How Can We Reach Youth and Teens in Our Preaching?
How can we reach youth and teens? In my own young listener study, the most consistent response about how to connect in preaching was “Relate to me” with its correlated “And let me relate to you.”
Passion for Preaching is a blog by different writing about a range of topics related to preaching. Many of the writers are participants in the Peer Groups or the Coaching Program, but other voices are welcome as well. If you would like to submit a 500-800 word essay to be considered for the blog, please email .
A Control Freak’s Encounter with Chaos: What One Preacher Learned from an Improv Comedian
The Dallas area Perkins Center for Preaching Excellence peer group, led by Dr. Michael Waters, spent a day at Dallas Comedy Club to learn together about the art of Improv and how it might shape their preaching.
Help Arrives for a Common Preaching Problem
I started hacking my sermons with one particular piece of linguistic advice, and inviting my students to do so, too: Remove as many instances of “There is…”, “There are…”, “It is…”, etc. from the sermon and reconstruct them. Simple as that.
Something That Will Save Me
What is one message found in the text this week that will save someone (or some group) who is struggling?
Poetry Makes Nothing Happen
A poem and commentary by W. Craig Gilliam
No Higher Privilege!
Preaching is the greatest honor bestowed upon a clergyperson. Preaching with faithfulness requires serious pondering, if not scholarly study of the Scripture to comprehend not just the words of the Bible, but instead requires one to live with passages of scripture for many hours.
Lectionary, Series, or . . . ?
I have two missions in mind on this topic: introducing the lectionary to those who only preach series and helping lectionary preachers consider another way. In other words, there are strengths and weaknesses associated with each.
God Is Still Calling
To those experiencing a call to preach but having significant doubts, I wanted to encourage them to honor their own uniqueness and not to second guess God’s choices.
Communicating Hope In Times of Crisis
I’d love to be able to put the topic on the shelf to gather dust while peace and love abound. But crises are like wounds that never heal, the scab keeps getting ripped off and the cut made deeper with each successive act of violence.
A Response to the Violence in Falcon Heights, Baton Rouge, and Dallas
Preachers have too often been comfortable letting unjust wars, all kinds of oppression, economic disparity, presidential candidates feeding on and fostering fear and hatred, terrorist attacks, and the like go unaddressed while preaching instead on the habits of a successful Christian...
Relating Faith to Life
My passion for preaching is that one’s faith should be related to life, to what is happening in the world. Faith is lived out not only in an interpersonal context but also in the context of larger issues, such as terrorism, natural disasters, untimely deaths, debilitating diseases, political realities, tragedy, and other aspects of our common life on this planet.
