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Bryan Chapell’s chapter on “A Redemptive Approach to Preaching” is a must-read for preachers! You will find it as chapter 10 in his book, Christ-Centered Preaching (Baker, 2nd edition). Last week, I read it again (for the fourth time in the last decade), and it profoundly influenced the sermon I preached two days ago on Ephesians 5:3-14.

Here's one of the ten illustrations we have to offer this week to members of PreachingToday. After you've taken a moment to read it, please brainstorm with us in the comments section. How would you use this story in a sermon?

Brett Favre Breaks NFL Record

On September 30, 2007, Green Bay Packers quarterback Brett Favre broke Dan Marino's record for throwing the most touchdown passes in football. His new record stands at 421 passes and counting.

One of the ways that I’m trying to speak to the non-believers who attend our worship services is to take a couple minutes in each sermon to address an objection to Christianity. I got this idea from Tim Keller, pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in NYC. He points out that almost every text we preach speaks to one of the major objections to Christianity.

The Associated Press has just released the results of a pre-Halloween poll that asked people about their supernatural/spiritual/superstitious beliefs. You can find the results here.

Take a look at this article from copyblogger.com. The idea of confident feet is obviously couched in terms of blogging in this particular article, but I'm curious about your thoughts on the importance and necessity of confident feet in preaching. The author of the article writes:

What I would like to talk about is healthy motion. Like many things, motion when speaking in front of people is a case of balancing extremes. No motion is boring, and too much movement gives off a nervous vibe. Check out this quote from Lin Sexton in a recent column for Worship Leader Magazine:

Sermons on the stewardship of God’s created world must provide some leads for application. Here is some advice for you as you help your listeners flesh out a theology of environmental stewardship.

You may be interested in attending a preaching workshop that I have gone to several times over the years and have always found rewarding. The event is sponsored by Simeon Trust, an organization spearheaded by author Kent Hughes and devoted to advancing sound biblical preaching. They now hold workshops in various parts of the U.S., and there will be one in Chicago in November.

Here's one of the ten illustrations we have to offer this week to members of PreachingToday. After you've taken a moment to read it, please brainstorm with us in the comments section. How would you use this story in a sermon?

As a follow-up to my last post on ‘green sermons,’ here is a brief list of biblical texts for use in preaching on stewardship of God’s environment.

In case you missed the article in the print edition of Leadership journal, Skye Jethani's "Glimpses of Glory" is now an abbreviated post on Out of Ur. I'd love for you to take a look at what he has to say and then make your way back to the PT Blog to leave a comment or two in reflection. Does Skye have a point about the difference between preaching and teaching? How does this challenge the dichotomy we've often created between visionary preaching and "regular" expository preaching? Is this something you've been wrestling with as a preacher? If not, how would you contest Skye's thoughts? If you have been, how has this challenged and even changed you as a preacher?

Environmentalism is a hot topic these days. Al Gore’s recent Nobel Peace Prize for his documentary on global warming has heated up the pressure for people to “go green.” Alright, sorry about the puns! “Hot topic” was unintentional, but “heated up” was! Anyway, is it appropriate to preach on environmentalism? If so, what do preachers have to say?

I’m a firm believer in helping my listeners apply the Scriptures to their lives. By definition, application is part of biblical preaching. Both Haddon Robinson and Bryan Chappell, authors of the classic homiletics texts for our generation, include application in their definitions. But I find that incorporating application into my sermons on a week-to-week basis is a challenge.

If you haven't visited Building Church Leaders, you really should. It's a great resource. You'll find downloadable materials on a number of pertinent topics, written by the best of the best in the evangelical world. I think you'll love it once you discover it.

If you're familiar with Building Church Leaders but haven't been back in a while, you should stop by again. Why? Because their site has been upgraded and it looks amazing!

For new visitors and old visitors alike, once you're there, notice that you've been issued a fun little challenge. Each time you play, you'll win a free downloadable resource. Nice, eh? You'll also be entered into the daily drawing for a free membership to Building Church Leaders. Even nicer, eh?

Stephen Langton, a professor who later served as Archbishop of Canterbury, added chapter-verse divisions to the Bible in 1205. The widely accepted divisions were then added to the actual Hebrew text (1330) and Greek text (1516). As you well know, the church has never looked back. These are our cherished coordinates in large and small worship settings. Reading plans and preaching plans bend to the traditional framing, telling us when to stop and when to begin again. Would a Bible be a Bible without the little numbers scattered across its pages?

If you preach an Old Testament story, be prepared to work with a much larger text than usual. The so-called “David and Goliath” story takes at least 58 verses to unfold. Preaching the full story of David’s sin with Bathsheba means preaching 2 Samuel 11 and 12 together. So how do you handle the reading of such long texts?

What would you like to see us tackle on the blog? Are there any burning issues you'd like addressed? Do you want more illustrations? Would book reviews be helpful? What about open forums about certain issues, where we pose a question and leave it wide open for you all to hash it out and interact with one another? How can we better help you through this interactive resource? I'd really like to know! You all are a relatively quiet lot, comments-wise, but if you could click on the comments section and toss me a few thoughts, that would be much appreciated.

Sermons from Bible stories often look at a human character’s behavior and ask, “To be or not to be?’ But is that really the question? Will this approach – following or avoiding the example of a character – really help us discover the theological message which the story intends to communicate? Let me give you a definitive answer: Maybe!

Hopefully you've been able to check out the Preaching Today interview with Kent Carlson and Mike Lueken on preaching for spiritual formation. Mark your calendars: the second part comes out this Friday. In the meantime here's something from the cutting room floor...

How did the topic of spiritual formation in preaching become important to you?

Kent: Our interest in preaching for spiritual formation is directly related to the story of our church. We were a seeker-targeted church that had experienced rather rapid growth in our area. We were having great fun and, in terms of attendance and decisions for Christ, were experiencing great success. By 2000, we were finally in our first permanent, large building, so we no longer had facility demands. This gave us flexibility to evaluate where we were and listen more carefully to what God was saying.

I’m getting ready to deliver a lecture this Thursday at Heritage Seminary near Toronto on “Preaching Old Testament Stories to a Story-Driven Culture.” Old Testament narrative literature presents several challenges to preachers. I’d like to wrestle with a couple of them in my blog posts this week. The first is the challenge of preaching Christ.

In his book Telling Secrets, Frederick Buechner offers this definition of preaching:

Basically, it is to proclaim a Mysery before which, before whom, even our most exalted ideas turn to straw. It is also to proclaim this Mystery with a passion that ideas alone have little to do with. It is to try to put the Gospel into words not the way you would compose an essay but the way you would write a poem or a love letter - putting your heart into it, your own excitement, most of all your own life. It is to speak words that you hope may, by grace, be bearers not simply of new understanding but of new life both for the ones you are speaking to and also for you.