The way this blog is set up, only Mike and Peter are able to publish new posts. However, if you would like to add something to the site that is not a comment on a previous post, all is not lost! If you have a question, or a text you are wrestling with in preparation for preaching, or a book review, or an idea for a post on the blog . . . simply write a comment after any post, including this one. Before the comment is published we will see it and move it into an appropriate new post. We look forward to receiving your input … it’s all about stimulating Biblical Preaching!
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Biblical Preaching 
Hey guys, great to see this new idea come to fruition and I trust it will become an excellent resource that will bless many.
Thank you for this valuable resource. As a very ‘part time’ preacher I appreciate it but as some one interested in effective preaching I will recommend it!
In His grip!
As the others have said, thanks for the ideas, time and thought that have gone in to this. I probably preach 6 to 8 times a year, so it is helpful to share ideas and have a place to get help.
More than that though I already see this as a place to lift my head above the day to day grind and find some encouragement and something to provoke some spiritual thought rather than what normally occupies my mind (how to keep 30 teenagers behaving and learning Maths!!!!!)
Thank you,
God bless
Here’s a question about a different topic:
Preaching in the first person – do you think this could ever be used for epistolary texts? I realise people use it to good effect on narrative texts. But what about a section of epistle?
What I’m thinking is, say, first part of Galatians 5. If you were first-person Paul then it might:
a) add variety (if you’ve been working through the book)
b) enable you to communicate the historical setting well
c) perhaps enable you to strongly communicate the passion Paul had for the Galatians and the sense of exasperation he felt.
What do you reckon?
This question is now in a post on the home page with a response – May 19.
I am curious to find out how other pastors are scheduling preparation time for more than one sermon per week. Many pastors serve in traditions like my own where the pastor generally speaks not only on Sunday morning, but also evening and midweek. While Sunday morning is important because that is when the pastor will address the most people at once, there is still a struggle to develop a study cycle that does not give short shrift to Sunday evening or midweek messages. What are some helpful ways others have developed to give sufficient time to more than just Sunday morning?
Peter says – This is a huge issue for most preachers. I don’t know many that only preach once each week. While the natural tendency is to shrink preparation and go from one sermon to the next, the wise approach might be to stretch the preparation so that they overlap and have time to take root in our lives. This would be much healthier than rushing to get a sermon ready to preach. Some preachers integrate their message schedules so there is considerable overlap. Some even preach the same passage twice, but with a different approach. This allows the same exegetical work to support two sermons. Considering the recent post entitled, “Is one sermon enough?”, this would seem like a possibility worth considering. I’d be interested to hear what others say about this issue.
I’m neither clergy nor a lay preacher, just a layperson lawyer, but I find your blog very thought provoking, which I check regularly. Thank you and may you do this blog for quite awhile. (also, after a rough day, the photo you have is very calming, and the blog itself is physically very readable – thanks for those too).
Do you think it is acceptable to change the metaphor from what the Biblical writer uses to another one, to add variety or communicate more in today’s world?
For example, when I preached Galatians 5v1-15 recently I changed the metaphor from slavery/freedom to ‘how are you standing – crawling/swaggering/stooping?’ I’ll not explain what I did, because that isn’t the question, but, in principle, is this an ok thing to do, or does it suggest I think my ideas are better than the apostle Paul’s.
The reason I did it was to add variety, as we had been going through Galatians on slavery and freedom for a while, and also to try to comunicate better, as slavery is not a concept we face in everyday life.
Is this fair use of the text, or taking too much liberty?
How would you go about preaching a series from Proverbs? By chapter, by topic?
And how would you expand on these pithy sentences – by imagining what may have led to the writer writing them then? Or by illustrating their application now?
And how could you avoid merely moralising?