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If you ever needed a case study on the importance of preaching, teaching, and doctrine, and the importance of having leaders entrusted with that crucial work, the recent CT story Are the Quakers Going Pagan? is it.

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Last Sunday I preached on Ephesians 5:15–20, which includes the call to "be filled with the Spirit. Speak to one another with psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ."

One of the most important things pastors do is teach believers to worship.

In one church that I pastored, we had one large family with a divorced father who struggled with drunkenness. He had a warm and humble spirit, and I liked him very much. When he came to church,

For several months I have been doing an in-depth study of Malachi. As a pastor charged with the responsibility of feeding the people, one passage that seized my interest the more I considered it was 2:1–9, which discusses God's covenant with Levi as it rebukes the priests for failing in their responsibility to properly teach the Word. It is a sobering and relevant warning for preachers today, for as much as we should talk about proper methods in preaching we also need to talk about the heart issues of how we faithfully discharge our responsibility as God's spokesperson.

In the wake of the tragic slayings at Virginia Tech, you may be called on to interpret the meaning of such events. Below are four sermons from Preaching Today Audio that may help your thinking. The last two sermons are by pastors from Littleton, Colorado, who spoke in their churches following the Columbine High School shootings.

God's Noninterventions
By George Wood

Jesus Wept
By Bryan Chapell

Tragedy and the Providence of God
By Jerry Nelson

Two Sets of Plans
By Bill Oudemolen

In addition, here are some videos from sister site FaithVisuals.com on three keywords:

Pain, Suffering & Death

At the 2007 National Pastors Convention in San Diego, editorial advisor John Ortberg gave a list of what he regards as the Ten Deadly Sins of the Preacher. Here they are:

I returned to my comfort zone last Sunday as I did a final sermon on the full section in Ephesians 4:1–6. (I really do love preaching by sections. I feel there is more balance to my sermons and more rich content to break open.) And this message brought the extra excitement of a doctrinal riff in verses 4 to 6 that offers the life-giving knowledge of God and his kingdom. Nothing gives a sermon greater power and weight than talking about God.

Last Sunday I completed my in-depth look at Ephesians 4:2 with "be patient, bearing with one another in love." As so often happens, as I began thinking about the message, my first concern was how I would find anything interesting to say on this that would change anyone's life because the call for patience is such a commonplace in both Christian and secular morality.

I heard a phrase recently that could make a nice illustration or sermon idea. One of the other guys in the office said he was not driving on a particular errand because he wanted "to reduce my carbon footprint." I googled to find the meaning of the phrase and found the carbon footprint website.

Several phrases come to mind as possible uses in a sermon: gospel footprint, spiritual footprint, sin footprint, righteousness footprint. Other ideas?

As I write about my current preaching, I find myself feeling defensive, defensive because my current series is topical and I am committed to biblical preaching, as are the Preaching Today family of resources. But as someone has said, biblical preaching is true to Scripture and true to life. Topical preaching can be solidly biblical and expositional, but topical preaching is a label that is often used with disdain because topical preaching has been abused.

Actually one practical reason I try to avoid topical preaching is, I don't have time to do it well (I'm a bivocational pastor).

Picking up from my previous post on my Ephesians 4 series—I decided that a few paragraphs spoken about each of the virtues in verse 2 would have no life-changing impact on hearers. Everyone already knows they are supposed to be humble, gentle, patient, and forbearing. What they needed for life change was in-depth application. And so, because these virtues are important for unified life in the body of Christ and in families I decided to preach a topical message on each virtue.

In the first message, on humility, I felt good about two things.

One of the subjects I plan to address in this blog as it seems helpful is my current experience in preaching.

On February 11th I resumed preaching a series through Ephesians, and I am now in the opening verses of chapter 4. My habit for several years has been to alternate on a monthly or seasonal basis between preaching sequentially through a Bible book and preaching topics that I feel are currently needed in our church.

Welcome to PreachingTodayBlog. My desire is that here you can join with a community of those who are committed to faithfully proclaiming God's Word in all its fullness to the church and the world. This space is for those who love this calling and tremble at this calling and who earnestly want to improve by joining in conversation with others who can be mentors, peers, friends.