Just read a great blogpost by Christopher Bernard, titled I Need to Cover My Mouth When I Preach. Here’s what he had to say about our tendency to want to speak for God in our preaching…

“There is a real danger in pastoral work. Th...

Recently, Erwin Stutzman (Eastern Mennonite Seminary) led a group of us homiletics professors in a discussion of vocal coaching in the classroom. Frankly, this has never been a primary focus for me, given the priority of helping students get the biblical text righ...

I had the privilege of presenting a workshop discussion at EHS a week or so ago. Speaking to a sub-group of homiletics teachers, I was interested to discuss whether or not our understanding of our task out to be expanded to consider those...

Now this has potential!

YouVersion, the top downloaded Bible app for iphone and Blackberry has just announced an intriguing new product. YouVersion Live
offers a way to allow ordinary preachers to get much more interactive in their preaching. The fol...

One of my students offered an excellent metaphor for preaching yesterday. He asked that we imagine an old-style record player with the vinyl record and its grooves serving as the message that we preach from God’s Word. As preachers we are the needle that fit...

There is a rhythm to preaching that is hard to understand. We all know what it feels like when we are able to get our sermon in "the groove. Some weeks we have it and some weeks we don’t. It’s better when we have it!

As I prepare I have beg...

It’s been a while since I have done a full powerpoint presentation for a sermon. I know that this is supposed to mean that my preaching will be less effective and somehow less culturally relevant. The truth is, however, I don’t think anyone has missed ...

A quote from Choosing to Preach, pages 250-51…

“We just don’t expect much from God when set to preaching. Many preachers believe that God will speak through his Word but that it will happen in some muted sense. We don’t expe...

Have you ever tried to articulate what bad preaching sounds like? We might not be able to describe it, but we know it when we hear it. Robert Reid from Dubuque University and author of The Four Voices of Preaching offers his take on plagiarism, exploitation, and o...

Will video venues eventually mean the death of preaching? This is the provocative idea argued by Bob Hyatt on his bob.blog.

Hyatt cites Shane Hipps in his book Flickering Pixels, who suggests that “every medium when pushed to an extreme, will reverse ...

Last week Tony Campolo spoke in our chapel service at ACTS Seminaries. He was his usual, provocative self, describing the difference between older evangelicals and younger evangelicals, at least as he sees it. I was generally appreciative...

Dave McClellan, a preacher, homiletician, and friend, has just launched Preach By Ear, a website and DVD designed to help preachers more effectively preach without notes. McLellan offers several short videos on the website that introduce ...

A theme has been developing in my end of semester conversation with students. We seem to be learning that there is a correlation with the amount of dialogue that occurs with listeners in a good sermon and the size of the group that is participating. This might see...

One of my students asked an interesting question yesterday. We had been listening to various student preachers and had observed that there was quite a difference in style between the various contributers. Some of the preachers were dramaic and dynamic – othe...

Whether or not you supported Barack Obama in the recent election, you have to appreciate him for his oratorical skill. Nurtured in the African-American preaching tradition, Obama inspires with his sweeping rhetoric. The man is a truly effective public speaker. Som...

Many of us know the stress and pressure that comes with the candidating process. We want to put our best foot forward, but we do not want to make such a good impression that we are never able to live up to it in the future. I remember hearing an older pastor years...

I came across the following passage, yesterday, as I was reading Marisha Pessl’s Special Topics in Calamity Physics. The novelist is describing a memorial service for her protagonist’s private school teacher and mentor.

“Johnson w...

A variation to powerpoint that I used to good effect this past Sunday was a title slide. I was having difficulty finding just the right pictures to match my taglines for my sermon on 1 Samuel 17. The problem wasn’t that there weren’t enough ways to ima...

A recent major writing project gave me the opportunity to consider the difference between what I do as a writer and what I do as a preacher. I love having written. I put a lot into the things I publish. I have deep affection for some of the sections you will find ...

Pronouncing the benediction at the end of a sermon or service of worship is a lost art. For some it might seem a little too liturgical. For others it might seem a little old-fashioned. I’d like to suggest that the practice ought to be resurrected. There is s...

I spotted this on Amazon Daily this morning. It was included in one of those annoying emails that people send each other. It is, however, based on a Cambridge University study that has some interesting implications.

> fi yuo cna raed tihs, yuo hvae a sgt...

One of my students made an interesting statement to me recently about the value of editing one’s sermon. “I want to make sure that there is no wasted energy in the sermons I present.”

I appreciated that particular turn of phrase. ...

I’ve noticed something about some of the better-known preachers of our time. They’re all funny! People like Rick Warren, Rob Bell, Andy Stanley, Erwin McManus – these guys really crack me up. They know how to tell a story that is both insightful ...

One of the potential negatives for preachers who work without notes is the potential for annoying verbal tics. These meaningless expressions fill the empty spaces in our speaking when we are subconsciously uncomfortable with silence or when we are nervous about wh...

I just came across an interesting piece by Brian McLaren on the impact of technology and the video projection of preachers into alternate venues. Perhaps the most famous such preacher is Paul Yonggi Cho who is closed-circuit broadcast to hundreds of thousands of p...

