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Last year I attended a Workshop on Biblical Exposition put on by Simeon Trust. I compared it to the first week of my D.Min. in preaching and said:

I had a similar experience this week - almost as good in some ways, but a lot cheaper. I attended a Workshop on Biblical Exposition put on by the Charles Simeon Trust. The workshop includes instruction, small group practice, and model expositions (sample sermons that put these into practice).

Worth checking out if you ever get the chance to attend one.

Next year we're hosting one at Richview from March 25-27. It's not too soon to register. Find out more here. Well worth attending.

I've posted this before, but it's probably worth reading every few months. It's written by Dallas Willard in The Art and Craft of Biblical Preaching.

There is no substitute for simple satisfaction in the Word of God, in the presence of God. That affects all your actions...

The preacher who does not minister in that satisfaction is on dangerous ground. Those who have experienced moral failure are those who have failed to live a deeply satisfied life in Christ, almost without exception...The surest guarantee against failure is to be so at peace and satisfied with God that when wrongdoing presents itself it isn't even interesting. That is how we stay out of temptation.

We are long on devices and programs. We have too many of them, and they get in the way. What we really need are preachers who can stand in simplicity and manifest and declare the richness of Christ in life. There isn't anything on earth that begins to compete with that for human benefit and human interest.

Preachers like that are at peace. They are not struggling to make things happen.

I encourage pastors to have substantial times every week when they do nothing but enjoy God.

Henri Nouwen said the main obstacle to love for God is service for God. Service must come out of his strength and life flowing through us into receptive lives. Take an hour, sit in a comfortable place in silence, and do nothing but rest. If you go to sleep, that's okay. We have to stop trying too hard. There may be a few pastors for whom that is not the problem, but for most of us it is.

There is a place for effort, but it never earns anything and must never take the place of God with us. Our efforts are to make room for him in our lives.

Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones rarely took time off to hear others preach. In 1968 he took ill, and for six months he did not preach at all.

This gave Lloyd-Jones an opportunity to sit in the pew and observe what was going on in churches. He shared these reflections in October 1968:

My general impression is that most of our services are terribly depressing! I am amazed people still go to church; most who go are female and over the age of forty. The note missing is "joy in the Holy Ghost." There is nothing in these services to make a stranger feel that he is missing something by not being there...

It is a great thing to be a listener. You want something for your soul. You want help. I don't want a "great sermon". i want to feel the presence of the God I am worshipping and to know that I am considering some great and glorious subject. If I do get this I do not care how poor the sermon is.

I suggest to you that our greatest danger is the danger of professionalism. We do not stop frequently enough to ask, What are we really doing? There is the danger of just facing a text and treating it as an end in itself with a strange detachment. It is all intellectual. Nor should our preaching be just emotional, or only to the conscience. Far to often it is one or the other of these things. There is no life, no power! We of all people ought to have it. Joy and power are intimately related. One without the other is spurious. (D.M. Lloyd-Jones, The Fight of Faith)

I'm preaching tomorrow for the first time in almost a month. These comments by Lloyd-Jones are helping me prepare myself.

Martyn Lloyd-Jones was seriously out of step with preachers in his day who focused on delivering messages focused on the well-being and happiness of the hearers. Lloyd-Jones took the opposite approach, saying:

The more the Church has accommodated her message to suit the palate of the people the greater has been the decline in attendance at places of worship. (David Martyn Lloyd-Jones: The Fight of Faith 1939-1981)

More of his comments here

The question behind Preaching to a Post-Everything World is simple: "Could I now reach who I once was?" Zack Eswine of Covenant Theological Seminary wants the answer to be yes.

Until we remember that God drew us to himself and nourished us before we even knew where to find the book of Exodus in the Bible or that such things as Arminianism and Calvinism even existed, we will withhold from others the same mercy that was required for us to learn what we now know.

