When I was attending Calvin Theological Seminary, someone somewhere along the line gave me a good piece of advice. He told me that when I became a pastor of a congregation, if the consistory (or the ...

Why do we listen to sermons? Where did sermons come from in the tradition of the church and how has preaching managed to hang in there across 2,000 years that have seen so much change in so many other ...

(RNS) — During last month’s Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting, debates about if women can serve as pastors dominated the business sessions and national news coverage. But at multiple Baptist ...

Preachers need an organized program of feedback to determine whether they have hit their target. What do you think of sermons?” the Institute for Advanced Pastoral Studies asked churchgoers—and got an ...

When I was in college, I spent some time in the hospital after surgery. My roommate was an elderly lady recovering from the same procedure I had had. She was a devout Pentecostal and often burst into ...

Shortly after my most recent move, my long-time boyfriend and I ended our relationship. The next week, I was scheduled to preach. I'm part of a multi-pastor church, and my colleagues graciously ...

Crafting a message for your—yes your—congregation. The hardest part of preaching, by far, is the application. It's one thing to say, "Love God and love your neighbor." Its another to show people what ...

“Now that I have preached about a dozen sermons I find I am repeating myself,” a young minister wrote despairingly in his diary in 1915. He was barely out of school and only a few months into his ...

Press, 154 pp., $18.99 paperback. Whether you are a preacher of sermons or a listener to them, you know how much rides on that 15 or 20 minutes in the pulpit. Hungry people are waiting to be fed. A ...

I have been writing Pencil Preaching for 10 years, more than three trips around the three-year cycles of the Lectionary and long enough to know that very little of what I share is original. I offer ...

Some 20 years ago, our small midtown Catholic parish in Kansas City was being considered for closure because of falling attendance, lack of money and outreach. A group of determined parishioners met ...