Someone has said that you know it was a good sermon when you find yourself asking how the preacher knew all about you. That’s a nice sentiment that points to the importance of applicational relevance in preaching. Now allow me to give you my statement. This is not a complete statement, or a forever statement. It’s a today statement. I heard a great sermon this morning. (This post was written a couple of weeks back at Keswick, in case you’re wondering!) So I heard a great sermon. Here’s my statement, “you know it was a good sermon when twelve hours later you find yourself still pondering the powerful but simple take home truth, reminiscing over the clear images used to drive home the main points, reflecting on how engaged you felt by the message and the messenger, how excited you were, and still are, to look at the text, to pray through all that hit home, to take stock of your life in light of the text, to respond and be transformed by the message.” That’s my sentiment tonight that points to the importance of so knowing your text that you can take listeners by the hand and enter into it fully, of so thinking through your presentation that you have clear and concise main thoughts, an overwhelming master idea, an engaging manner of delivery, a contagious energy in presentation, a reliance on the Lord to move in peoples’ lives, and a targeted relevance to the listeners before you. Simple really, pull those things together and you’ll probably preach a decent message!
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Simply Good Preaching
Paul Harvey Don’t miss our contributor Christopher Jones’s piece over at Juvenile Instructor : ” ‘ Owned by the White People’: America and Native Americans in Church History Sunday School Lessons, 1934. ” Going through some boxes of old material while packing and moving, Chris reflects on Mormon providentialist interpretations, as communicated in Sunday School lessons, on the founding of America, and on relations with Native peoples. Some of it is kind of standard-issue stuff for that period: heroic and virtuous Pilgrims, God preparing the way for the coming of our Christian civilization, and so on.
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Owned by the White People
In today’s Gospel from St. John, Jesus tells his disciples that “unless a grain of wheat fall to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it does, it produces much fruit.” The first thing that comes to mind when one hears that passage is Jesus’ own death and resurrection.
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Letting the Grains of Wheat Fall to the Ground
I suspect somewhere in more than a thousand posts on here, I have mentioned once or twice about the importance of unity in a message. Order is often present, if only by virtue of the progression of the text. Progress is sort of present, inasmuch as the number of verses are running out, as is the available time. But all too often, in preaching in some circles, the sense of unity is negligible or just plain vague. Too many messages are essentially a series of points united by a common textual source and a title. This is not the inherent unity that is there in the text. Often messages are essentially a vague-subject completed. Three things about our title. Four aspects of such and such. This is not really reflecting the unity that is present in a unit of thought. Sometimes I wonder if we might be forcing texts into sermonic structures, rather than structuring sermons in such a way as to effectively communicate the texts
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Have I Mentioned This Before?
Amritsar, Punjab: To prevent eruption of controversies over books and films based on the Sikh religion, gurbani, history and culture, the five Sikh high priests have directed the SGPC to constitute a “censor board” comprising Sikh scholars to examine and clear books and films before their formal release.
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Sri Akal Takht Sahib directs SGPC to form ‘censor board’
Paul Harvey We’ve had a number of posts here in the past where folks have reflected on their experiences researching in various archives. One of my most enjoyable was a couple of weeks years ago at the Amistad Research Center at Tulane, where I dipped a bit into the massive archives of the American Missionary Association, the Congregationalist enterprise which after the Civil War was heavily involved in education for the freedpeople. At the time of this research, I was thinking of a good deal of the literature on postwar black education, leading to “industrial” schools; that literature focused on missionary paternalism.
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Education for Liberation: The American Missionary Association from Reconstruction through Civil Rights
Paul Harvey Once again, it has happened, and I am happy. Every time I think my field of study (religion in the South) is disappearing as a distinctive entity — every time I start assuming that regional homogeneity is the order of the day, that immigration has fundamentally changed religious patterns, that the Journal of Southern Religion will have to close up shop — Gallup or somebody does a survey and finds plus ça change, and all that.
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Survey Says . . . . . You Southernists Still have a Job!
A Muslim Frenchman cited by officials as a reason behind a crackdown on polygamy has been charged with aggravated rape, the state prosecutor said Sunday. Xavier Ronsin said Lies Hebbadj , who lives in the Nantes region of western France, was charged with aggravated rape based on a complaint from a former companion
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Muslim man at centre of French firestorm over polygamy charged with aggravated rape
So I started into Spurgeon’s Lectures and got about, well, more or less, about a page in before I was “arrested” by his helpful thinking. Here’s a taster … We are, in a certain sense, our own tools, and therefore must keep ourselves in order. If I want to preach the gospel, I can only use my own voice; therefore I must train my vocal powers
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How is Your Preaching Toolbox?
Sudbury’s Ted Holland says he was molested by Catholic priest William Hodgson Marshall — now facing charges of molesting four boys in Windsor — and later paid hush money.
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Basilians say money was to help alleged victim heal