As a rowdy class leaves and I have a moment before the next comes in I can take the time to reflect on something I have heard. And more often than not I end up thinking, “If I preached that passage I’d …” or “I’d never have thought of …”

I am definately more likely to have a smile on my face in the day than if I just listened to the radio.

It also fires me up for preaching. It’s good to hear good sermons and I find that good practice slowly seeps in to what I do.

In addition, I think it is important to recognize that just hearing other people will, as you say, stir the “creative juices.”

Back in the day when I was trying to learn Jazz (which I never was effective doing), one book I was reading talked about a musician who never could get his Jazz concept right. The teacher asked him, “Who do you listen to?” And the student said, “I don’t listen to anybody.” The Jazz musician told the student, “you will never be an effective Jazz musician unless you listen to and love Jazz music.”

I think there is something there for us as preachers. We don’t copy the style or content of other preachers, but just listening to them will do things to us. We will see a different take on a text that we thought we fully knew. We will see how to integrate illustrations differently. We will be exposed to different approaches to structure a sermon.

I think that listening to other preachers is probably the third most important component to good preaching, behind connection to God and regular Bible reading and study. Well perhaps that is hyperbole, but you get my point…

God bless…

I am looking for excellent “contemporary” preachers who are good expositors. My first pastorate was with an elderly congregation who loved 3 points and a poem. I now have a young group with a large youth group. If you all have any names of good contemporary preachers, and even better with podcasts, I’d appreciate it.

I know it’s the same eternal gospel we preach, and even the applications will be the same through the generations, but is the way we communicate different between the builder generation and post-moderns?

Love the blog. Have referred to my friends.

Thanks, chip.

One of the hardest things I had to learn was to listen. In the past couple of years I have preached little, but have raised by game in studying homiletics and teaching homiletics. It was difficult and humbling to not preach every week. Yet I have learned much more by listening to others.