My book report is on “Communicating for a Change” by Andy Stanley and. The key idea is when your preaching seems weak and frustrating, cut your sermon to one point. Why? it helps you condense the goal of your preaching.
Just make your sermon say one thing. If you need cover an idea that has more than more point. break up your sermon into to a series of sermons. They say most sermons have a series stuffed into them and no one catches any of it. If they miss part of the series they still caught more of the Word then they would if they where assaulted by a whole multi-point sermon.
He admits they will be times that muilt-point sermons maybe OK. But he does not give many times when that is. The authors may have a point. Good hermeneutic principles say that we preach a text unit. That unit has one point, often we do it a disservice to make it say more than one thing, or we are trying to cover to much text and lose the congregation. Even a good sermon series has one point.
A good point focuses on putting both knowledge and action inside us, this is not two different points. But they are flip sides of the same one point. We must make a sermon that sticks, but these sermons do not just fall into place they take hard work to make.
You first need to know your goal. Then how do you get the congregation to receive your goal? Know your audience, what do they need to know, and figure out what will grab their attention.
You dig into Scripture, until you find something that make that makes you say A-ha! The authors say preach the most impactful verses. I am not sure I buy this argument. But I guess that is what Bible Study is for. We usually do not preach from judges, so there is some validity. So study and cut until you find that one ...
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... sermons may become unbalanced. We must not allow ourselves to sacrifice doctrine in the pursuit of relatible preaching. Also could you give me a better definition of what life change means? Does it simply mean becoming a more moral person. Does it mean fixing your felt needs? Or is it letting our submission to Christ change who we are in Him?
Also I could not stand how they act like it is the only right way to preach. Some areas if you would preach a short sermon in a church starving for the Word you undeserving them. Those churches want as much of the Word as possible and they would hear every word. The method in the book is good for our ADHD culture, but our goal is to move to a point where they can hear and understand deep preaching. But no matter how long the sermon is, the sermon must be well made. But still it is a well made book with many valuable points.
You need to not preach your personal theology but preach the theology of the church
The most important task you can do as an ambassador for Christ, is to spend time hanging out with God yourself. Even if it cuts into time that you wanted to spend in "ministry." Spending some time enjoying God's presence, aware that God is enjoying yours at the same time, will do more for those around you, than any words you could work up. If you have a sense of intimacy with Christ, you will be able to do more than just talk about God.
Speeches functioned as great tools for inspiring and motivating people. A passionate and charismatic speaker could often change a group of people’s view of the world with just a short speech. A perfect example of this phenomenon can be seen in the leaders of religious groups such as Matthias and Joseph Smith. These two men both possessed the ability to make people pi...
The Sunday morning service opened with a selection by the sanctuary choir and orchestra, followed by a congregational hymn. Pastor Gaines began talking to the congregation about looking at the vision frame of the future for the church and their mission statement, which comes out of the word of God. A testimony of multiplying disciples was shown featuring Kyle Reno. The sermon given by Pastor Gaines Multiplying Disciple Makers was relevant to the needs of the world today. The sermon came from the scripture of Matthew 28:18-20 and Timothy 2:1-7. Pastor Gaines stated, “Every disciple is called to be a disciple maker. The word of God is completely sufficient at pointing individuals to Jesus...
Paul’s purpose in writing this book is to teach against the false teaching’s being taught there.
transformation of Christianity has taught us. Generally these lessons focus on the hope that this
While reading chapters thirty-one through thirty-four, my mind was blown multiple times! These chapters clearly demonstrated how differently we react to the same situation based on how a question is framed; this thought had never occurred to me before. I have always thought that I am a consistent and fair person, someone who responds to every situation with the same reply. However, these chapters illuminated that that probably is not the case. When this realization is juxtaposed with the example of Christ who truly remains constant, we can see just how quickly we fall short of being perfect; this is what makes us human and flawed.
