Preaching works! If you didn’t believe that, you probably wouldn’t be reading this article. It’s effective. The Spirit of God uses the Word of God to convict of sin, convince of truth and convert the heart. When I was growing up, people would make a “public profession of faith” before being baptized. While we don’t…
Eye contact. It’s the most uncomfortable aspect of public speaking. Why? Because when we make eye contact with people, two things happen… We know a little bit more about what someone is thinking about what we’re saying. Our listeners know a little bit more about how we’re feeling about what we’re saying. And both can…
When big news happens, pastors usually start an internal dialogue about the coming Sunday’s message. Do I preach the message I’d planned on preaching? The one I had announced and slotted perfectly into our current series? The one I’ve already spent a couple of early mornings and late nights working on? Or do I preach…
Church metrics. That’s not a very pretty phrase. In fact, for many, it seems cold. If church becomes a numbers game, then people become “just a number,” and when people are just a number, we’ve failed to emulate the ministry of Jesus. But if we fail to count anybody, we allow people to slip through…
I love being a Pastor. I’m passionate about preaching. I am humbled that God has called me to shepherd a flock of His choosing. And I especially love the fuel that fires me up – the Word of God and what it has to say about whom I am. One of my favorite passages on…
Gideon is one of my favorite Bible heroes. In my wife’s Bible class curriculum, he’s known as “G. I. Deon!” I especially love the way he’s introduced… The way Gideon sees himself: Gideon threshed wheat by the winepress, to hide it from the Midianites. ~Judges 6:11 His further questioning of God’s choice of him shows…
Do you ever get that post-sermon, anti-climactic feeling that all of your research, all of your writing, all of your preparation just got burned up in a single half-hour shot? It would be far more ideal to leave church on Sunday believing there was still much to come of the results of your preaching, even…
There are certain elements that must be included in every single sermon you ever preach. They are non-negotiable. To put it another way, every sermon you preach has three key components. Understanding them and helping them to play well together is half the battle of preaching effectively. The God Component The “God component” is what…
When your church meets in a movie theater, you understand what it is to do ministry right in the middle of the marketplace. For four years, our church plant met in two different movie theaters, each surrounded by shopping districts and restaurants. And sometimes, it got a little weird. A few times, we had to…
The title is the smallest part of a sermon. It usually doesn’t even get mentioned during the actual sermon. Professional copywriters often refer to the first line of a sales letter as the “eyebrow” because it literally looks like one, all alone at the top. But I believe the value and importance of sermon titles is severely…
Preaching the gospel is always, always a holy and sacred event. Within that special hour, the Creator empowers his messenger to boldly speak forth words that raise the spiritually dead to life new. When it comes to Easter Sunday, or Resurrection Sunday as many prefer, there is a sense in which little is actually different from the…
Preaching out to persuade people to move toward God and his purposes. The eternal destiny of the hearer literally hangs in the balance. W. A. Criswell, while speaking at Moody Bible Institute on The Romance of Expository Preaching, defined preaching as “seeking to move a man’s will God-ward.” He went on to say that teaching is instructing…
Fresh Ideas to Connect Christmas with Life
Get a copy of our FREE guide to avoiding burnout and discover what causes pastoral burnout, and how to heal so you can lead well into the future!
Where can we send this ebook?
Powerful and Relevant Illustrations Connect Christmas with Life
Inspiration to Breathe New Life to the Traditions of Christmas
