Recently I’ve had to preach when it hasn’t been well with my soul. I had a really tough week and was experiencing major inner turmoil. It wasn’t even well with my body; I had a mild stomach bug at the end of the same week. I arrived exhausted at a weekend on which I was [...]
I realise this sits ironically above my previous blog post a year and a half ago titled ‘Ps: I love preaching’ (http://kiwimadepreaching.com/author/laura-giddey/) but trust me, I have not lost my passion for what I do in that time. Keep reading. The year has started with a whir and a bang, as I’m sure it has [...]
When I was training for ministry at Carey Baptist College a few years ago, one of our lecturers challenged us to consider spending as much time in prayer for our sermon as writing the sermon. That’s quite a challenge! For starters, for most ministers, there doesn’t appear to be enough hours in the week to [...]
Time for some honesty. The amount of prayer I put into my preaching falls well short of what I would like. It’s not that I don’t believe in the power of prayer. It’s not that I haven’t seen the difference it makes in the depth and delivery of my sermons. It’s not that I don’t [...]
One of the best books on pastoral ministry I’ve read in recent times is a little volume by Michael Jinkins entitled Letters to Young Pastors (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006). When giving some advice on preaching he recalls the words of the puritan pastor, Richard Baxter, and says: ‘preachers who aim their sermons at the broken [...]
A prayer I pray often in the preparation, and/or before delivery [sometimes my public prayer at the beginning of my sermon], of sermons is: “Lord, please take the stones of my words, and transform them by your Spirit into living bread, which will feed the hearts, minds and whole lives of all those who listen [...]
The post is a response to Steve Worsley’s post last month. Steve’s post made me feel a bit defensive (I don’t know Steve personally so assume he wasn’t aiming it at me) but I am very lazy when it comes to application and so I thought I would take Steve’s provocation to explain why. I deliberately take a [...]
Is it just me, or does anyone else worry about what they wear when they get up to preach? Perhaps it comes of being only a sporadic preacher – and so not having a reliable “uniform” for preaching days. Perhaps worrying unduly about what to wear is simply a nervous divergence of energy that would [...]
Don’t get me wrong. I’m passionate about expository preaching, and I can think of no bad thing to say about my preaching mentor, Paul Windsor, who created the ‘First Fifteen’. For any who don’t know, the First Fifteen are fifteen questions you can ask of a passage of Scripture to help you unpack its meaning [...]
Do I actually care if Monica Lewinsky has plastic surgery on an upcoming reality TV show? We are plagued by a prevalent fascination with the tantalising and the trivial, the immediate and the individual. Such preoccupations threaten to rob young and old alike of any sense of human substance or significance, connected to heroic deeds, [...]
