Love Wrought It On one of the arches in a magnificent cathedral in Europe is sculptured a face of wondrous beauty. It can be seen only once a year when the sun is in a certain position. For then its r...
Humor, especially in the pulpit, can be tricky, but often worth the risk in order to connect with your congregation. You can buy books that have all the variations of humor, but there are three broad ...
Rick is the co-author of The Externally Focused Church and 60 Simple Things Every Pastor Should Know, and his newest book is Living a Life on Loan. He was recently interviewed by Preaching editor Mich...
The pathway to being lost in the middle of your own ministry story is a road that has been traveled by many. Inspecting their journey can help you understand yours....
This ordeal left him blind in one eye so he could not take part in contact sports. Miraculously he suffered no brain damage and was fearfully aware that his abductor was still at large. He struggled w...
Studies have shown that many pastors and church staff are burning out. The current state is taking its toll....
Current homiletic approaches did not materialize in a vacuum. Their ascendancy to popularity did not just happen. Today at least three winds of influence swirl around contemporary homiletic discussion...
In his book The Big Idea (Zondervan), pastor Dave Ferguson talks about how his church has taken the homiletical concept of a single driving idea for the sermon and extended that across the entire teac...
I thought I was the first to discover this technique of dealing with controversial issues from the pulpit. But it turns out this little find of mine has been unearthed many times in the past....
I am an expository preacher, and I am also a Pentecostal. Admittedly, these two categories are not often used in the same sentence....
What do you do when your fears seem to be winning the day? What if you pray and God still hasn’t come through for you? If you are like most people, you begin to lose hope, and you wonder why you bothe...
The first step in preparing a biblical message is to study the passage......
Each year brings a continuing flow of various study bibles and this one has been no different. Some such Bibles seem merely to be the result of marketing efforts, but others are truly helpful....
Since 2003, John Ortberg has served as senior pastor of the Menlo Park Presbyterian Church in Menlo Park, California....