Tim Challies reminds us to tend to our own families before we seek the approval of others. What if all the blog readers are impressed but my wife is entirely unimpressed? There are many pastors who are loved all around the world but who have earned very little respect in their own church. There are …
Robbed Hell – C.A.S.T. Pearls Presents from Canon Wired on Vimeo.
“Jokes don’t really have a place in sermons. To tell a joke that is obviously set down in a sermon without any relationship to the thrust of the sermon, is to risk trivialization of the sermon. Yet when the gospel, laid next to the human condition, produces humor, then I think it’s fine to let …
“I must make clear in my preaching that I preach what I have been told to preach. I serve the text, not those who listen. I must thereby help my listeners recover the adventure of being those who are baptized to listen to the text, those who bear the burden and the blessing of bending …
I’ve recently begun a new sermon series from the Psalms leading up to Easter. I had to collect some resources for this series, and thought I’d share with you some that have already been beneficial to me. I’m sure you may have some of your own that you would like to suggest. Psalms from the …
Getting to know our neighbors is not always an easy endeavor in today’s society. My good friend Ben Stevens has written an article, “To Love Your Neighbor, You Must Know Your Neighbor,” that can help us in this important aspect of the Christian life. As pastors, we need to encourage our people to get to …
“My colleague, Stanley Hauerwas, was recently asked about the moral confusion of contemporary clergy. Hauerwas said something to the effect that, ‘You have these people who get out of seminary thinking that their job is to ‘help people.’ That’s where the adultery begins.’ What? ‘So you have these clergy,’ he continued, ‘ who have no …
“Pastoral care aids preaching by giving the preacher a respect for listeners in their individual struggles. In counseling troubled parishioners, preachers are with their people in intimate, personal, face-to-face encounters. The preacher who is also a pastor is therefore less likely to make sweeping, generalized, universal judgments about ‘the human condition.’ Before making pronouncements from …
“Informed imitation, that’s our goal. We don’t listen to the preaching of others so that we can be slavish imitators. We listen as fellow artists, as those who have learned enough about preaching to know competence when we hear it, to respect the ways in which more experienced practitioners of our craft can teach us. …
Hugh Latimer was a popular preacher of the English Reformation known for his “homely, rustic touch…he spoke from the heart and his words went…to the heart.” His best known sermon is his “The Sermon of the Plough.” Read a couple of excerpts below. And now I would ask you a strange question; who is the …