I believe there’s a misnomer in the church. It’s the definition of deep or shallow preaching. Deep preaching gets defined as doctrinal and shallow preaching is defined as applicational. I think we have our definitions wrong. Shallow preaching is when a speaker tells you what the text means, but fails to tells you what the text can do in your life. Throwing out a few Greek words doesn’t make preaching deep. Talking about ancient cultures doesn’t make preaching deep. A person could stand up and read a commentary and do exactly what some define as “deep” preaching. Deep preaching is … Read More

I’m so excited about teaching this series for the next 4 weeks. There is so much confusion inside and outside the church about God speaking. Does God still speak? How can we know it’s really Him? How can I recognize God’s voice from my own? All of these questions and more will be answered starting this Sunday!

I color code my message notes and the color I use for scriptures that I’m going to read is yellow (I don’t know why I picked yellow, I just did). One of the things I look at each week before getting up in front of the church is, “How much yellow am I sharing?” I love sharing stories and I feel storytelling is one of my giftings, but I want to always have plenty of yellow on my pages as I communicate.

One of the things that I so enjoy about teaching the Scriptures is the time I get to spend in God’s Word, thus giving God more opportunity to work in my life. One of the things I’m talking about this weekend is forgiveness, and as I asked God to search my heart this week I realized there’s someone I hadn’t forgiven. I had to forgive, give the situation over to God, and experience the freedom that comes from obey God’s Word. I’m so glad I get to teach the Bible week after week. It makes me keep short accounts 🙂

One of the things we’ve built our church on is the systematic teaching of the Bible. We’re a verse by verse Bible teaching church for the most part. We do topical stuff as well (some topics are best covered in a topical manner), but the majority of Sundays, we’re working our way through a book of the Bible. I’ve been thinking about this since we just finished the Gospel of Mark this past weekend (We started on Easter of last year). I looked and realized that we’ve taught through 19 books of the Bible since we started Calvary Fellowship 7 … Read More

It’s all about the text! I love creativity and I love thinking of new ways of sharing old truths, but you have to start with the text. I’m concerned whenever I talk to a leader who tells me he’s doing a series of teachings on _________, but hasn’t figured out what Bible verses he’s going to teach. It’s the classic case of the tail wagging the dog. We start with the text because when you break it all down, that’s all that matters. The lights don’t matter… The staging doesn’t matter… The bumper video doesn’t matter… The graphics don’t matter… … Read More

The first 5 minutes is the most important part of your message. If you can’t grab people’s attention and tell them why it was imperative they got out of bed to hear you, it’s over. A great close can’t fix a bad opening. A good middle can’t compensate for a boring beginning. Why? Because if you don’t grab them at the beginning, you’ve lost them. That’s why stories are so powerful. I love telling stories to open my message because: – they grab people (“That’s interesting. Where’s this going?”) – they relate to people (“I’ve done that before too”) – … Read More

The difference between a good message and a great one is the transitions. When you’re driving in a car, what makes for a smooth car ride is how well the driver makes his turns. The same is true in teaching. Your transitions are the turns you take to get to your destination (assuming you have one of course 🙂 The masters of transitions are sportscasters. If you watch Sportscenter (as any self-respecting man does), notice how they transition seamlessly from sport to sport using great transitional phrases, stories, and parallels to move us without leaving us behind or confused. They’ll … Read More

Someone in the office just found the first message I ever taught at Calvary Fellowship…. Time to break out the Sledgehammer!!!!!!

John rearranged some stuff in our storage closets at the theatre and he brought me 6 boxes worth of cassettes with every teaching I’ve given since the 1st Sunday of our church. Old school! I feel bad for the people endured those messages. Some of that stuff was brutal! Those tapes might accidentally end up in the bottom of a lake…