Borrowed Conviction
It has happened a few times before. It happened again recently. Someone without a good church gets in touch, referred by a mutual friend. Or someone drops an email asking for advice. Or there is a conversation at a conference…
Tag Preaching
God’s Ambassadors: Advice for Preachers
If a hundred preachers could agree on advice to be given to other ministers, it would probably be worth weighing their wisdom on the subject. This is just what the Westminster Assembly offered in a “sub-directory” on preaching within the…
God’s Ambassadors: Advice for Preachers
If a hundred preachers could agree on advice to be given to other ministers, it would probably be worth weighing their wisdom on the subject. This is just what the Westminster Assembly offered in a “sub-directory” on preaching within the…
Preparing Sermons with John Owen
After a cracking day at the Evangelical Library in London on “Reading John Owen” (opening, it has to be said, with Nigel Graham giving what may be one of the finest popular introductions to the life of Owen that it…
The Need for a Ministerial Break Down
“We keep our preaching basic because we have so many new believers. If we give them too much doctrine, they won’t be able to understand it.” I can’t remember how many times I’ve heard church planters and pastors say such things.…
What Andy Stanley Has Forgotten
What Andy Stanley has forgotten is that conversion to Christianity involves a supernatural rebirth that requires the Word of God. Forgetting this essential truth has been the tendency of the seeker-sensitive church-growth movement. This vital truth is forgotten wherever sociology is…
The Missing Message
While preparing talks for a forthcoming Reformation Conference, I happened across Heiko Oberman’s outstanding 1961 Theology Today lecture, “Preaching and the Word in the Reformation,” in which he set down what he believed to have been the three most important…
Kierkegaard (of all people?) on Authority and Eloquence in Preaching
Søren Kierkegaard is surely one of the most influential and misunderstood influences on modern Western thought and especially contemporary theology. This is a bit surprising for someone who wrote in Danish and styled himself neither a philosopher nor a theologian…
The Westminster Assembly and the Debate about the Word
Someone in the Jerusalem Chamber had asked if it was a pastor’s duty to read the Scriptures publicly in the weekly worship services of the church. It was November 1643, and the Westminster Assembly was trying to build a biblical…
The Westminster Assembly and the Debate about the Word
Someone in the Jerusalem Chamber had asked if it was a pastor’s duty to read the Scriptures publicly in the weekly worship services of the church. It was November 1643, and the Westminster Assembly was trying to build a biblical…