This feature is only available to members. Join now for full online access. “I can’t believe the elders won’t fire him,” exclaimed my friend. A few years earlier, while sitting in a pew on Sunday ...

We talk, we read, we write, we listen. We surround ourselves with print on paper and walls and screens. We surround ourselves with sounds-making-words that convey meaning and images. Except for the ...

Why expository sermons should make up your church’s main diet. There are two basic forms of preaching: expository and topical. Hughes Oliphant Old defines ...

In a recent essay, Marilynne Robinson attributes the struggles of mainline Protestantism to preaching. She claims that the sermon, as the center of worship in the contemporary mainline church, is ...

One man’s mountain is another man’s plain. In Luke (6:12-17, which precedes today’s Gospel) Jesus goes up a mountain to spend a night in prayer. The next morning he picks his Twelve Apostles. Then, ...

When I first began preaching, I asked my sister-in-law what she thought. “Oh I will have to listen next time,” she said. “I am used to shutting out the homily because my pastor only makes me mad or ...

Luke’s account of Jesus’ Passion offers a distinctive perspective: “The ordinary people are not only not complicit in the death of Jesus, but they repent of what has been done to him,” says Luke ...

I have always loved the Acts of the Apostles and have often recommended it to those who are approaching the Bible for the first time. Filled with colorful narratives, adventure, martyrdom, persecution ...

At the Mennonite congregation I served as pastor for 16 years, I would perch my sermon manuscript on the face of the pulpit, sliding the pages across the smooth surface as I preached. I’m no longer a ...