preaching on Leadership

A Game of "Who's the Best Preacher?" What is preached matters far more than how it is preached or who preaches it. In Paul’s first letter to the church in Corinth, he addresses a troubl...

A Game of "Who's the Best Preacher?" What is preached matters far more than how it is preached or who preaches it. In Paul’s first letter to the church in Corinth, he addresses a troubl...

The Master & His Workshop I remember first walking into my friend Andrew’s new workshop, housed in a colonial-style barn and situated on an expansive wooded acreage on the Eastern Seaboard. Thin...

The only person who likes change is a wet baby. –Mark Twain (Attributed) To Change or Not to Change, That is the Question When do we decide to change ? I’m not a Tony Robbins acolyte, but I do l...

The Protestant Reformer John Calvin (1509-1564) arrived in Geneva to lead the city’s church in 1536, but not, as we might imagine, to universal acceptance. Rather, there was significant resistance and...

We pray, dear God, for our spiritual leaders. Increase in them the charism of faith that they might preach the Word of God with boldness. Increase in them the charism of wisdom that they might gui...

I’m not sure that I could have articulated the ground rules for the search for resilience the way I understand them today, but I must have intuited them nevertheless. Some of the basic ideas were thes...

Hugh Latimer was the Bishop of Worcester, England during the reign of King Henry VIII. On one occasion he preached a sermon that offended the king, who sat in the audience. The king commanded Latimer ...

God of Grace and God of Glory–rich in love and mercy, all powerful and everywhere present: We come to You at Your bidding, trusting in Your faithful compassion and not in our fruitless efforts to do w...

It looks so easy. Prewrite. Draft. Revise. Edit. Publish. Substitute “Preach” for “Publish” and you’ve adapted it to sermons. Just five steps and you’re done. The problem is that, even though we taugh...

The Lord calls us to examine the wounds of the Risen One and to see there the depth of his love for us. Let us therefore approach the throne of God in confidence as we pray for the people of God in Ch...

Do not try to make the Bible relevant. Its relevance is axiomatic. Do not defend God's word, but testify to it. Trust to the Word. It is a ship loaded to the very limits of its capacity.

The ideal pastor preaches exactly 20 minutes. He condemns sin, but never hurts anyone’s feelings. He works from 8 AM to midnight, and also serves as the church janitor. He makes $40 a week, wears good...

There once was a popular shaman in India whom people would seek out for advice. People would stand in line for hours, waiting to hear the choices they should make in their lives or the changes that wo...

A 4-Part Series on Sermon Writing Imagine what you would have thought on the first day of class if your professor told you that you would have to write an original theological paper every week that h...

Preach with authority. The authority for us is the Word of God. Preach with simplicity . . . Preach with urgency . . . heaven and hell are at stake. Preach for a decision.

Your Inner Life Matters While I have long recognized the significance of a pastor’s inner life, I hadn’t pondered the relationship between our inner life and the act of preaching until recently. Our ...

While sexual sin, financial scandals, and toxic work environments hurt pastoral credibility, a more subtle, and probably more common danger is carelessness with the truth. Intellectual integrity matte...

Ancient lens? What can we learn from the historical context? Context and Tone Paul was writing from prison to a Christian community that he didn’t establish. Rather, it was his co-laborer, Epaphr...

Kate's Crisis: Values vs. Church One damp afternoon during the fall of 2016 I was sharing a pastoral conversation with Kate, a professional artist in her late 20s. Over years of meals and convers...

My goal is to speak the truth in love. There are a lot of people speaking the truth with no love, and there are a lot of people talking about love without much truth.

Joining the Story “We read to know that we are not alone” (Anthony Hopkins as C. S. Lewis in Shadowlands ). That’s also why we listen to sermons. Someone once told me that in every sermon they hope ...

How do you choose what to preach on any given Sunday? Are you a… Lectionary Preacher ? Occasional use of the lectionary, select seasonal use of the lectionary, or full-throttle every Sunday and any...

Introduction Easter stands out from every other day. It’s time to celebrate and to reflect: how will you “preach the resurrection” and proclaim the new life we have in Jesus Christ? How do we invite ...

Retired professor of homiletics Fred Craddock suggests a different vision of fruitfulness. Fred told me a story about a friend of his who wanted Craddock to go with him to hear “the greatest preacher ...

Diane Ackerman was talking about life, but I think it applies to preaching when she wrote, “I don’t want to get to the end of my life and find that I just lived to the length of it. I want to have liv...

I came to believe that my job was not to receive and critique a sermon but to dig into it, to seize its power, to participate with its message, and to steal its fruit.

HOMILETICS, n. The science of adapting sermons to the spiritual needs, capacities and conditions of the congregation.

Your life is in the pulpit with you Fred Craddock said, “Not everything that’s in the Bible is in the Bible .” That’s why we have, among other things, commentaries . The most helpful ones throw o...

Building anticipation into one's preaching simply calls for one basic understanding of the task of the pulpit: the goal is not to get something said but to get something heard.