Advent Quote Collection: Inspiration for the Season
Organized under the themes of encountering, noticing, preparing, waiting, and magnifying, this collection can be used in your Advent sermons, liturgical prayers, or personal or household devotions for the season. They help us remember the only thing that matters: Christ and Christ alone.
Preaching through Advent? Prepare Now with a Stop-Doing List for More Rest, Connection, and Joy
Whether you feel happy, sad, angry, or a mix of those this season, one thing is almost certain: your to-do list abounds. To make your Advent season and Christmastide more joyful, here are ten “Stop Doing” suggestions you can begin to implement now.
Apply as needed.
Advent (&dvent) Devotional (A Guest Post)
Like all deliciously wonderful things in life, Advent takes time to simmer and to develop flavor, texture, and richness. We have created a multi-media devotional based on the assigned texts from the Revised Common Lectionary, Yr B. Inside you’ll find corresponding word clouds, photographs, and resources, as well as questions for reflection. May this devotion offer you a sense of ease and comfort, a place for the Spirit to simmer inside you and inspire you to pull up a chair alongside nature—to see and hear her Advent beauty.
"I will offer the sermon I am capable of offering. I will forgive myself."
It is good to offer the sermon we are capable of crafting—loaves and fishes style—within the limits of our skills, available time, competing demands, and lack of feedback. We can trust God to multiply our efforts so that listeners receive the nourishment they need.
Your call is to offer the sermon you are able to offer. And forgive yourself for not meeting your expectations.
10 Rules for Preachers to Stay Healthy, Wealthy in Spirit, and Wise
Whether we preach weekly or less often, there’s always another Sunday, another funeral, another wedding, another Holy Week circling back around that needs a sermon.
If we’re not careful, the things that bring us joy—our loved ones, our fascination with Scripture, and our connection to God—are in constant danger of being taken for granted.
Left untended, they wither.
How do we want to feel when we look back on our preaching careers? How do we want our loved ones to feel looking back on them?
Here are ten rules to keep us healthy, wealthy in spirit, and wise—for the long haul.
Preaching Holy Saturday: Proclaiming Good News from the Depths of Grief & Suffering (A Guest Post)
When preachers suffer grief, loss, illness, disability, or despair, still they preach. What does it mean to preach from these depths? What are the unique gifts of preaching from Holy Saturday, that liminal space when all seems lost and yet God continues to work?
Preaching on Stewardship: Discern Three Meaningful Sermon Themes in Less than an Hour
Stewardship preaching can be full of angst because it seems so much is at stake. However, the focus on outcome moves our sermons away from the true needs of our congregations. This stewardship guide will help you reframe your stewardship preaching with a process you can complete in an hour, dozens of scriptures verses, and an example of how the process can be applied. May it encourage you in this stewardship season.
Stewardship of Time: Preaching on the One Thing We're Embarrassed to Have More Of
Most resources we guard and amass as precious stones: money, skill, assets. But there’s one resource we give away as though its scarcity were a badge of honor…
The Uncomfortable Relationship Between Preacher, Stewardship, & Congregation: 4 Revealing Conversations
During stewardship season we preach to our parishioners about the need to offer their time, talent, and treasure.
But we preachers need a different conversation.
We need a frank, "backstory" conversation about our personal dependence on parishioners' donations, and the ways money affects our relationships with parishioners and colleagues and our capacity to preach with our whole selves.
3 questions to guide sermon prep for special occasions or crisis circumstances (A Guest Post)
“As people of faith, we believe God is present and active and has a word to offer to us in all times and seasons of our individual and corporate lives.” In their book, For Every Matter under Heaven: Preaching on Special Occasions, Donna Givers-Johnston and Beverly Zink-Sawyer address specific preaching occasions that arise from calendars, celebrations, or circumstances—leading preachers through a process of preparing sermons that seek and then speak God’s word for the occasion. They introduce us to their approach in this guest post.