How much of what we preach should we be informing people? How much should we be inspiring them? How much comfort should we offer? How often should we challenge? Increasingly I am of the view that information is a good place to start. There will be some in the congregation who imbibed Scripture and the […]
I’ve just finished preaching through Ezekiel, what a fascinating book to take a journey through. We did it in six weeks, so honestly it was a once over lightly. However, how many preachers would tackle this book today? I suspect that many of us avoid these great tomes because they just seem too difficult to […]
In a recent post, Robyn Mellar-Smith wrote about preaching through a whole book of the Bible over a number of weeks (http://kiwimadepreaching.com/2013/10/when-its-never-enough-robyn-mellar-smith/). But what about preaching a whole book in one sermon? This is the challenge taken up by one of my local congregations. Over the coming weeks and months, they’re going to be […]
As the main preacher of a church community, one of my favourite things to do is to preach through a book of the Bible. You never know what is going to come up and I think that working through a whole book is the “steak” of the preaching year, particularly for those members of the […]
One of the things I’ve enjoyed about going along to an Anglican church this year is knowing that in every service, every week, we’ll hear from the breadth of Scripture before anyone even gets up to preach. There’s always a Psalm, an Old Testament reading, an epistle, and then the capstone, a Gospel reading. Every […]
I believe in biblical preaching. I believe, I think, in biblical preaching from the entire Bible. I believe that God can, and does, in some mysterious manner, Speak through Scripture and its faithful exposition. And yet, there is all sorts of muck in there that – perhaps appropriately? – seldom rates a mention in weekly […]
1 Samuel 5 is meant to be funny – at least some of the time. Quietly lying in the ark-box, Yahweh is seemingly sleeping (or dead). Israel is seriously questioning. And Philistine warriors and children are scratching, covered as they are in scabby “tumors” (the root word is “to swell”.) Perhaps these are anal […]
