I like to make up new words. You’d think there might already be enough to go round! But sometimes new words are required… As I wrestle with the goal and act of preaching, the tension which sometimes exists between the two seems to require something new. Barbara Brown Taylor encapsulates the tension beautifully: [...]
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myk habets: sharing the yoke
Preaching is so often a lonely and solitary affair is it not? We spend hours in our studies pouring over the Word, working through commentaries, looking at our Logos software (but not listening to the online sermons of the text of course!), and praying over the text as we complete our ‘First Fifteen,’ or try [...]
karen spoelstra: the questions to ask
As a lay preacher every sermon I preach is normally to a different congregation, a congregation about which I know very little. So getting a decent briefing is pretty important to me. The most thorough I’ve ever received was when I was asked to preach on the “Songs of Songs” as part of a series [...]
jonathan robinson: educational preaching?
I saw an interesting video the other day. Brian McLaren was discussing the life cycle of the modern congregation. He suggested that pastors have usually operated on the principle that people will be at church their whole lives, and so they have plenty of time to teach the Christian faith. While I’m not so sure about that, [...]
greg liston – the view from the pew
It’s been about 6 months now since I stepped down from being the Senior Pastor at HBC. Six months of listening to sermons instead of preaching them. The view from the pew is not like the view from the pulpit – you see things differently from down here. And this different perspective has made me [...]
dale campbell: on monologue and conversation
Before I went to Carey Baptist College and began learning how much I didn’t know, I went through a season of questioning the relevance and value of preaching. I resonated with the complaints that preaching was a “monstrous monologue by a moron to mutes”. I was nearly convinced that “conversations” were better ways of discerning [...]
tony plews: prophetic tirade anyone?
Have you ever listened over time to the kind of preacher who, no matter what the passage, text, or genre, is always ‘encouraging’ their hearers? I did once for almost a year and it nearly drove me and the rest of congregation to distraction. The preacher in question was a wonderful bloke, and an empathetic [...]
reuben munn: the medium is the message?
What comes to mind when you hear the word ‘tele-evangelist?’ For many people, it evokes the image of a suit-wearing, sweat-dripping, fist-pounding American preacher, asking his audience for money. This kind of connotation can lead people to think preaching has no place on television or any broadcast media. But I think it’s possible for biblical [...]
