Preaching Tips

In a day and age when prayer meetings are becoming a thing of the past, you’re to be commended for keeping them alive!  You have the heart and desire to lead your congregation in prayer or you wouldn’t be here, so let’s talk about the “how to’s” of a prayer…

Preaching is a calling.  It is a skill.  In many ways, it is an art.  Pick up a book on preaching, and you will find a definition of preaching.  John Broadus says in his book On the Preparation of and Delivery of Sermons, “Preaching is the proclamation of God’s message by…

Public speakers who maintain a conversational tone have a better chance of keeping their audience engaged. Constantly looking down at notes hinders the conversational nature of a presentation and causes your audience to lose interest. So how can you prepare and then speak without notes?  Below I will present three steps towards speaking without notes, but…

Upon writing this blog, it is my desire to help the reader in designing and preparing a sermon.  If this is our “calling” to preach or to pastor, then we are also called to master the art of sermon design and delivery.  I will leave it to other “experts” on…

Not long ago, the preaching world was rocked by the story of two well-known pastors who preached a sermon virtually word-for-word that belonged to another pastor. Their sermons raised some serious questions and caused some much-needed soul-searching. Today, let’s answer the question, “When is someone else’s sermon just inspiration, and…

Many people claim various places are sacred. In a recent family trip out west, we visited the sacred grounds of the Black Hills. Several years before we visited our nation's military cemetery, Arlington National Cemetery which is reported to be sacred ground. UNESCO's World Heritage include the Alamo, Yellowstone, and…

If reporters interviewed pastors after worship as they do NFL athletes after Sunday games, I imagine I would step up to the podium and say: ''We gave it our best effort out there today but we came up short. Yes, I spoke about the second person plural of the Greek…

Contents Pray without CeasingLike a Broken Record, Read the Text Over & Over AgainStudy Like It’s Finals WeekBrainstorm - All Ideas Are “Good” IdeasFocus Like a LaserTime to Write There is no one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to how to write a sermon. Everyone has their own method, but there…

If you are anything like me, by this time in mid-December you have almost completed the pulling out of all of your hair, leaving your scalp bare and an ulcer or two in your stomach just in time for the eggnog and neighborhood caroling. Add the fact that you are…

Most pastors and Bible teachers immediately recognize the power of a well-told illustration. It engages the heart of those listening and allows the mind's eye to see truth through the application of something familiar. Ignoring the use of skillfully chosen illustrations in your sermons will lessen their effectiveness and cause…