What I Wish I’d Known Before I Started Preaching
I trust you are as capable as I was at finding your way and learning the lessons about preaching that you need. But learning by trial and error takes a long time, and I wish I hadn’t lost so much of mine. Alas, I didn’t know what I didn’t know. So I’m sharing the main challenges I faced along with what I wish I’d known: suggestions to make this preaching life easier—no matter how many years you’ve been in the pulpit!
How to Cultivate a New Preaching LIfe
When your preaching life feels overgrown with last-minute scrambles, the tyranny of the urgent, insecurity about your sermons, or frustration that your sabbath feels ever out of reach, it may be time to pull up the old and plant something new.
X Marks the Spot: Blocking Time for Yourself (A Guest Post)
We’re tempted to believe the spirit moves by whim in un-scheduled and unpredictable ways. But Peterson models, and I’ve experienced, that the inspiration and insights of preaching are more often rooted in practices that make space for us to invite and hear the spirit.
What Children Can Teach Us About Grief: Joy and Sorrow Are not competitors (A Guest Post)
I've come to believe that one of the greatest mistakes adults make is assuming that because children return to play, they've left their grief behind. But play isn't the opposite of grief any more than laughter is the opposite of love. Children have an extraordinary ability to move in and out of sorrow without feeling the need to explain themselves. Somehow, they know instinctively what many adults spend years trying to relearn: joy and sorrow are not competitors. They are companions.
You Should Experience This Preaching Blog
Adults (and kids—have you noticed?) don’t like to be told what to do. When we’re told we should do something, it make us feel defensive and shamed, like we don’t know what we’re doing, like we’re expected to do better or be better than we are. Moreover, shoulds can feel like yet more things to add to an already overburdened day. making us feel defeated and exhausted before we even try—even if we know engaging those activities is likely to do the opposite! How do we avoid this dynamic in our sermons?
The Simple but Misunderstood Key to Keeping Listeners Engaged: How to "Show" Rather than "Tell"
It’s often hard work for adults to get literal when it comes to using the five senses. We tend to leap from image to meaning so fast we don’t recognize what we did. But that leap fails to draw our listeners in, to make them feel something. And the more your audience feels, the greater the impact of the story and your sermon.
The Sermon as Conversation (A Guest Post)
When we hear the word sermon, we tend to think of pulpits. Microphones. Platforms. Singular personalities. A voice. A message. An interpretation. What if, instead of pulpits, we imagined tables?
Preaching & Einstein's Definition of Insanity: 2 Perspectives to Avoid Losing Your Mind
The definition of insanity often attributed to Einstein is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Sometimes, preaching can feel like an exercise in insanity: we present the good news over and over with what feels like little effect. Maybe it's not our preaching that's insane, though, but our expectations. Check out two perspectives that will help you avoid the feelings of futility discourage preachers.
The 3 Steps You're Missing When Planning Anything—Including Sermon Prep
When we envision ourselves undertaking tasks under the “worst”—or, ahem!—realistic circumstances, we’re far more likely to get closer to reality. Sermon prep is no different. Consider these three strategies to bring your idealistic expectations in line with the realities of life.
Overcoming Sermon Procrastination: How to Get to Work When You Don't Know Where to Start
Sometimes, what looks like procrastination is actually failure to make a decision. After all the decisions we have to make, What am I going to preach? can feel like the Everest of decisions. As a result, we put our sermon prep off. But we can anticipate this difficulty and plan for success.
How do we overcome the fatigue that causes us to put off our sermon prep? How do we just get started?