preaching on Resisting Change

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...

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...

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...

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...

It is difficult (maybe impossible) to write about self-righteousness without being self-righteous. [Editor’s Note: One might argue the same about preaching!]

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’...

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...

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...

Preaching Angle: Wheat and Weeds Grow Even in the Church God’s good creation grows food for all living creatures. God made the Earth, God made all the plants, and God made all the humans and animals ...

That little vertical bar on the white screen at the beginning of the blank line just keeps blinking. It flashes over and over. Is it mocking you , or is the late hour finally getting to you?  Chance...

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 ...

You may think of quotes as a great thing to add a little gravity, insight, or humor to your sermons. And they are! But have you considered Lent quotes as a jumping-off point for sermon ideas? We pick...

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...

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...

I repeat: the pressure to apply is a modernist pressure, not a biblical pressure. William Willimon observes that most congregations love hearing preaching with this application emphasis. The only pr...

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...

Our people probably already know 90 percent of any biblical instruction we plan to give them. The reason they are not yet obeying biblical truth is not because they don't know it but because they ...

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...

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...

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...

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.

For many of us, silence is something we try to avoid, both in conversations and in preaching. But as Richard John Neuhaus aptly describes in his time watching Martin Luther King, Jr. deliver his sermo...

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...

I don't like to hear cut and dried sermons. No—when I hear a man preach, I like to see him act as if he were fighting bees.

Unless those who proclaim the Gospel acknowledge honestly that darkness . . . they might as well save their breath for all the lasting difference their proclaiming will make to anybody.

It was strictly forbidden to preach to other prisoners. It was understood that whoever was caught doing this received a severe beating. A number of us decided to pay the price for the privilege of pre...

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...

A strong church once inscribed these words on an archway leading to the churchyard. Over time, two things happened: the church lost its passion for Jesus and His gospel, and ivy began to grow on the a...