preaching on Leading by Example

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...

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...

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...

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...

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 ...

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 ...

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...

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...

Resist ending your sermon with “live like this,” and rather end with some form of “You can’t live like this. Oh, but there’s one who did! And through faith with him you can begin to live like this too...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Something I’ve noticed over time is that, while we Protestants try to live “ sola scriptura (by scripture alone) ,” a large number of traditions have crept into our theology and praxis over time. One ...

Easter after Resurrection Sunday One of the challenges of the Christian calendar for pastors is that we often put so much energy into Holy Week, that by the time we reach Easter Sunday , and parti...

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...

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 ...

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.

Let's Explore Ephesians! This summer, we’re inviting you—and your congregation—to join us in a journey through Paul’s letter to the Ephesians. As your congregation's minds turn toward rest,...

In grad school, although I was studying to become a clinical psychologist, I started working at a Baptist church. I discovered then that I loved to preach . . . until one weekend when the sermon wasn’...

August 2018 Recently I had the opportunity to preach at a church located in a residential neighborhood in a large U.S. city.   I actually preached two weeks in a row, both on the same topic, both in t...

300 10-Minute Devotions For the past six years I’ve been a volunteer chaplain at Haywood Pathways Center , a Christian residential program for people working to turn their lives around from addict...

Preach [and live] as if Jesus was crucified yesterday, rose from the dead today, and is returning tomorrow.

Introduction This message is primarily directed to my friends for whom the word “lectionary” sounds like a disease. I, too, once shared your visceral shudder when someone uttered the phrase “lectiona...

A Special Kind of Story Most Christians have some idea of what a parable is. Ask an adult Sunday school class and you might hear: “It’s a story!” Another might chime in, “with a moral message!” Mer...

Preaching Angle: Preach the Word, Rest in God’s Work Maybe I tend to focus on the negative, but when I read the parable of the soils, I tend to focus on the soils that struggle (the soil too close to...

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...

The Power (and Peril) of Words One time, I lied to the elders. (That’s another story except to say that they were blinded by trust.) It wasn’t a big lie—I said I’d done something I hadn’t—but I reali...

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...