Preach the Word! Be Ready in Season and Out of Season

Pep Talks for Successful Living - Mark Galli 

Yes, but don’t we need something more from our churches?

I was talking with a fellow evangelical Christian, an older woman whose circumstances required that she live with her aging and abusive father. To say the least, this was a trial, but she said she had recently had a breakthrough.

"I was watching Joel Osteen, and he was saying that we should not whine about our circumstances, but accept them as God's way of strengthening us, and use them to love those who make our lives hard. That really helped."

This made me curious: Exactly what was Osteen preaching? I had heard mostly scathing critiques of the best-selling author and Houston pastor. So I listened to a few of his sermons. It's been said that even a broken clock is right twice a day. Osteen is right more frequently than that. As I flipped though the channels and caught messages by other so-called prosperity preachers, I found the same thing. They regularly offered wise counsel on how to strengthen marriage, raise kids, handle suffering, and so forth. They often talked about how trusting God can offer calm and hope in the face of adversity.

Yes, I cringed at the occasional allusions to faith and financial prosperity. But that was rare. Most of what I heard was a combination of biblical and psychological wisdom shaped for an audience that knew hardship. Or, as historian Kate Bowler put it in Blessed: A History of the American Prosperity Gospel, the prosperity preachers offer "a comprehensive approach to the human condition"—one that gives hope to desperate people.

So what's the problem? Keep reading

2013 John Reed Miller Lecture Series - Kevin DeYoung [Audio]

Lecture 1-How Can a Biblical Sermon Be So Boring? The Case for Veracity and Clarity in Preaching

Lecture 2- How Can a Biblical Sermon Be So Boring? The Case for Specificity, Authenticity, and Ingenuity in Preaching

Lecture 3-How Can a Biblical Sermon Be So Boring? The Case for Spontaneity and Authority in Preaching

Q&A- Discussion on Crazy Busy

Q&A- Discussion on Preaching and Pastoral Ministry

4 Benefits of Eye Contact in Preaching - Brandon Hilgemann

I love visiting other churches. I love walking on a church campus for the first time pretending I know nothing about church. It helps me understand how people might feel when they come to visit my church for the first time.

I visited a new church this week that I have never been to. They have a nice building. Their volunteers were friendly. The music was good. But as I sat and listened to the pastor, for some reason I was having trouble connecting.

The content was good, but something in his delivery was off. That’s when I realized the problem. The pastor had lousy eye contact.

His eyes bounced left, right, then down at his notes. Left, right, notes. Left, right, notes.

Although the message was thought out, his eyes betrayed him. His nerves showed. And it made it hard to watch and listen.

Eye contact is critical for four major reasons. Keep reading

6 Reasons Not to Abandon Expository Preaching - Don Carson

Puritan theologian William Perkins wrote that preaching "has four great principles: to read the text distinctly, from canonical Scripture; to give it sense and understanding according to the Scripture itself; to collect a few profitable points of doctrine out of its natural sense; and to apply, if you have the gift, the doctrines to the life and manner of men in a simple and plain speech."

There is something refreshingly simple about that description. Our aim as preachers is not to be the most erudite scholar of the age. Our aim is not to titillate and amuse. Our aim is not to build a big church.

Our aim is to take the sacred text, explain what it means, tie it to other scriptures so people can see the whole a little better, and apply it to life so it bites and heals, instructs, and edifies. What better way to accomplish this end than through expository preaching? Keep reading

Creative Sermon Change-Ups - Doug Green

The Bible is a compelling book. More good news: if you are preaching through this Bible week after week, you ought to be a compelling preacher. Best news: if this is true, God’s Word ought to come alive in your congregation, causing them in the pew to fall in love with what He says.

That’s right, biblical preaching can be … well … exciting.

So, why does expository preaching often get a bad reputation, frequently associated with monotone lectures about ancient civilizations and antiquated languages? Could it be the deficiency of the presentation, not the content? Are there ways to spice up your preaching and keep your congregation intrigued –– even though they listen to you preach week after week?

Let me use a baseball metaphor and call these templates “change-up pitches.” These sermon templates give some new creative ways to say the same things, mixing up your predictable “fast ball” with freshness.

So, once you establish the content of a biblical text, there are thousands of — actually infinite — ways you can communicate it to your audience. You will not exhaust God’s creative power in you nor will you run out of things to say about His imaginative Word. Expository preaching can only be boring because the preacher has sidelined creativity. However, preaching that exposes the biblical idea of the text, at its best, ought to be compelling and life-changing. It should be anything but boring.

Here are some creative sermon forms. Try them soon.... Keep reading

Preachers, Find Your Voice [Video] - David Matthis

Christian preaching is not parroting.

As desirable as it is to copy a skilled communicator, and as unavoidable as it is to imitate those who have shaped us most, there is good reason for a preacher to find his own voice. Not vanity, but being true to what Christian preaching is.

Before it is heralding a message, preaching means first and foremost stewarding a message. Before we “preach the word” (2 Timothy 4:2), we should be devoted and unashamed students, “rightly handling the word of truth” (2 Timothy 2:15). Before telling others what God has to say, we must hear his voice ourselves and deeply know his speaking. Watch now