Proclamation or Story Telling
The Pulpit is No Platform for Having a Dig at Someone
Where Can I Find the Spirit of Christ?
The Bible tells us that while Christ is not physically on earth, he makes his Spirit visible in the world through believers who exercise sacrificial love and hospitality, and through the preaching of the gospel and the administration of the sacraments.
Seven Ways the Internet Can Make Preaching More Difficult
The internet can be a great tool for preaching, but it can also be a hindrance to preaching. This article provides seven ways that the internet makes preaching difficult.
Fifteen Ways to Improve Your Preaching and Teaching
How can you become a better preacher and teacher? Here are fifteen ways of improving your preaching and teaching.
The Preaching of the Word Is the Word
The Authority of the Preaching
Preaching: An Affair of the Heart
What is the goal of preaching? Who is your preaching about? This article explains that preaching is a matter of the heart being pointed toward Christ.
The Lost Art of Preaching with Conviction
Why is preaching with conviction at the heart of effective preaching? Because such preaching is penetrating, persuasive, and personal.
Preaching to Meet Crisis Needs (Part 5)
Preaching God's Word to his people implies addressing the needs of the church through the Word. This article explains that it is important to preach to crisis needs, and identifies common crisis needs and how preaching should address them.
Preaching and Grief (Fourth in a Five-Part Series)
Preaching God's Word to his people implies addressing the needs of the church through the word. This article explains that preaching to the grieving is crucial, and identifies different kinds of grief to which preaching must speak.
Preaching to Emotional Needs (Preaching and Pastoral Care–Part Three of Five)
Preaching God's Word involves addressing the needs of the church. This article explains that preaching to the emotional needs of people is crucial. It explains the dangers of psychological preaching and addresses a proper way of preaching to emotional needs.
What Is Preaching?
We may say too much in a single sermon, we may give a field of wheat instead of a loaf of bread.
Is There No Longer a Struggle?
Preaching Is Applying the Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven
You or We?
Which personal pronouns should you use in preaching? Should it be "you and we," or "you and I"?
Information Overload
Note to Aspiring Preachers: Here Are Seven Key Pitfalls to Avoid
This article establishes that preaching is difficult work, and is not for just anyone. It presents seven key pitfalls that preachers need to avoid.
Should You Preach from a Full Manuscript?
A Pastor’s Reflections: Manuscript, Notes, or No Notes?
What preaching method works best, preaching from a manuscript, notes, or no notes?
A Pastor’s Reflections: Did I Explain the Text?
This article considers the difference between exegesis and explanation of a text, helping the preacher evaluate whether he indeed explains the text in preaching.
A Pastor’s Reflections: Did I Apply the Text?
This article considers the nature and importance of application in preaching.
A Pastor’s Reflections: Pray before You Preach
A Final Word on Self-Examination
Six Errors in Targeting Audiences
Targeting the 45-Yarder: The Indifferent Unbeliever and Those without Hope
Targeting the 35-Yarder: The Open-Conscience Unbeliever
Targeting the 25-Yarder: The Backsliding Believer and Those in Bondage
Targeting the 15-Yarder: The Growing Believer
Targeting Audiences
The Primacy of Preaching in Church Planting
Pulpit or Table: Pick Any Two: The Church Needs Both to Be Well Fed
This article wants to give encouragement to learn to cherish both preaching and the sacraments.
How the Scandal of Preaching Will Reach Our Postmodern World
This article shows how scandalous preaching is in a postmodern world. It shows what makes preaching set apart from the priorities of our age.
The External Call of the Gospel
Fruits Upon Preaching
Veggie Tales, Moralism, and Modern Preaching
What place does the imperative have in preaching? When is preaching considered moralism? This article considers the place of moral imperatives in preaching, and shows by way of examples that sometimes it is fine to take large blocks of teaching and focus on Christian morals without fear of falling prey to moralism.
Eighteen Minutes or Less: Preaching in a Distracted World
God Is Not Your Co-Pilot
Why is preaching the gospel essential to the church? Gospel preaching truly reveals the place of God and of man.
Eight Reasons the Resurrection Matters More Than You Think
Typically we stress the importance of preaching the cross of Christ. This article shows, however, that without the resurrection, eight awful truths emerge that render the faith as false.
Three Mysteries of Preaching We Don't Appreciate
What is preaching? It is God's Word in action, God's chosen tool, and for God's people.
On Technology and Preaching
This article explains that the greatest risk in using technology in preaching is not distraction but missing God himself.
