For the second half of 2015, I had the privilege of attending worship at Bethany Presbyterian Church in Seattle, where Doug Kelly is the senior minister. (I was on study leave from my lectureship at the University of Otago.) One of the highlights of worship was Doug’s sermons. He preached probably three quarters of the […]
In my experience in the church and with fresh students to Laidlaw College, in the main, Christians today are not engaging sufficiently with the text of Scripture. So, I consider one of my primary tasks as a preacher today is to get them to do so; at least for the 20-30 minutes I have opportunity […]
When I was a young preacher the big question was expositional versus thematic preaching? Should we preach expounding the Scriptures passage by passage, focusing deeply on one passage, drawing out its meaning? Should we preach thematically, drawing from all of Scripture or key portions thereof to discuss a theme? In more recent times, narrative preaching […]
Recently someone asked me if it is possible to use the lectionary and also preach expositionally. I have served in associate roles in two churches where the lectionary was used part, or all, of the time and where the preaching was largely expositional. I preached once every month or six weeks in both churches, so […]
