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robyn mellar-smith – how then shall we plan?

Oct 10th, 2011
by Robyn Mellar-Smith.
3 comments

Around this time of year I start to give serious thought to a preaching plan for next year. I am the sole pastor of a medium sized Baptist church who is responsible for the preaching slot on Sunday morning. This means that I either preach myself (around 3 weeks out of 5 this year) or I find someone else to speak.

When I studied at Carey Baptist College a few years ago, I picked up the idea from a course by Paul Windsor that it is good to preach a series from an Old Testament book, a Gospel and an Epistle each year. He also suggested doing a topical series and taking time to focus on special days in the church calendar, such as Pentecost Sunday.

This year I have taught a fairly long series in the Gospel of Luke (in two parts), a few weeks on the Self-Denial mission material from Tranzsend, a series in the book of Isaiah, and next month I am planning a short series on the Holy Spirit in the book of Ephesians. When we have guest speakers, I don’t require them to fit in with any series I’m doing, and enjoy it when they choose to address a topic I would be reluctant to, such as a guest speaker next month who is hopefully going to speak on “Christians and Sport.”

My question to others is…how do you choose what books/topics to focus on?

Obviously this is a matter for prayer and discussion with leadership, but do you have goals you try to reach as far as variety? What are the factors that feed into your planning?

Part of me believes that it is important what books we teach when, but a bigger part believes that God will get his message across regardless of what book it’s from, if we do the study and seek him.

I would be especially interested to hear from those who have responsibility for the weekly preaching portion of the Sunday service. Blessings.

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Robyn Mellar-Smith is a daughter, wife, mother, grandmother, and the pastor of Epuni Baptist Church in Lower Hutt.

robyn mellar-smith – what does a bowl of jaffas have to do with it?

May 3rd, 2011
by Robyn Mellar-Smith.
4 comments

One of the things that has given me great joy as a pastor is mentoring our youth leaders in preaching. I meet monthly for lunch with our 4 youth leaders aged 17-23, and last year thought that maybe I would add value to our sessions by teaching them to preach.

We started off by looking at Paul Windsor’s “First Fifteen” – the method by which I was taught to do exegesis at Carey Baptist College. What a lot of fun we had! After we had worked through this, I asked them to pick a passage and they chose James 4:1-10. We then proceeded to work through the “First Fifteen” with this passage. I was delighted with the illustrations they came up with! To be honest, I’d love to go over all my passages with them – they had such unique ideas :-)

We decided that they would do a sermon for our Sunday morning congregation “tag-team” – five minutes each. One would do “the world”, one “the flesh”, one “the devil”, and one would do the application and summarise. We spent several sessions going over what they might say, with each of them contributing ideas to the others. Then they individually wrote out their pieces, practising together and gently critiquing each other.

On the day they were fantastic, with the sum-up guy producing a huge bowl of jaffas and giving some away to members of the congregation, to signify us giving away authority in our lives to the various areas outlined in James 4:1-10. Instantly memorable! The congregation loved it.

They were so outstanding that I suggested that next time they preach two at a time so they could have a longer time each to speak. The first one was last Sunday and was amazing.

This time they fitted into my series in the Gospel of Luke, rather than doing a one-off sermon. Their exegesis was quicker, their ideas better, and they were more confident in their speaking. They still had to do a lot of preparation work, but we met regularly and talked about how they were doing.

You would have to be there to receive the full extent of their offering because the whole youth group was involved in illustrative skits before the sermon but if you want to have a listen, have a look at http://www.epunibaptist.org.nz/publicmessages.php

They still have a little way to go in getting their exegesis into a fully flowing message, but I understand that. And, like most beginning preachers, they tried to say too much. (I’ll put my hand up for that as well.) But on Sunday I was intensely proud of them and the congregation was too!

Are you mentoring anyone in your congregation in preaching? And if so, what have you found helpful?

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Robyn Mellar-Smith is a daughter, wife, mother, grandmother, and the pastor of Epuni Baptist Church in Lower Hutt.

robyn mellar-smith: when it doesn’t write right

Sep 2nd, 2010
by Robyn Mellar-Smith.
6 comments

A little while ago, I was preaching through a series in the book of Psalms. I decided to speak on Psalm 73 because it is one of my favourites and because it typifies ‘reorientation’ as I understand it (from the Brueggemann typology).

I was looking forward to getting into this psalm a bit deeper & duly spent a chunk of Monday (as is my practice when preaching weekly) doing the exegesis and thinking through what might be important to say, especially in light of the two psalms we had considered the previous Sundays (24 and 88). My study Monday was a bit interrupted, but I went home with a sense of excitement, encouraged by the movement in this psalm from a dark place to a place of reliance on God, as the psalmist moved his focus from other people to God. (more…)

robyn mellar-smith: preaching across the stages

Mar 2nd, 2010
by Robyn Mellar-Smith.
7 comments

Over a recent couple of weeks of summer holiday, I spoke to three people close to me who have been Christ-followers as long or longer than me, but who are now questioning their faith and unsure of the “whole church thing.” Two out of the three still go to church, but sit through the sermon feeling quite “ho-hum” about it all. I suspect I have several people in my congregation like that also – dear people who over the years have faithfully served God, but now find the shape of our services a bit hard to sit through, although they have a strong personal faith. How do we preach to such people? (more…)