Life-Changing Sermons
I Am a Sinner Preaching to Sinners
How do Christ's undershepherds come to grips with the truth that they are sinners preaching to sinners? This article explains that preachers have to sit under their own preaching and teaching.
Five Ways to Fight "Preaching Hangover"
Your Baby's Ugly
Can preaching be taught? Yes. However, this article argues that to discern whether someone can indeed learn to preach, it is important to see the following in the person: a sense of calling, a teachable spirit, a passionate heart, and a reckless abandon to risk being a fool for Christ.
"Preaching Circles”
How Preaching Makes Disciples
This article addresses the question "How do we disciple?" by considering discipleship by preaching. All disciples are formed and strengthened by preaching.
Charismatic Chrysostom
So Help Me, God Preaching is too Important to Prepare Unaided
A Word in Season The Season was Unexpected, but the Word wasn't Wasted
Don't Let the Tone of Your Voice Ruin Your Sermon
We Need Fools in the Pulpit: The Danger of Sophisticated Ministry
This article explains that preaching ought be recognized less as sophisticated and more as cross-centred, after the example and teaching of Christ and his apostles.
Sermons That Live – Preaching through Stories
The Bible uses stories (narrative) to reveal who God is, what God desires, how God acts, and how God wants humans to respond to him. Too often preachers ignore the narrative structure of the Bible. This article wants to encourage preaching that honours the narrative structure, content, and purpose of narrative texts.
A Word-Centred Culture instead of a Man-Centred Culture
This article explains that preaching needs to be Word-centred, rather than focused on the preacher. It provides three considerations for building a Word-centred church.
Expository Preaching and the Recovery of Christian Worship
This article stresses that the heart of true biblical worship is the preaching of God's Word. It issues a call for faithful expository preaching, and lists three characteristics of such preaching.
A Dragon Intrusion
This article reflects on the character and spirit of preaching and celebration during the Advent season.
Privileges of Preaching the Gospel
Christ-Centred Reading, Preaching, and Teaching
Christ-centred preaching starts with your exegesis. This article explains the need and benefits of reading the Bible in a Christ-centred way.
Preaching and Leading Worship
This is a review article of Preaching and Leading Worship, by William H. Willimon. It indicates that Willimon has a balanced approach: he sees the need for appraising and evaluating worship but guards against a craze for novelty. The book provides suggestions for preparing for and conducting worship. Willimon provides guidelines on preaching—on both the preparation and delivery of sermons.
Returning to the Good News
What is the greatest need of the church? It is Jesus Christ, who comes to us through the preaching of the gospel. The church needs gospel preaching all the time. Why? This article offers five reasons.
How to Proclaim Jesus and Make Disciples
Christ-centred preaching should be the desire of every pastor, in order to make mature followers of Christ. This article shows from the apostle Paul that Christ-centred preaching is possible when the preacher preaches like an evangelist, a prophet, and a theologian.
Should You Use Illustrations from Movies?
This article lists several reasons why preachers should not use illustrations from movies in their preaching.
Preaching as an Act of Worship
Do you preach doxologically? This article shows how preaching itself needs to be an act of worship.
What Is Preaching? Marks of a Healthy Church 3
Holy Humour? The Danger of Being Funny in the Pulpit
Is Expository Preaching Boring?
Preaching and Witness of the Spirit
Does This Have to Be in a Sermon?
The Church and the Preaching of the Word The Life of the Church Series: Sermon Nine
What Is Preaching According to the New Testament?
Does preaching still have any meaning in our time and age? Is the sermon a relic of the past? This essay wants to reflect on the theological question of what preaching really is. The true renewal of preaching can only happen in the way of understanding the real nature and function of preaching. A renewal on the level of preaching technique alone is not really a renewal at all. In the New Testament, we find the origin of what Christian preaching is. Some key terms used for preaching are examined.
Repentance – The Missing Note in Today's Preaching
Preaching today often lacks a call to repentance. This article explains why and explains the fruits of preaching repentance based on Scripture.
Effective Evangelism
God tells us that the preaching of the Word is the most powerful tool of evangelism. Are churches and members today being effective in this preaching of the gospel? This article weighs in.
The Covenant and the Preaching
The Necessity of Strict Preaching of the Law in the Church
Based on Lord’s Day 44 of the Heidelberg Catechism, this article gives reasons for the need of the preaching of the law. It shows that such preaching is essential to the health of the church and the believer.
Expository Preaching – The Antidote to Anemic Worship
What is central to Christian worship? This article answers this question by pointing out that the heart of Christian worship is the authentic preaching of the Word of God.
