I’m ranting, so you’ve been warned!  But the recent post from Church Marketing Sucks still has me thinking.  The comments went wild that churches shouldn’t do it, but so many churches are.  Why are we so quick to copy?  I watch church leaders copy other churches’ mission statement, values, ministry names, and teaching series.  Is there a problem here?  I think so.  Especially when so many churches are claiming creativity is one of their values.  OK.  What are you creating?  Orders to different ministries to know waht the next series is?  Come on.  Should we glean?  Of course.  But that … Read More

Bruce johnson has a great post today about teaching.  Do yourself a favor and read it.  It’s right here. 

This weekend we are having a “Youth Takeover” service. This is where our youth serve in all the areas of the service from the band, ushers, greeters, etc… Also, Mark our youth Pastor, will be teaching. What’s fun about someone filling in for me is that we have this ritual where we have the speaker for the weekend give his message to our staff. This is totally brutal because we share honestly about the message, but it’s also very helpful because we are able to offer insights that always make the message better. While I don’t do this every week, … Read More

With all the talk about MP3’s as of late, I thought I’d let you know that our media geniuses have put my latest series "Elements" on our church site for free download.  I can’t guarantee quality, but what do you want, it’s free!  Also, they have put 1 minute clips on MP3 from our radio show "Fuel" on the site as well.  You can download them here. 

I am firm believer that if you don’t feel it, you can’t teach it!  The best definition I’ve heard of preaching is "Truth through a personality."  So when I walk up to the front, I’ve go to feel like the message I have to share is absolutely dire for people to hear!  Here are some things I think about before opening my mouth that maybe you’ll find helpful:  #1 – Do I really believe what I’m about to say? – Do I believe this message down to my bones?  I can’t teach something just because someone else said and I … Read More

I was thinking about the trend of having teaching series’ last anywhere from 4 – 8 weeks. The reasoning behind it at times is that we don’t want people to get bored, we don’t want to dwell on a subject for too long, people have shorter attention spans, etc… But what if we took a page out of what TV has been doing for years? They aren’t showing a 4-part mini-series anymore for the most part. They are going with season long shows. A season for a TV show is anywhere from 4-8 months. So what would happen if we … Read More

If you teach, you know how God has you go through the stuff that you’re teaching? Sunday was a really tough message for me. It was one of those, “What happens when God doesn’t answer in the way you wanted Him to?” types of messages. But the response was unbelievable! People were so moved as I shared my story about how God hasn’t answered me in the way I’ve wanted Him to at times. I was teaching on John the Baptist being in prison (I’ve been doing a series of messages on John the Baptist’s life) and he waited and … Read More

So what came first, the chicken or the egg?  Let me ask you another question, what comes first, the Biblical text or the illustration?  I believe the text should come first.  The primary issue of preaching is to get God’s heart across as revealed in scripture.  So that should be the basis from which all of our series ideas or message flow from.  Do you have a great illustration, or a movie that you want to build a series of messages around?  I think that’s fine, but be careful that the tail doesn’t begin to wag the dog.  When you … Read More

Since I was in Bible College I’ve heard students, teachers, and future Pastors debate the issue of what’s the best way to teach for life change. Those in the Expositional camp site Paul’s exhortation to the Ephesian elders in Acts 20 as the proof text for straight “through the Bible” teaching. “Therefore I testify to you this day that I am innocent of the blood of all men. For I have not shunned to declare to you the whole counsel of God.” (Acts 20:26-27) The topical camp looks at the fact that Jesus Himself never taught through a book of … Read More

I’m kind of concerned in some things that I’m seeing in church world. We’re hearing words like creativity and innovation, but we’re not really seeing a lot of it. What do I mean? We aren’t being creative or innovative when we steal someone else’s series and teach it. There’s another word for that: Lazy! There’s a time and place for ripping off people’s stuff verbatim. When we started our church and I was working 50 plus hours outside of the church, that’s the time to steal and thank God there are resources to help young Pastors get going. But there … Read More