Preaching

The Doctrines of Grace: Four Commands and Five Points

Jonathan Master
Jan 2, 2017
One of my favorite passages to preach for an ordination or installation service is 2 Timothy 4:5. The context is significant, since in it Paul acknowledges the challenges of pastoral ministry and the apparent success that many false teachers will achieve. In essence, the verse is set against the...

Borrowed Conviction

Jeremy Walker
Dec 28, 2016
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 with someone who has come looking for help, counsel, refuge. Somewhere...

Ministerial Godliness: Its Value

Mark Johnston
Dec 20, 2016
What matters most to us in life? There is a ‘right’ answer to that question, but then again there are many ‘real’ answers that lurk beneath the surface. No serious-minded Christian would argue with the truth of the Shorter Catechism’s assertion that ‘the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy...

God's Ambassadors: Advice for Preachers

Chad Van Dixhoorn
Nov 30, 2016
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 body's larger Directory for Worship . It is there that the...

God's Ambassadors: Advice for Preachers

Chad Van Dixhoorn
Nov 30, 2016
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 body's larger Directory for Worship . It is there that the...

A God Thing

David Garner
Nov 15, 2016
Exuberant over an experience, an oh-so-sweet manifestation of divine providence, you delightedly seek to give God praise in telling your story. “It was such a ‘God thing’,” you proclaim. As you see it, God wove together an otherwise inexplicable combination of events to deliver a wonderful—even...

Preparing Sermons with John Owen

Jeremy Walker
Oct 24, 2016
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 has been my privilege to hear - lively, careful, engaging, insightful), I want to do...

The Need for a Ministerial Break Down

Nick Batzig
Oct 14, 2016
"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. Sadly, as their ministries begin to grow numerically, mature believers...

What Andy Stanley Has Forgotten

Richard D. Phillips
Oct 5, 2016
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 given a higher...

The Missing Message

Nick Batzig
Sep 28, 2016
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 aspects of the preaching among the...