The Urgency of Preaching
Has the pulpit become an advice centre? Has the church lost the urgency of preaching? This article draws out the difference between preaching done out of the urgency Scripture and that which is based on populist mentality.
The Means of Grace
This article explains how the preaching of the gospel and the sacraments are two gifts God gave to his church for her growth.
Preaching and the Real Battle for Worship
Preaching to the Mind
Man's mind is by nature at war with God's truth. Preaching, however, can transform the mind. This article offers ways to addressing the mind and making the Word of God effectual to our hearers.
Four Characteristics of Earnest Preaching
What makes preaching earnest? This article offers four characteristics: know the text, feel the truth, love the people, and keep the sermon simple.
Help! My Congregation Struggles with My Preaching
As a preacher what should you do if your congregation struggles with your preaching? Cultivate humility, openness, gentleness, patience, and focus.
On Being Persuasive
In preaching how do you persuade others who are listening? This article offers three aspects to consider for persuasive preaching.
Christocentric or Christomonic?
Christ-centred preaching is vital for the church. Yet there is a fine line between preaching that is Christocentric and Christomonic. The latter preaches Christ from Scripture to the neglect of the Father and the Spirit. This article explains the tendency to slip into Christomonic preaching, and reminds from Scripture how Jesus' work of redemption includes the Father and the Spirit working with him to that end.
Preaching and Teaching
Preaching the Funeral of an Unbeliever
Preaching at the funeral of someone who was almost surely an unbeliever is very difficult. This article offers a few things worth considering if you are given such an opportunity: talk about the fall, death, and judgment, exalt Christ, hold out the hope of the resurrection, emphasize the role of faith, and stay away from eulogizing.
It All Leads Straight to the Cross
Should every sermon bring its hearers to the cross, even if Christ himself did not do so? This article shows how everything the Lord Jesus said during his earthly ministry on the way to the cross must be read in the light of what he would accomplish at the cross. Thus, preaching needs to have the blood of Christ as its focal point every time again.
Seven Fundamentals of Biblical Preaching
This article offers seven fundamentals to preaching faithfully, including the following: preach expositional sermons, preach the whole counsel of God, preach to yourself, and preach Christ.
The Worldwide Preaching of the Gospel
From Matthew 24:14 this article shows that the preaching of the gospel to the whole world will precede the second coming of Christ. This preaching is about the kingdom, and its purpose is to save the elect and render people without excuse.
God's Word and Man's Words
What is preaching and why is it so important? This paper considers the significance of preaching in its relationship with the Word of God. It indicates the importance of seeing Christ as the Word that God presents to the world. It also defines the relationship between God's Word and apostolic preaching. In the last section the article examines the relationship between the Word of God and contemporary preaching.
Why I Preach through Books of the Bible
This article provides several benefits of preaching through whole books of the Bible (series preaching). Some of the reasons are: pastors are to preach the whole counsel of God, preaching through a book allows the minister and congregation to better absorb the purpose of God, and it gives a better understanding of a particular book and of biblical theology.
Preaching in Reformed Worship
Preaching is central to Reformed worship. This article shows that this was at the heart of the Reformation, and it gives three reasons why preaching is important.
Bunyan's Departure from Preaching
Is preaching the sole means for presenting the gospel in evangelism? This article shows how John Bunyan defended his use of allegory in his Pilgrim's Progress to confront people with the claims of the gospel on their lives.
2 Corinthians 4:5 – We Do Not Preach Ourselves
What does Paul mean in 2 Corinthians 4:5 when he says, "We do not preach ourselves"? This article weighs in, offering an exposition of this verse in context. Preaching ourselves will never solve the world's problem.
Five Quick Reasons to Manuscript Your Sermons
Using a full manuscript can be beneficial for your preaching. This article gives five reasons why.
Three Reasons to Say “You” More Often in Your Sermons
Should a pastor use the second person pronoun in his preaching? This article lists three reasons in support of this.
Martin Luther and the Power of Preaching
This article assesses the approach of Martin Luther to preaching, and how in spite of its one-size-fits-all approach, it reminds us that the Word of God has power in itself.
Six Rules for Using Quotes in Sermons
Should you use quotations in sermons? Quotations in preaching can be a hindrance or a help. How should you use them? This article gives six rules to guide you.
Preach a Sermon Your Audience Can Actually Follow
Every pastor wants to preach an effective sermon. He wants his preaching to be of help to his people. This article offers a pastor some ways to help people follow his preaching.