other day. This is one who…
Is Celebration Entertainment
One question that comes up over and over again is whether celebration is merely entertainment. I have addressed it before on this blog, but I think it deserves mentioning again. The argument…
Become the Message of Your Sermons
How does one grab the moment and preach effective sermons? Many of us who teach preachers spend a lot of time talking about sermonic preparation. We discuss how to effectively exegete a…
Agreement or Conversion? To What End is Our Preaching?
Are we attempting to bring agreement between the Gospel and those to whom we are preaching? Are we seeking to have people understand and state that what we are saying is valuable and even true? Or are we seeking for something more substantial? Or are we seeking, by the power of the Spirit, to actually change something?
How One Sermon Was Remembered
I was talking to a laymember the other day who was very excited about a sermon he had heard. The member gave me all four of the points of the sermon and…
Stories in Sermons Don’t Always Work
A few weeks ago, I heard a sermon by a preacher who obviously had heard of the benefits of stories in effective sermons. However, a particular illustration had great difficulties for the…
Making Room for Celebration
The other day a preacher contacted me about a critique of his sermon. The sermon’s biggest drawback was the lack of a celebration, and yet the preacher was very animated and was…
Evaluating a Sermon Outline
There are multitudes of sermon outline sites. Some of them require you to pay for the outline, others are membership sites that give you access to thousands of outlines, and still others are completely free.