Preaching Discipleship in a Climate Emergency (A Guest Post)
“Humanity has an extremely short window of time in which we can make a course correction regarding the climate emergency. Preaching discipleship in this time is one of the most critical and effective things that pastors can do to support, encourage, and challenge their people to respond.”
Preaching for Impact: How Understanding Personality Can Help Your Sermons Connect (A Guest Post)
“Each weekend, our churches gather, bringing with them a beautiful mixture of varied experiences, insights, struggles, gifts, tensions, and reactions to the world, which we call ‘personality’… Personality is our strategy to survive and thrive in the world. It is the wise preacher who spends her time learning as much as she can about the nature of personality and learning to speak to the beautiful variety present in the pew. After all, there is no way to guide hearers into a new vision for their place in God’s Kingdom and mission without meeting them, not just where they are, but in who they are.”
Three Homiletical Insights Preachers Can Learn from Howard Thurman (A Guest Post)
Dr. Edgar “Trey” Clark III, Assistant Professor of Preaching at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California, offers three practical preaching insights we can learn from Howard Thurman. “While the goal is not to imitate Thurman, I’m convinced he embodies wisdom that can be applied in relevant ways in diverse ministry contexts today.”
Laughing Our Way to the Truth (A Guest Post)
Enjoy this guest post from Rolf Jacobson, Luther Seminary Professor of Old Testament and the Alvin N. Rogness Chair of Scripture, Theology, and Ministry: “Preachers can learn from comedians—especially from stand-up comics. Because like us, they stand up in front of a gathering of people with nothing other than a microphone for protection.”
What Your Parishioners Wish They Could Tell You (A Guest Post)
(A guest post). Ever wonder what your listeners are thinking week to week? Consider these three suggestions from a life-long parishioner to ensure your messages connect at a soul-level.
The Embodied Word (A guest post by Steve Thomason with an excerpt from The Visual Preacher)
“People learn in many different ways. Pure words are very difficult for many people. Pictures and visual cues help connect the dots for a vast majority of the people in our pews. Read on for practical ways to combine visual communication with the Word of Scripture and the words of your sermon, so that, when you are done preaching, your listeners will say, ‘We have seen Jesus.’”
Preach Specifically: Dignity Is in the Details
Language changes and, as a result, so does our culture. If we want to be part of changing the narrative, we can improve the specificity of our language. We can tell better stories with more informed word choice.
Getting Away from the Page: How to Preach from the Heart
For those who want to get away from the page but don’t know how to get started, and for those who fear “all the things” that can happen when not using a manuscript, Dr. Giver-Johnston’s book offers practical tools to move in that direction, step by small step.
Preaching + Advertising? (A Guest Post)
“Both preaching and advertising struggle to get a message across in a world cluttered with noise that makes it hard for anyone with ears to hear. Because of this common struggle, the two communicative disciplines share a lot of the same concerns and methods. This means that a lot of what I learned was less of a radical re-thinking of preaching and more a confirmation of some standard elements of homiletical methodology to which advertising methodology offered some new nuance.”
A Stewardship Sermon Series on Psalm 50:14 (Part 2 of 2)
This is the second of a two-part blog series , “A Four-Week Stewardship Sermon Series on Ps. 50:14..” The sermon series is titled “To Know God Is to Thank God.”
Psalm 50:14: “Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving, and make good your vows to the Most High.”
Week One: Offer to God
Week Two: A Sacrifice of Thanksgiving
Week Three: Make Good Your Vows
Week Four: To the Most High