Before You Go: Leave Your Ideal Church Behind

A friend sent me this note in response to my last post. I share it with his permission. If I’d have practiced this principle two wife’s ago I wouldn’t have had two previous wives. But, if I hadn’t screwed up in my relationships then I wouldn’t have developed to be ready for “———” who I [...]

Why I’m Glad My Wife and I Have Different Senses of Humor

In a fit of fatigue induced delirium, I had some fun the other day on Twitter while hoping to catch a flight in the Atlanta airport. In case you missed it, here’s how it went down: 9:46 AM: Stuck in the Atlanta airport. 5 chances to get home today. 0 for 2 so far. #buddypasstravel [...]

Advice to Churches Working with Young Preachers

I’ve been hired as a young preacher twice, at ages 23 and 29. I made tons of young preacher mistakes and the churches I worked with had to put up with a lot from me. I’ve given advice to young preachers in the past and I’ll do it again in a future post. In this [...]

Working with Young Preachers

This past weekend I had the privilege of spending some time with a young preacher working with a church in Southern California. I was impressed by his sincerity, humility, and total lack of cynicism. He has a tremendous future as a minister of the gospel. I hope the church he’s serving recognizes this and takes [...]

Why Jesus? (Part Five in the Preacher Geek Series)

I’ve been getting great feedback on the Preacher Geek posts so I’ll keep sharing one a week. My goal with these posts is to give preachers some ideas for upcoming sermon series. Some of these ideas are based on things I’ve done in the past and some are from my “someday” file. If someone grabbed [...]

Thin Places (Part Four in the Preacher Geek Series)

thin

Here’s an idea for a teaching series I’ve had ever since I read a book on Celtic Spirituality that talked about “Thin Places.” Thin Places are sites where heaven and earth intermingle. The veil between them is thin. The Celts had a number of thin places that they considered to be holy ground. The idea [...]

One Reason Your Jokes Bomb

notfunny

The speaker steps to the podium and begins. “Good Evening. It’s great to be here tonight. By here, I mean up here on this stage. I have sat where you all are sitting many times and wondered what it would like to stand up here and look out at such a crowd. Now that I’m [...]

Preaching on Work (Part 3 of the Preacher Geek Series)

If you want to preach some material that your church probably hasn’t heard before, do a series on the theology of work. In fact, I can almost guarantee you’ll be stepping into frontier territory with your first sermon. Most Christians have never been encouraged to think about their work–what they spend 40 to 60 hours [...]

Preaching the Beatitudes (Part 2 of the Preacher Geek Series)

One of the preacher’s worst nightmares–besides working with a church that actually expects him to practice what he preaches–is to plan a six week series of teachings that turns out to be only five-and-a-half weeks long. By that, I mean that the preacher runs out of material before he gets to the end of the [...]

Preaching Romans (Part 1 of the Preacher Geek Series)

One of the challenges for preachers is to come up with fresh ideas for teaching series. While I’m a fan of expository preaching over topical, I favor framing expository series in a topical way, rather than just saying, “We’re going to spend the next year in Romans and see where it takes us.” Over next [...]