I’ve been reading the Confessions of St. Augustine as part of my devotional life recently. Before Augustine was a bishop and theologian he was a rhetorician, captivated by the promise and lure of eloquence. That enthusiasm began to wane, however, as...

John Chrysostom, the well-known fourth century preacher was famous for his eloquence. Nicknamed “the golden mouth” he was better known for the grandness of his speech than for the content of his sermons. Understandably, this began to grate on him.

Yesterday my wife participated in our pastor’s sermon by illustrating his sermon with a simultaneous sermon painting. What’s that, you ask? Let me try to explain.

Brian Stewart was preaching from Philippians 2:15 about how we are to shine as lig...

Further to my earlier posts this week, Tony emailed me with the following…

John Wayne quote: “Talk low, talk slow and don’t say
much”.

UPSPEAK:

Upspeak is the habit of raising your infle...

These days I hear an awful lot of up-speak. You know what I’m talking about – that quizzical turning-up of the voice at the end of our statements. It’s a vocal way of punctuating our statements with a question mark as if to say that we’re n...

I had a fantastic opportunity today to sit in on a class taught by Tony Alcantar at the Vancouver Academy of the Dramatic Arts (VADA). Tony is a veteran Christian actor and comedian out of the Second City environment who is tired of liste...

Having heard hundreds of students preach in my various classes, I’ve discovered that there is a limit to a person’s “dynamic range.” Like a musician that can sing over multiple octaves, some preachers are capable of hitting the high notes a...

I am one of those preachers that play golf. Most of the time my golf game is a lesson in humility, a kind of willing mortification of the flesh that reminds me that for all my supposed spirituality, my conquest of the physical world is tenuous at best. Preachers d...

This summer I read The Power of Persuasive Preaching by Ben J. Katt. Katt is an expert in public speaking and has brought those skills to bear on the practice of preaching. Like my “Preaching With…” books, this book is written in a narra...

We’ve been doing some renovations on our home recently which has meant a lot of moving things around. One of the bigger headaches in this process has been getting the stereo and television components set up in a new location. This has become an incredibly co...

Last night my wife and I attended a play at the Vancouver Playhouse. We are subscribers and as such, attend about five plays each year. Some of them, like last night’s production of Vigil by Morris Panych are outstanding. Sometimes, not so much.

One of my students told me about a recent experience preaching through a series of cell phone interruptions. A listener’s phone rang at least six times during the service, eventually causing the preacher to stop the sermon. As it turned out, the telephone ca...

I’ve observed a phenomenon in my preaching, whenever I preach a sermon more than once. It’s always better the second time around. The third time is better yet. Perhaps, in churches that offer more than three services, there is some point at which impro...

I’ve found it interesting this week to contrast two of my students whose preaching (and personal) style is very different. One of the guys is energetic, passionate – the kind of guy who makes his presence felt wherever he is. Everybody likes him. The o...

Another interesting paper presented at this year’s meeting of the Evangelical Homiletics Society was Joseph Webb’s “The Unusual Role of Long-Term Memory in Preaching the Contemporary Sermon.” Webb, who teaches preaching at Palm Beach Atlant...

Last weekend my family and I saw a street performer who’s only real skill seemed to be able to “catch a catapulting cabbage on a spike on his head.” At one point in the performance he spoke to all the children in the crowd. “When you see so...

Listening to the speakers at this week’s Willow Creek Leadership Summit I have been struck by just how funny everybody is. Patrick Lencioni, Jim Collins, and even Bill Hybels all used humor to great effect. Andy Stanley was hilarious. Not that anybo...

Preparing for Sunday is more complicated than it used to be. Now, on top of the eight to twelve hours needed to prepare a serious biblical sermon, we have to add two or three more to prepare the PowerPoint presentation.
I was discussing this with a pastor re...

Years ago, I had a regular opportunity to preach on a local Sunday morning radio program. One day the producer and I had a conversation about the nature of radio communication. The secret to effective radio, she told me, was to forget about the fact that there are...

Being a preacher is a little like being a FedEx employee. We’re delivering a package, in this case a message. The message isn’t ours. It belongs to someone else. Our responsibility is simply that it be delivered intact and on time. FedEx employees are ...

When Isaiah entered the temple (Isaiah 6), he experienced the presence of God in a powerful way. Seraphs were flying, smoke was billowing, and the doorposts were shaking because God was present and he had something to say. I’m not sure I have ever literally ...

Years ago I found myself faced with a daunting preaching responsibility. I was young and feeling unprepared for the challenge in front of me. An older pastor, a mentor to me, looked me in the eye and said, “The old time pastors used to talk about ‘unct...

If preachers want to speak so that listeners can hear they will have to learn to speak the listener’s language. We will need to learn to speak “oral.” In North Amerlca, statistics tell us that 45 to 48 per cent of the general population is either...

“In 1993 the United States’ National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) released the results of the National Adult Literacy Survey (NALS). The survey tested participants in their ability with prose (edi...

The manner of preparing one’s notes for preaching (if notes are used at all) is about as varied and personal as preachers are themselves. Within a range of options, preachers ought to feel free to adopt any method that helps them to be as comfortable (or unc...