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.
Too Many Sermon Ideas? 3 Ways to Find Your Message Fast
When there are so many potential themes, ideas, characters, and overlap with our world, it can be impossible to know where to start! Here are three strategies to try when you feel stuck because you have TOO many ideas—with a specific process for each.
Tough Passage? Preach What the Gospel Says (Not What You Wish it Said)
Sometimes the principalities and powers of this world need to be named because they are in need of God’s redemption. However, if we name the same principalities and powers every week people will tune out the urgency. Instead, help people hear the context and need for God’s redemption revealed by the text itself. Let people wrestle with angels through questions posed— without giving answers. Then trust God will convert any willing heart to love Jesus most.
4 Steps to Build a “Study Hall” for Efficient, Effective, & Sacred Sermon Prep
We may not be students at the moment, but we still face deadlines, major projects, and of course, preaching happens at a certain time every week
What I’ve learned since I was an undergrad is that study halls don’t have to be inside a library, and they become a lot more meaningful when we design them to be not only productive, but sacred.
5 Steps to Simplify Your Sermon Prep When You Get "Lifed!"
When life throws chaos your way, prepping a sermon can feel overwhelming. And it is if you prep the same way you always do. But with a simplified process, you can write a solid sermon in less time that will leave your listeners pondering the Good News.
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!
Going small for Sermon Inspiration
God's glory is revealed in the small as well as the big: in the sparrow and the heavens, the mustard seed and the mountains, the little children and the disciples. And our preaching grows stronger when we learn to attune ourselves to the way God appears in the smallest details of the Bible's stories and text.
A 3-Step Review to Preach More Compellingly and Joyfully This Year (& All Year)!
Complete this 3-step review to preach more compellingly and joyfully this year (& all year)!
Advent-Christmas Sermons: 5 Steps to Preach the Sermons Your Listeners Need
Whether you’re preaching once or at every service the rest of December, exegeting your congregation and determining the preaching “voice” that will best serve them can make your sermon prep more efficient and relevant. Consider this 5-step process to craft Advent-Christmas sermons that bring good news to your listeners’ contexts.
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I participated in the Lectio study today with a complicated and double-speak Gospel (John 17:6-19) and WOW! I received so much great insight and am headed in a direction I feel really good about. Thank you to all my colleagues! If you are wondering if this is worth it, wonder no more. It is.
—Donna G.
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The Gospel People Don't Want to Hear: Preaching Challenging Messages was written to aid preacher’s in understanding what’s at stake for their listeners so they can craft sermons their audience can receive, even if they challenge cherished beliefs.
I just have to say WOW. I'm so grateful that I made the investment and joined The Collective. These Thursday [workshops] are a game-changer for me.
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