Essays on Preaching (53)
  1. Time devoted to planning, to say nothing of prayer, pays-off in the long run many times over. If ever there was a vocation that need not be in a hurry, it is the cure of souls.
  2. Dear preachers, if you recoil at the prospect of sermons which are generated by algorithmic bots, then here is a first step in your resistance: Make your preparation to preach more analog.
  3. In the final analysis it isn’t a matter of whether you use rhetoric, but how. Inasmuch as your preaching is still public speaking...you’re going to get rhetorical.
  4. When God’s strong Word is wedded to beautiful human words it makes for a potent one-two punch that fells the Devil and raises the saints.
  5. What all variations of affable chatter share in common is that the preacher does not do justice to the most salient fact about him and his hearers: They are dead men walking.
  6. A solid structure, a lively skeleton, inarguably makes your messages more life-giving. They will be clearer, more interesting, and easier both to follow and to remember.
  7. But what God’s people want and need more than a perfect sermon, or even necessarily a polished one, is a true one.
  8. The ancients had a process for preparing to give a speech that has come down to us as the so-called “canons” (or stages) of rhetoric, which continues to be useful for orators of all kinds, not least preachers.
  9. “What’s the play about?” Imogene asked. “It’s about Jesus,” I said. “Everything here is,” she muttered.
  10. Today, I want to share with you one simple trick which will help to ensure the stories you tell are truly “stories,” and not just an arranging of events in supposedly narrative form.
  11. For preachers with ears to hear and eyes to see, good stories are all around us.
  12. For preachers, the inspirational element of good stories is particularly vital. But how do they do it?
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