Over the past six months or so, I have heard two different one point sermons that caught my attention. The preachers in question delivered well developed, biblically faithful, and rhetorically compelling messages. The one point, once revealed, served as both the...
In speaking with a preacher friend recently, I mentioned that the early part of every sermon needs to surface a problem that needs to be solved or expose an itch that needs to be scratched. Really, then, sermon openings invariably involve predicaments. I want the...
We preachers value the responses that people have to our preaching. After all, most of us didn’t go into this so that our words could vanish into thin air, never to be heard, much less considered, again. Yet even the best preachers (so I’m told) get all kinds of...
I have noticed in the communication field that it is all too easy to succumb to the “Captain Obvious Trap.” One of the commentators on the Tennis Channel, for example, is notorious for telling viewers that “Wow, Novak Djokovic is really flexible,” or “Man, can John...
As you can see in the Books I Like section, I am currently reading White House Ghosts, a detailed history of presidential speechwriters from 1932 to 2008 . . . or, to use initials, from FDR to W. When I first saw the title at a used book store, I realized, “I give...