This is a public forum to share ideas, ask questions, and reflect on being a pastor in the CRC.
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The four page structure of a sermon as taught at Calvin Seminary is very useful for beginning preachers, especially in a country like Uganda where there has been very little theological training for pastors.
Have you considered the challenges face masks pose to people who are hard of hearing? Have you considered the struggles someone with social anxiety may feel when no one will go near them?
As I have been grading sermons these past days (about 25 of them since middle of last week with about 10 to go) I often find myself writing “Show, Don’t Tell.”
We preach in our churches but in the larger sense we are always preaching in public. We cannot bracket out the larger world when we preach.
Calling all pastors! Have you ever talked about creation care or climate change from the pulpit? We encourage you to participate in the Creation Care Preaching Challenge.
The best preparation for preaching to the unconvinced is to build relationships with the unconvinced. If you don’t know any unchurched people, you won’t preach well to them.
Talk to anyone from the world of seminary admissions/recruitment today and you will hear the same story: enrollment numbers for seminaries are down across the board.
Back in the late 1990s shortly after I published a little book called Remember Creation, I was invited to give five morning lectures on creation stewardship at a Christian Bible camp north of Seattle.
This text was rather difficult to preach in the wake of a week of violence. Yet as it turns out, this very text was precisely what a broken, hurting world and church just might need to hear.
The CRC is blessed with immigrant pastors and members who stand strong and speak up for more welcoming attitudes. Read sermons from the finalists of the Immigration Preaching Challenge!
I’m a huge fan of the Parable of the Prodigal Son. Lately I've seen a trend where sermons focus on the older brother instead of on the grace and forgiveness shown to the younger brother.
Few, if any, students arrive at Calvin Seminary thinking they already know theology very well. But some do arrive at seminary convinced they already know how to preach...
Have you ever talked about immigration from the pulpit? The Office of Social Justice invites you to participate in the Immigration Preaching Challenge as a way to respond to God's call to be truth tellers.
As a pastor, one of the greatest joys I’ve had in the pulpit has been precisely in uncovering the real stories of Scripture, especially the ones that got sanitized in Sunday School or Christian dayschools.
As you visualize in your mind the scene in Bethlehem at the time of Jesus’ birth, what picture comes immediately to mind?
It's the same for all ages: we want to be liked. We are not proud of trying to look good. Still, the approval of people around us has its lure.
Preachers help us cross that hermeneutical bridge between the text, and what it means for us today.
I confess--when I had to write down in my sermon log book what I had preached the day or two previous--sometimes it happened I'd find myself with my pen poised over the log book page and I could not recall the sermon...
Preaching should mostly be about saying something nice, but not at the cost of saying nothing at all in case the soundness of the faith is threatened.
As a pastor, I don’t like anonymous notes. I wished you had signed your name. Here’s why.
If there’s one disadvantage to knowing Bible stories, it’s that they don’t always surprise us anymore. Take the story of Jesus’ transfiguration. That Jesus’ clothes become dazzling white and that Moses and Elijah show up...