To reach others in a post-everything world, Eswine argues that we need "preachers who understand biblical exposition in missional terms." How do we become this type of preacher?

more at my book blog

Five days a week in the gym, in the car, and sometimes when doing chores around the house, I have my iPod plugged in. I don't listen to music nearly enough, and it's the fault of the following people. I find their sermon podcasts genuinely helpful.

• Redeemer - This is the only preaching I subscribe to outside of iTunes, although I'm hoping they make the switch one day. Tim Keller and friends are always worth listening to.
• New City Church - Tullian Tchividjian's recent series on Jonah was outstanding.
• Imago Dei - Rick McKinley's crowd is different from mine, but Rick is always solid and he occasionally blows me away.
• Steve McCoy - Steve is a good example of someone who is currently engaged in church revitalization, plus he's a good guy.

Some new ones I've been listening to lately:

• Sojourn Community Church - A church that's really taken off in Louisville, Kentucky
• The Village Church - I'd heard of Matt Chandler, but it wasn't until Steve McCoy mentioned them that I began to listen to his preaching.

I also subscribe to the following, although I don't always get to listen to the entire messages:

• Mars Hill Seattle - I occasionally check out what's happening there.
• The Meeting House - Bruxy is a very good teacher. Different theology than mine, different approach, and different crowd, but I love his teaching.

Are there any that you're listening to that I should check out?

I just heard a fantastic sermon on love this past Sunday. Yesterday I posted on Compelled by Love. And then last night I read this in Preaching to a Post-Everything World:

I used to think that a revival of true preaching was the greatest need of the hour. Don't get me wrong - a revival of preaching is a great need...But a few bends in the road have led me to think that a need even greater than preaching exists...

Often we preachers turn to differing tools and models rather than to differing relationships as the answer for more relevant homiletics for our times. This book will take the necessity of contextualization and homiletical tools quite seriously. But whether one uses technology or not, has a pulpit or doesn't, uses more propositions or more narratives, uses more monologues or more dialogues, has drama or does not have drama - if these form our only homiletical discussions and offer our only answers to the dissonance found in our generation or a geography, maybe we have misunderstood the question. It is our greater love more than our greater technology or techniques that will glorify God and transform a generation.

I just started reading Preaching to a Post-Everything World, which is excellent. The author, Zack Eswine, includes this section on preaching what's redemptive:

In the Narnia stories, C.S. Lewis poetically makes the point that reality is like a land that is always winter and never Christmas. But reality changes when Aslan is on the move. Ice melts, the earth warms, and Christmas returns.

Francis Schaeffer called this redemptive movement "substantial healing." Substantial healing "conveys the idea of a healing that is not perfect, but nevertheless is real and evident"...This substantial healing engages the four basic spheres of reality - God, people, place, and self. Schaeffer observes: "First of all, man is separated from God; second, he is separated from himself (thus the psychological problems of life); third, he is separated from other men (thus the sociological problems of life); fourth, he is separated from nature (thus the problems of living in the world - for example, the ecological problems). All of these need healing."

When Schaeffer says, "All things need healing," I hear him saying, "Reality needs redemption...When someone hears a biblical sermon, they are meant to declare with the beavers from Narnia, "They say Aslan is on the move."

To speak of God's redemptive movement is to announce the return of beauty to the land of the living.

Preaching announces substantial healing to every sphere of life, and that Aslan is on the move. Good stuff.

I don't even need a calendar.

• A Tribute to Women up 149%
• Honoring My Parents up 114%
• The Ministry of Motherhood up 121%

One of the best experiences of my D.Min. was the first residency. The first week was completely disorienting as we studied passages and realized how much we didn't know. Once we were humbled, we were ready to learn, and we developed a new appetite for what good Biblical preaching could be.

It sounds strange, but as I look back, that first week was intense and nerve-wracking, but also amazing.

I had a similar experience this week - almost as good in some ways, but a lot cheaper. I attended a Workshop on Biblical Exposition put on by the Charles Simeon Trust. The workshop includes instruction, small group practice, and model expositions (sample sermons that put these into practice).

Worth checking out if you ever get the chance to attend one.