Breathe: An Easter Prayer & Survival Guide for Preachers
Ask the Spirit what one thing you are to do right now.
- If it's to work on your sermon, work on your sermon and your sermon alone.
- If it's to proofread bulletins, then focus on each line, each word, each number, one...at...a...time.
- If it's to stand in the pulpit and preach, then preach with your whole being.
Do the one thing you are to do. And find the peace of Christ waiting for you therein.
Pray Your Easter Sermon Into Being: A Sermon Prep Resource for Less Stress
Discerning a message and prepping a sermon amidst the other demands of preaching is a challenge.
That's why we're offering this free guide to a process that will transform your sermon prep from work to respite—all while helping you discern a transformative message for your listeners.
Last week, we introduced BsP's lectio divina sermon prep process in the post "What if You Never Had to Search for a Sermon Message Again?"
In this guide, we go deeper to help you implement each step of the 5-day process.
What if You Never Had to Look for a Sermon Message Again?
Even the most experienced preachers sometimes wonder how to pull another message out of too-familiar lessons.
Sermons driven by fear—or avoidance of embarrassment—may get the job done, but not pleasantly.
What if there were another way? A better way?
What if we never had to look for a sermon message again? And no, I don't mean looking to the internet to "borrow" someone else's sermon.
I mean, what if we didn't have to look for the message at all?
What Are You Asking of Your Listeners? A Good Sermon Counts the Cost
Why does it seem like a good sermon isn't enough to cause hearts to be changed?
If the Holy Spirit is really at work and the Gospel is preached with clarity and conviction, how come as soon as we hear the Good News we don't we embrace it and change course immediately?
How to Keep Sermon Listeners on the Edge of their Seats: Why You Should Build Tension into Every Sermon
Tension keeps us reading, watching, or listening.
Think about any book or movie that kept your attention.
- There's a need... a desire, wish, want, hope
- that's blocked... thwarted, redirected, obstructed, obscured
- which creates a question. If? Who? How? When?
- Questions create tension...suspense, anticipation, dissonance, uncertainty
- that we need resolved....settled, resolved, determined, answered
which keeps us on the edge of our seats
Ten Tips for Keeping Your Sermon Prep Out of Your Weekend
Don't want to do sermon prep on the weekends? You don't have to!
Here are ten ways to reclaim your weekends.
You spoke right to me! How did you know?
A relevant sermon connects our listeners to our message in a way that helps them find God in the midst of their lives. Lent, this season of remembrance and anticipation, is a prime time to address our listeners' challenges and questions directly.
To help listeners feel as though we're speaking right to them, we need to understand their context, their struggles, and their hopes that they'll be OK.
Should You Preach "Relevant" Sermons?
Googling the idea of a sermon that is "relevant to the listener" brings up all kinds of disagreement. Some think the idea of relevance is juvenile or manipulative, that it's a cheap ploy to seem current at the expense of truth. Others say it's essential.
Here's just a sampling of what people have to say about "relevant" sermons:
- Be true to yourself and your sermon will automatically be relevant to the listeners.
- We're not supposed to consider the relevance of the listener but the relevance of the Gospel.
- Relevance will be discerned when we think "from the pew" instead of "from the pulpit."
- "Relevance" is a homiletical and theological disgrace because God is eternally relevant.
Is that the case, though?
Perhaps to determine whether our sermons should be relevant, we should consider what it would mean to preach a sermon that is NOT relevant.
The 10 Biggest Mistakes Preachers Make
Even the best preachers can fall into patterns that make them less effective. Check out these 10 mistakes even good preachers make to see if you might be unknowingly hurting your own preaching.
Does Your Sermon Persuade or Manipulate?
What are we trying to accomplish when we preach? What is our goal and purpose?
Is our goal to preach our listeners into agreement with our position–political, religious, social, or otherwise?
Or is our purpose to reveal the Good News to our listeners?
The sermon that manipulates tries to control the listener's response. It threatens that something is at stake in the relationship with you and/or the church and/or God.
How can we tell if we're stepping over that line to manipulation?
Ask yourself these questions...