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Archive for December, 2007
Syndication Feeds
Posted in Uncategorized on December 31, 2007 | 1 Comment »
The Blessing of New Year
Posted in Homiletics, Preacher's Personal Life, Preaching on December 30, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
It’s the last Sunday of the year. It’s the season of gym-joining, diet-starting, habit-kicking and so on. As I come to the end of the year I tend to do my personal review in November. I ask myself two questions to kick-start my thinking process. 1 – Am I doing the most strategic ministry open [...]
Bible Read Through
Posted in Homiletics, Preacher's Personal Life, Preaching, tagged Bible, Plan, Reading on December 29, 2007 | 2 Comments »
It’s that time of year when resolutions are made, and often it is about 3-7 weeks from when they are broken! But reading through the Bible in a year is a very healthy idea for both the preacher and the congregation. Perhaps this Sunday would be the best time to mention it? Here are a [...]
Preaching Outside the Safety Zone?
Posted in Homiletics, Preaching on December 28, 2007 | 1 Comment »
As we approach the new year and are thinking through the possibilities in 2008, let us think about possibilities for ministry outside the safety zone of our own pulpits. Depending on what country you live in, and your network of contacts, there may be possibilities to serve in other strategic settings as well as your [...]
Review: Preaching with Power, edited by Michael Duduit
Posted in Homiletics, Preacher's Personal Life, Preaching, Review on December 27, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
Subtitle: Dynamic Insights from Twenty Top Pastors (2006) As editor of Preaching Magazine, Michael Duduit is able to take good content from that magazine and publish it in book form. This is exactly what this book is. Twenty interviews with top preachers that have appeared in Preaching Magazine and now appear in this book from [...]
When 10 is Only 7
Posted in Homiletics, Preaching, Review on December 26, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
Since every book review posted on this site can be found by clicking on the Review category in the list to the right, there is really no need to have a page of the same reviews sitting on the site too. This profound insight has spurred me to change the Books page to Top Books. [...]
Practicing What I Preach
Posted in Homiletics, Preacher's Personal Life, Preaching on December 24, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
For many preachers life is lived in reverse. People take Sunday off and come to church. It’s no day-off for us. People finish work and come home in the evening, but sometimes we have to preach, teach or lead then. And the season of relaxed family time easily becomes the busy and draining season for [...]
The Wonder of Christmas
Posted in Homiletics, Preacher's Personal Life, Preaching, tagged Advent, Christmas, Ministry, Pastor, Professionalism on December 23, 2007 | 1 Comment »
One of the great occupational hazards of ministry is that we can so easily lose the wonder of what we are dealing with. With the demands of the schedule, the expectations of people, the burden of creativity in a season that comes every twelfth month (but is only fully reported in two gospels), the ongoing [...]
Thriving in the People / Passage Tension
Posted in Audience Analysis, Homiletics, Preaching, Stage 2 - Passage Study, tagged Brooks on December 22, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
Phillip Brooks said something along these lines: He never went to his study and looked in the Bible that he didn’t see his people’s faces running across his study. When he went out to meet his people, his study would beckon and he would see the Bible. This tension is not a reason for frustration. [...]
Don’t Half Quit
Posted in Homiletics, Preacher's Personal Life, Preaching on December 21, 2007 | 2 Comments »
There are always reasons to quit. This is true in anything you pursue. Sport, music, hobby, fitness, work, ministry, marriage. Anyone who has ever been successful at anything has had to overcome numerous opportunities to quit. How true is that in preaching? There are few things that can compare with it – how important it [...]
A Preacher’s Personal Cloud
Posted in Homiletics, Preacher's Personal Life, Preaching on December 20, 2007 | 1 Comment »
It is too easy to get caught up in present ministry and future plans, but forget past blessings. As a preacher, whether you have only just begun or have been ministering for decades, you are not a self-made preacher. The truth is that people have marked you. Your ministry now is partly the result of [...]
New Category
Posted in Homiletics, Preacher's Personal Life, Preaching on December 18, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
Just to let you know that we’ve added a new category in the menu to the right. If you click on “Preacher’s Personal Life” you will be given a list of all the posts related to this vital subject. Hope that is helpful.
Preaching Passion – Checking the Foundations
Posted in Homiletics, Preacher's Personal Life, Preaching, tagged Delight, Passion, Sibbes on December 18, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
According to Augustine, our task is to say what God says. One of our core convictions must be that when the Bible speaks, God speaks. So let’s take a moment or two to run a quick evaluative test to make sure our passion in preaching has not grown pale. These three indicators are by no [...]
Review: Preaching the Gospel from the Gospels, by George Beasley-Murray
Posted in Genre, Homiletics, Preaching, Review, Stage 2 - Passage Study, tagged Gospels, Johannine, Synoptics on December 16, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
This book is far more a book on the Gospels than it is on preaching. It would serve well as a reference tool for the gospels, having an accessible scripture index included. Yet while not addressing homiletics very much, what it does is share a fundamental conviction that the gospels were written out of preaching, [...]
Top Trumps: Genuineness
Posted in Delivery, Homiletics, Preacher's Personal Life, Preaching, tagged Confidence, Rhetoric, Speech on December 15, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
My post on the 12th, Do They Know That You Know?, received a helpful comment. I wrote that “The preacher must build confidence in the listeners; confidence that the preacher knows the message, knows how it will progress and knows when it will end.” The comment in response included this statement, “A good balance of [...]
Sermon Preparation – How Long?
Posted in Homiletics, Preaching on December 14, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
Some people wonder how long it takes to prepare a sermon. Some seem blissfully unaware of what it takes. But honestly, is there a right amount of time? Someone famous (you can remind us who it was), said a sermon takes a lifetime to prepare. That is certainly true. I had an instructor that suggested [...]
The Heart of Biblical Ministry
Posted in Homiletics, Preaching, tagged Mentoring on December 13, 2007 | 4 Comments »
If you study through the Scriptures, it is clear that ministry is not just about the crowds. There is certainly that large-scale aspect to ministry, but we must always be alert to the smaller-scale ministry of mentoring. Moses led the Israelites, but mentored Joshua. Elijah prophesied to a nation, but mentored Elisha. Jesus could certainly [...]
Getting to Grips with the Genres: Narrative (2)
Posted in Genre, Homiletics, How to . . . ?, Preaching, Specific text, Stage 2 - Passage Study on December 11, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
So if narratives function through plot, how does that look in 2 Samuel 11 and following? What is the rhetorical impact of the story of David and Bathsheba? Narrative affects the reader/hearer through association or disassociation with/from the main characters. The story contains five parts. Background/Introduction: David should be at war like the other kings, [...]





