Are you sitting comfortably? The answer is “probably not” if you are in the typical church pew or crammed into a packed hall with little leg room. So hopefully the sermon will be short, sharp and snappy though you’ve got a feeling that it might not be. Expository sermons have a reputation for being long… Continue reading How to listen to expository sermons
Category: Preaching and Teaching
Breaking it down and finding the flow
I’ve been writing a few posts about how I study a passage in the Bible in order to give you a feel for how to go about the close textual analysis involved in exegesis. This should be helpful to anyone who is planning to preach, lead a Bible study, teach a youth group or even… Continue reading Breaking it down and finding the flow
Going Deeper
We often talk about the need to go deeper into God’s Word. A few years back, Andrew Sach and Nigel Benyon wrote a helpful little book with the title “Dig Deeper” which was all about the tools we can use to get a better grasp on what God’s Word is saying to us. The risk… Continue reading Going Deeper
What your Bible translation does
In my previous article talking about how to slow down our reading of the Bible I mentioned that you might find it helpful to read from a different translation from time to time. I thought it might be helpful to talk a little about choosing Bible translations in terms of how they function. There are… Continue reading What your Bible translation does
Slow Down
If you take a preaching class, one of the first things you’ll start with is something called Exegesis. Exegesis is all about how we read the meaning out of (Ex) the text. This is contrasted with eisegesis, reading our own meaning and ideas into (eis) the text. The risk when preaching is that we will… Continue reading Slow Down
Why I started preaching longer sermons again
At the start of Coronavirus when we all moved church services online, the majority view was that we needed to preach shorter sermons (in fact our services overall were shorter). I agreed with this approach and followed it. I believe it was the right thing to do. You see, all the evidence seemed to point… Continue reading Why I started preaching longer sermons again
What do you see (Matthew 11:1-19)
What do you see when you look at the world around you? The chaos and uncertainty around a contested Presidential result? The devastation caused by a global pandemic. The ongoing climate change crisis? The division and hurt of racism? What do you see when you look at your own life? Weakness, failure, shame? The drudgery… Continue reading What do you see (Matthew 11:1-19)
“I don’t need no sauce on the word”
This tweet with media clip needs little explanation. Kanye West fantastically explains what expository preaching is and why we need it. For all of us preachers who are going to be tempted from time to time to be entertainers, it is worth hearing a strong exhortation from an actual entertainer that this is not our… Continue reading “I don’t need no sauce on the word”
Is it time to rethink – or even drop – our ministry training schemes?
What if we were to close down our Ministry Training Schemes and start again? Up and down the country for the past 2-30 years, churches and Gospel partnerships have been running these schemes. They tend primarily (though not exclusively) to be run from churches with high student numbers and a scheme typically involves One day… Continue reading Is it time to rethink – or even drop – our ministry training schemes?
Peace (Matthew 8:23-33)
“I just wish things could get back to normal.” Have you heard other people saying that? Have you found yourself saying it too? If I were to take you back to February and March, how did you feel then? Perhaps you were anxious but there was also the adrenalin of being in this together too… Continue reading Peace (Matthew 8:23-33)
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