Archive for the 'Preaching' Category

Pray that your pastor preaches to the whole choir

Published on July 29, 2010 in Preaching. 1 Comment

Here is a post that will help you better pray for your pastor(s) and his preaching. 

Kevin DeYoung has written about the different sections of the figurative choir that preaching needs to address.  This points to one of most challenging aspects of pastoral ministry and preaching.  We need to constantly address a very wide range of people.

I’m no expert in preaching, neither in its theory nor in the actual doing of it. But one thing I’ve learned is that there are different kinds of people in the congregation who need to hear different sorts of things. Obviously, no sermon can be all things to all people. We must stick with the theme presented in the text. We must preach within our own personalities. Most of all, we must trust the Spirit to preach a better sermon to each heart than the one we deliver.

But still, there’s wisdom in considering what different segments of the church may need to hear. The Puritans were masters at this, often dissecting the congregation into different categories and applying the word accordingly. Early in my ministry I developed a fourfold schema that has served me well. In every sermon I try to remember that I’m preaching to the weary, the wandering, the lazy, and the lost. You may have different categories, but I find these four helpful for keeping my sermons fresh, relevant, and not too lopsided in any one direction.

The Weary

These faithful saints need compassion and encouragement. They are fighting the good fight, but they are struggling in some way. Maybe their kids are wayward, or the test results were not hopeful . . .

Read the rest here.

Where Christianity stands or falls

Published on June 13, 2010 in Preaching. 0 Comments

P.T. Forsyth:

It is, perhaps, an overbold beginning, but I will venture to say that with its preaching Christianity stands or falls. . .

With preaching, Christianity stands or falls because it is the declaration of the Gospel.  Nay more – - far more – - it is the Gospel prolonging and declaring itself.

Does your prayer this morning for your pastor reflect a belief that Christianity stands or falls with its preaching?

Are you ready for Sunday?

Published on May 21, 2010 in Church and Preaching. 3 Comments

Why not spend some time on Friday and Saturday plowing the ground in your life in preparation for Sunday?

We are told men ought not to preach without preparation.  Granted.  But we add, men ought not to hear without preparation.  Which, do you think needs the most preparation, the sower or the ground?  I would have the sower come with clean hands, but I would have the ground well-plowed and harrowed, well-turned over, and the clods broken before the seed comes in.  It seems to me that there is more preparation needed by the ground, than by the sower, more by the hearer than by the preacher.  Charles Spurgeon.

Quoted in the recommended, Expository Listening, by Ken Ramey.

The obvious place to begin in improving the health of a local church

Published on May 16, 2010 in Preaching and Quotes. 2 Comments

Mark Dever:

If a healthy church is a congregation that increasingly displays the character of God as his character has been revealed in his Word, the most obvious place to begin building a healthy church is to call Christians to listen to God’s Word. God’s Word is the source of all life and health. It’s what feeds, develops, and preserves a church’s understanding of the Gospel itself.

Arturo Azurdia: “The efficacious empowerment of the Spirit of God is indispensable to the ministry of proclamation.”

Published on April 24, 2010 in Church, Prayer and Preaching. 0 Comments

Would you pray for the preaching of the Word in your church tomorrow?

The efficacious empowerment of the Spirit of God is indispensable to the ministry of proclamation. Arturo Azurdia

Calvin: The preaching of the Word serves “To make our faith firm and steadfast, even to our dying day”

Published on April 8, 2010 in Church, Preaching and The Red Brick Church. 0 Comments

I am thankful that during my sabbatical I leave our pulpit in the capable hands of men like Mike Wittmer, Bob Bixby, and Jeremy Scott.  I remind our flock that we need to hear the Word preached, even to our dying day.

A quote from Calvin:

But St. Paul tells us that so long as we are in this world, we must continue to profit in God’s school, and have our ears beaten daily with his Word, that we may on the one hand be checked, and on the other hand be strengthened and set forward more and more. . . Therefore God’s vouchsafing to have his Word preached to us even to our dying day, serve to make our faith firm and steadfast. John Calvin[1]

[1] John Calvin, Sermons on the Epistle to the Ephesians, Rev. translation. ed. (London: Banner of Truth Trust, 1973), 377.

A Window into a Pastor’s World

Published on March 27, 2010 in Leadership and Preaching. 2 Comments

“and [pray] also for me, that words may be given to me in opening my mouth boldly to proclaim the mystery of the gospel, Ephesians 6:19

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The point of this is not to complain about my schedule – - I am so thankful God has called me to be a pastor.  Rather, my goal is to encourage our people to pray that the Spirit would work in conjunction with the proclamation of the Word.