Many historical events played significant roles in the makings of today's literature starting with getting important messages across to people. A way people would do this was to talk in the form of a sermon. For example, revivalist preacher, Jonathan Edwards, gave a sermon like no other in the year of 1741. "..his anger is as great towards them as to those that are actually suffering the executions of the fierceness of his wrath in hell, and they have done nothing in the least to appease or abate
For threshold members of the discourse to communicate with their congregation, they have added a new genre, sermons during the Divine Liturgy, to help guide the congregation. Sermons are orations that are told by a member of the clergy, which often address biblical, theological, or moral topics to advise the congregation through difficult times. As part of the feedback aspect of the discourse community, all members of the discourse, are advised to have a father of confession. A negative constraint that may hold members of the discourse from having a father of confession is the thought of judgment by the priest. The positive constraint is having a motivational speaker, who can influence the way you look at your weaknesses and improve in your spiritual fight.
Church attendance is slowly dwindling in all the churches, even in your megachurches and the Word of God is not being sought as it should. Without the basic knowledge of “what is sin”, “who commits sin”, “where does sin come from”, and how to get rid of sin” it is resulting in much dishonor among people and rebellion against God. People are continuing to live secular lives living without basic biblical principles. People are continually seeking those things when that leads them further and further away from a Christian life and they should be seeking spiritual guidance. The Bible can and will educate you on all types of self-helps, psychology, geography, philosophy, love, prosperity, etc. One Book does it all except make you read. Yes, there are things that clergy should set up to attract people to the Word and the Word should be presented accordingly and sought out by all. Times have changed and we should equate the times in the Bible. The Bible was written so many years ago and the Word still applies
when counseling people. And according to the word of God, 2 Timothy 3:16-17 "All scripture is God breathed and is useful
More people are there for the actual sermon I feel, because a lot of people don’t understand true praise and worship. What I have come to learn is Praise and worship, is a cleansing and realization of self, and what God has done for you and is not intended to be a “feel good” experience. This is a perfect example of how some worship experiences have been dumbed down to appease the masses. The worship experience should open our minds. It ought to go against the “character” offf a culture that takes for granted God and praise. Praise and worship is a different kind of relationship, which exists between man and God, a relationship of complete adoration and praise. Far too often, in this emerging new culture, we want to treat God as friend, and not as creator and sustainer. Humans are flawed fleshly beings, therefore whenever in the true presence of God a transformation from old to new should occur. We should feel so convicted about our transgressions until we have an earnest desire to change. The flesh dies and slowly loses control of our lives, leaving the Holy Spirit to
Love Yourself as Hearers. Above all, the preachers should consider first the audience or “hearers” when preparing a sermon. As stated in this book, “we need to learn how to introduce, develop, and conclude our subjects in a way that interests hearers” (Galli and Larson, 1994, p. 16). In other words, we need to learn how to modify our words, sentences, paragraphs, stories and illustrations to deliver the message and impact the lives of our audience.
That is an important point. Whether a preacher uses expository preaching, narrative, testimony, or conversational interaction with the congregation, she can still point to the gospel, and the “eternal truth” of Jesus Christ while sharing the Good News of the Gospel whatever form her sermon
Using this method, he successfully engages the congregation through descriptive narratives and relating ideas to current times. As part of the narratives he includes descriptive biblical stories beginning with the story in his text, claiming it as a “scary story”. He further re-enforces this scary story concept by sharing two more biblical passages where a scary story exists. These biblical narratives are the beginning of what Wilson would call the second page of the sermon where the trouble in the text is given. This of course was preceded by his first page that discussed the idea of having scary stories in our lives today (trouble in the world) by using a vivid personal illustration. He continues to use vivid illustrations to hammer in his focus on the church needing to be friends to the downtrodden because God responds that way. He designs the third page to share the Gospel in the text reminding us that God responds to continual injustice by sending his son to be the friend that everyone needs. The one who stands up for injustice and never leaves your side. Finally, he concludes with the fourth page by demonstrating how churches can live the gospel in the world today. They do this through friendships with people in their surrounding community whose stories might be