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Blog/RSS Directory |
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Biblical Preaching
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Not a Rule, But a Commitment to Expository Order
I split the preparation process into two. Stages 1-4 focus on the text. Stages 5-8 are concerned with forming the message. Before beginning to think about the message, it is a good idea to consider the listeners (audience analysis). Until this point the focus is on the text. From this point on the focus is [...]
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Real Life Is Raw
As I write this post I am sitting in a café working away at my laptop. I can tune out most of what is going on around me. But not at the moment. Two parents and a teenage daughter are having a dispute at the next table. It?s simple really. The father wants to protect [...]
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Word Process the Reading
If you have a Bible reading that stands distinct, either within the sermon or before it, then consider using a word processor. Why? Because it is so hard to read well in public. Simply pasting the text into a document and then breaking it into appropriate phrases can make a huge difference. A few minutes [...]
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The Strength is in the Roots
Back in the 1950?s H. Grady Davis shifted the metaphor for a sermon. Instead of something constructed by the preacher, a building, it is something grown, akin to a tree. Here is another quote used in McDill?s book, 12 Essential Skills (I appreciate these quotes at the start of each chapter).
A sermon should be like [...]
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The Generational Dance
Parker Palmer (in The Courage to Teach) writes about when we as teachers lose heart, and how we might recapture the heart to teach. He begins by raising the issue of those mentors that first stirred the passion to teach in our lives. Many make the mistake of trying to clone their mentors, thereby finding [...]
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It Can?t Half Touch
When we preach, our desire is for God?s Word to truly mark the lives of those listening. We want them to learn, certainly, but more than that, we want them to be changed. We want them to apply the Scripture in their lives that they will not be hearers only, but doers also. We want [...]
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There is Power in a Transition
It?s like a wave crashing onto the beach. It can be big or small. It can be obvious or hardly noticed. But as a preacher you must notice your transitions. What you can?t afford to do is forget the power in a transition. Like a wave it can be beautiful, or destructive. A transition can [...]
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Process and Forgive First
At times we get angry. Perhaps justly so. But remember the advice you give to others. I would tell others to prayerfully process their feelings and even forgive someone who had offended them before confronting them. The same applies in preaching. You read something or hear something. It makes you hot with anger or even [...]
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True Liberty in Preaching
Along the same lines as the subject of yesterday?s post, how do we find true liberty in our preaching? This is Phillips Brooks in his 1877 Lectures on Preaching:
In the desire to make a sermon seem free and spontaneous there is a prevalent dislike to giving it its necessary formal structure and organism. . . [...]
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Is Preparation Spiritual?
Periodically I come across people who think it is wrong to study preaching, or to prepare in any specific way for a sermon. Perhaps there are more, but they don?t make themselves known to me ? quite possible. I like this succinct paragraph from Wayne McDill?s 12 Essential Skills for Great Preaching (p219):
Some preachers are [...]
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