Here are some preaching-related resources from this past week all nicely packaged up on one page.
Let the Tone of Your Sermon Match the Tone of Your Text – Trevin Wax
Giving these various moods and tempos, styles and emotions will bring to your people a rich sense of the varied nature of how God speaks through human agency. Let the Bible become as variegated to you as you would like it to be to them. God does after all speak in various ways his wonders to perform.
The Fourth Ingredient – Peter Mead
When I evaluate preaching, I always include a fourth necessary ingredient: Interpersonally Engaging. Good preaching needs to be biblical, clear, relevant and engaging.
Download My Fee Sermon Illustration Ebook “Show Then Tell” Today – Erik McKiddie
Today I’m pleased to give away a free ebook, Show Then Tell: 52 Illustrations for Believing and Living the Gospel. It contains original, hand-crafted illustrations that will point the people you teach to Jesus. I hope you find it helpful.
Don’t Pack Too Much in Your Sermons – Erik Raymond
As preachers or Bible study leaders, this is good and important reminder: We can’t pack everything into every message. Let me give you a few reasons why and then how we can pack it more effectively.
Saving Eutychus – The Briefing
Our slightly tongue in cheek trailer for the new book “Saving Eutychus: How to preach God’s word and keep people awake”…
5 Quick Reasons to Manuscript Your Sermons – Erik McKiddie
I’m not saying that from now on I’ll only use a manuscript when I teach or preach. I picture myself still using an outline in more casual environments: Sunday school, retreats, Bible studies, etc. But for Sunday mornings, for the foreseeable future, I’ll be a manuscript guy. What about you?
Focusing Your Sermon – B21
Deciding what to include and leave out from sermon study is one of the most difficult tasks for young pastors in crafting sermons. Often sermons become a regurgitation of the cool things they learned in their study, instead of a focused exhortation.
The Puritan Principle: The Secret to Preaching with Power – Nicholas McDonald
This is the secret of meditation. Meditation isn’t just studying the verse you’re about to preach, and it’s not simply praying it. It’s something in between.
Who Is the Hero of Your Sermon? – Greg Breazeale
Every sermon has a hero. Every message points to some kind of rescue from financial, relational, or ethical plight. Few would argue that someone other than Christ should be this rescuer – this hero – in every sermon. But many of us think we are pointing people toward Christ, when in fact we are not. We may talk about Jesus a lot in our sermons, but ultimately we point our people toward something or someone else.
The Power of Pause in a Sermon – ProPreacher
One of the biggest mistakes that preachers make is neglecting the power of the pause.
Shall We Preach the Gospel or Morality? Part Two: Natural Virtue and Common Grace – Kevin Bauder
Part of Christian duty involves both the positive and negative proclamation of moral standards. Positively, Christians are responsible to explain how God has made the world to work, and they have a duty to point to the natural, this-worldly consequences of ignoring God’s moral law. Negatively, Christians are responsible to rebuke the works of darkness, shining the light of truth on those works so that people can see them for what they are. Preaching morality never takes the place of preaching the gospel, but it remains a non-negotiable obligation for Christians.
These links and summaries are offered for your consideration and evaluation because they relate to preaching. Their inclusion does not necessarily imply my whole-hearted commendation. I can’t even recommend everything I write. As always, read with discernment.