For those of you who aren’t “Bricks in the Valley,” my schedule is not a lot different than most pastors.  Would you pray in a special way for your pastor this weekend?  Pray, in particular, that whenever he opens his mouth, Words would be given to him to preach the Gospel with boldness (Ephesians 6:19).

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This morning Allison has a softball doubleheader, but I don’t feel like I can take the time to go the games.  (I have already been at several softball games).  Here’s why:

  • Between our church and a conference, I preached six times last weekend – - so, I’ve been swamped in general.
  • This weekend I am on an ordination council this afternoon which will fill up the afternoon and evening.
  • Tomorrow morning I am preaching from Romans – -
  • Tomorrow afternoon I am preaching at an ordination service (1 Peter 5:1-4).
  • Monday I am leading a funeral service in the suburbs.
  • I really need to get another chapter of the book I am working on drafted.

What Paul faced and what Paul did

Published on March 23, 2010 in Preaching. 0 Comments

What Paul faced (per Will Willimon):

Imagine being asked to stand before a grand gathering of the good and the wise and being asked to make a speech about goodness, beauty, the meaning of life, the point of history, the nature of Almighty God, or some such high subject and having no material at your disposal but an account of a humiliating, bloody execution at a garbage dump outside a rebellious city in the Middle East.  It is your task to argue that this story is the key to everything in life and to all that we know about God.  This was precisely the position of Paul in Corinth.  Before the populace of this cosmopolitan, sophisticated city of the empire, Paul had to proclaim that this whipped, blood, scorned, and derided Jew from Nazareth was God With Us.  (Will Willimon, Proclamation and Theology, page 66).

What Paul did:

And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.(1 Co 2:1-5).

Tim Keller: “If you can sink this deep into your heart, you’ll be an unsinkable person.”

Published on March 20, 2010 in Preaching and eschatology. 0 Comments

If you are feeling disillusioned about the Christian life, I recommend this sermon from Tim Keller on biblical hope.  Not only is it tremendous preaching, but Keller also talks about the beginning of Redeemer Presbyterian church.

Some of the quotes I took from this sermon.

The English word that always translates the Greek word for “hope” never translates it well.

Biblical hope is life changing certainty about the future . . . being certain about the future in a way that affects how you live now.

You and I are unavoidably and irreducibly hope based creatures.  We are controlled how we live now, but what we think will happen latter.  Christian hope has to do with the ultimate future, not the immediate.

Keller quotes three things Jonathan Edwards (in a sermon on Christian hope and happiness) says about Christian hope.

(1) Your bad things will turn out for the ultimate good.

(2)  Your good things can never be taken away from you.

(3)  The best things are yet to come.

One more Keller quote:

People who do not have a proper understanding of Christian hope are always freaked out.

Here to listen.

More on preaching as “logic on fire”

Published on March 14, 2010 in Preaching. 0 Comments

Yesterday, I posted that we should be praying for fires when the Word is preached in our local churches (see here). 

Below are more quotes on unction or Spirit empowered boldness and clarity.

“We are not inspired as the apostles were, but the Spirit of inspiration illumines our minds and grants unction to our lips as we, too, seek to combine spiritual truths with spiritual words.” Edmund Clowney[1]

“It appears to me that in the Bible, it is the message that is anointed by God as much as the messenger. Unction seems to live in God-given messages, as fire dwells in lava. The fire is in the message and the warning to the preacher is not to let it cool. Unction is not so much poured out as lifted up and delivered . . .when we faithfully reiterate Scripture, when our exposition exhales what the Lord has breathed into it, when our hearts are impassioned with Bible truth and our characters are refined by its heat, there is unction.” Lee Eclov[2]

“What is preaching? Logic on fire! Eloquent reason! Are these contradictions? Of they are not. Reason concerning this Truth ought to be mightily eloquent, as you see it in the case of the Apostle Paul and others. It is theology on fire. And a theology which does not take fire, I maintain, is a defective theology.”[3] David Martyn Lloyd-Jones.

“What is [unction]? It is the Holy Spirit falling upon the preacher in a special manner. It is an access of power. It is God giving power, and enabling, through the Spirit, to the preacher in order that he may do this work in a manner that lifts it up beyond the efforts and endeavours of man to a position in which the preacher is being used by the Spirit and becomes the channel through whom the Spirit works.” David Martyn Lloyd-Jones.[4]

[1] Edmund P. Clowney and Gerald Lewis Bray, The Church, Contours of Christian Theology (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1995), 251.

[2] Lee Eclov, "How Does Unction Function?," in The Art and Craft of Biblical Preaching, ed. Haddon Robinson and Craig Brian Larson (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2005), 82, 84.

[3] D. Martyn LLoyd-Jones, Preaching and Preachers (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1972), 97.

[4] Ibid., 305.