Great Post today from Church Marketing Sucks.
So the question that I have to ask myself is, what am I preaching for? What is the most important thing for our ministries to be preaching for?
Tag Archives: Preaching
New Years
2 JanHappy New Year to everyone! I hope you had a great time celebrating what God has done and looking forward to what God is going to do.
Last Sunday I had the privilege of speaking to our church. The Sermon was called, “Called to Exile”. You can listen to it here.
Over the break I finished up two books that were kind of related to each other. First I finished up unChristian, by Dave Kinnamon and Gabe Lyons. This is a very interesting and insightful look at the way 16-29 year-old outsiders view the Church. This book is really quite eye-opening. But I wouldn’t say that I found it surprising. I found myself agreeing with outsiders on a lot of the issues that were addressed.
The second book that I finished was Everything Must Change, by Brian McLaren. McLaren is the Emergent Church leader de facto. He has an ever evolving liberal view of faith, Jesus, the Church, so he is a little troubling to read. He makes me angry on a lot of issues, but at the same time he brings issues to light that really should be addressed. Everything Must Change intends to show that the Gospel of Jesus Christ isn’t just about salvation from sin, but it’s really a salvation that should effect and transform every aspect of human life. He is very much an idealist, but he writes with great hope that Christians would not wait for heaven to come to try to make this world a better place.
I found myself agreeing with a lot of what McLaren was saying, he does a good job of showing how revolutionary Jesus really was, and the fact that Jesus didn’t play the same game with the same rules as his counterparts. Jesus was introducing a new set of rules that went counter to the system (or as McLaren calls it story). Very intersting stuff.
If you want to wrestle this is a good book to get you thinking and wrestling. You don’t have to agree with everything McLaren says to take some good nuggets of wisdom away from it.
Preaching today
30 DecI’m preaching today. I’m excited, as I usually am. It’s a great privelege to share what God has been talking to me about with our church. I’ll post the link to the podcast on this here blog when it’s done.I went to my Bloglines this morning and I read this post. Great reminder. Have a great Sunday
Writing ahead of time
13 DecI have the privilege of speaking on Sunday December 30th. I have the general idea of what I am going to talk about, but I need to have my outline done super early because we have essential 4 services that we need to be done before next wednesday due to the christmas break that our office and staff have. And December 3oth falls right in the middle of that. Crazy busy for the office and they are incredible for getting all this stuff done. But that means that I need to get all my notes and stuff done way ahead of time, and that is a challenge for me. I really like to marinade in my topic for a while so that it really comes from my heart. When I have to get my outline in this early it kind of feels disconnected. I don’t know if that makes sense.This is a good discipline to develop though, to have things done early is better than pulling things out of thin air the night before. So I have the majority of my notes done, but I’m having a difficult time saying I’m done. I just had to get all that off my brain.
better public speaking in 250 easy steps
4 DecIt’s not really a steps thing but this is a great list for people who want to improve their public speaking skills. Read the whole list here.
Thoughts on Critics
12 NovI am taking a little break from sermon prep for my next Sunday Morning opportunity. Part of the sermon is talking about Jesus’ response to the Pharisees’ question about paying taxes to Caesar. I love the fact that Jesus doesn’t play their games. He doesn’t allow himself to come down to the the level of the critics and instead stays focused on what God has called him to do. And that’s really his response to his critics. Brilliant!
As a pastor I have to deal with criticism. No one (that I know of) is trying to kill me. But it seems like everyone knows how to do my job better than I do. And the thing that I constantly have to come back to is what has God called me to do? What am I to give back to God? That is the ultimate thing that I have to be focused on. Critics come and go and they have their opinions but those are not the most important opinions. God’s is the only opinion that matters.
What are the critics saying to you? What is God calling you to do? If you are following God you will always have critics. Something about God moving in people’s lives drives the religious or the stubborn crazy. So be kind and respectful to your critics but don’t let them change your path. Don’t let them trip you up. And most importantly don’t fight with them, don’t play their games.
New Series and stuff
5 NovHey Everybody,
last thursday we started a new series called Everyday Heroes. We looked at 1 Timothy 4.12 (one of my life verses) and we talked about setting the example as the first step to being an everyday hero. You can download it here. It was good times.
Hey while you are downloading stuff check out the creekside cast. And download some great sermons from our church’s sunday morning gatherings. We have been going through the Gospel of Matthew and it has been a blast so check it out.
Also I promised I would share this video on here, we played this before the sermon on Thursday. Enjoy!
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