Notes or No Notes Preaching

Notes or No Notes? Are you a notes or no notes preacher?  That’s the question for today’s post.  In the last post we saw that it is helpful to have a map, or outline for your message. Now the question is how you lead people…

Create a Map

Creating a map In the last post we saw that one of the most effective ways of creating a sermon is to pick one point, one major idea that you are going to bring to people in a memorable way. …
hitting the target

Make One Point

One Point Preaching John F. Kennedy John F. Kennedy was one of the great speakers in the history of the United States. People still study…

It's About Jesus

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In my last post, I listed three goals, or destinations for your sermon: to get knowledge into your hearers' heads, to get Christ-like living into their hearts, and to inspire them in difficult times.…

Know Where You Are Going

The last three posts have had to do with the introduction to a message. Now we turn to the body of the sermon. One of the secrets to having a successful sermon is to know where you are going with your message.…

An Intriguing Question Makes a Good Introduction

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We are considering how to "hook" people with good introductions to our messages. We've seen so far that a story will accomplish that. So will a shocking statement. Today we are exploring the fact that an intriguing…

Shocking Truth Makes a Good Introduction

The in the last post, we began to look at the subject of the introduction to a sermon. We saw that a good story captures peoples' attention, and then serves as the gateway into the message itself. Today we are…

Introductions Are More Important Than You Think

In the next series of posts we are going to look at how you go about developing a sermon. I will assume that you have done the basic work referred to earlier in this blog, things like defining the main point of a passage,…

Communication of Truth Through Personality

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The title of this post is a famous quote by Phillips Brooks, a well-known preacher from the middle 19th century in the United States. It was in a series of lectures at Yale University that he gave this definition of preaching: Preaching is,…

Learn to Speak In Pictures

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      Speak in Pictures My grocery store has them.  So does the gas station that I use.  So does the restaurant where I occasionally lunch.  What am I referring to?  Screens--lots of screens.…