Nobody likes sounding like a broken record. But, chances are, the things that are repeat to you are things your congregation is hearing for the first time. Tom Fuerst shares what he learned about repetition in his preaching and how God can use it to reach people.
Do you have places in your sermon when you can tell you are losing your congregation’s attention, but you don’t know why? Tom Fuerst explains what he learned when he dug in and figured out the problem. The solution may surprise you!
And the difference between those who knew Christ and those who did not was simply a matter, not of faith or confession or creed, but of fruit and character.
When we use illustrations that are beyond the scope, the everyday experience, of our hearers, there’s an higher chance they illustration will miss them altogether. They may even intellectually grasp the message, but they will not feel it, relate to, or see themselves in it.
For many of us, when we read the Bible, we read it from the perspective of people who need encouragement, therapy, challenge, hope, or even love. These are all good things that we do, indeed, need. But usually these needs arise from a larger situation that involves someone or something hurting us. For example, we need encouragement because a boss is berating us. We need therapy because of a conflict in our family of which we see ourselves as the victim. We need challenge because we find it hard to keep pressing on. We need hope because our situation seems hopeless. And we need love because we lack self-esteem.
Again, these are all fine. But I wonder if they don’t eventually become habits of reading that blind us to other things we may need.
Wisdom is not just an intelligence bomb that God drops on us one day when we get our first gray hair. It’s not an intellectual realization that hits us one day simply because we’re aged. We’ve all known older folks who are foolish. No, wisdom has less to do with gray hair and more to do with the experience of suffering and making the choice during that suffering to continue to live in engagement with God
Not too long ago I had to preach on divorce. By had I mean I had no other choice. If given the option, I would have avoided it altogether. I would have dug under it, flown over it, or march all the way around it.
But this isn’t just something Christ did that was different than how God had previously revealed himself. Rather, God, from the beginning, has been challenging our understandings of the way the world is.
TED Talks are known world-wide now for not only their amazing content, but their consistently quality presentations. It seems, then, that evaluating the differences in quality between the various TED talks might provide those of us who preach with some quality insight into what makes for a good sermon.
By claiming that the church is “one,” we announce that the church throughout time and space (that is, geographic location…i.e. nations) is united, not by some abstracted idea of freedom, but by the Holy Spirit who liberates us from the claims of human structures and governments.
The apostles don’t see themselves as CEOs or slaves to the church. They see themselves as fulfilling a specific duty for the church: the ministry of the word of God and prayer. Everything else was dropped from their plate. And not only did the church not look down on them or call them lazy for a desire to emphasize these two tasks alone, but this suggestion “pleased the whole community.”
Creation, time, space, love, truth, goodness, and beauty are not afterthoughts in God’s plan to save the world. Each plays an intricate role in that plan. Each contributes something the overall whole of the gospel. Each reminds us of God’s good intentions for his world and the inhabitants thereof. And no matter your eschatology, you are called to live in creation, time, space, love, truth, goodness, and beauty at least until God takes you out of this world.
