Ministers should cultivate “a mixed air of simplicity and majesty, decent neatness and elegance, without flaunting pomp and gaiety” (Foxcroft, The Gospel Ministry, p. 34).
Persuasion to What?
My adaptation of Weaver is: Rhetoric is persuasive communication in the service of Truth that creates an informed appetite for the Good” (Overstreet, Persuasive Preaching, p. 27)
In Which I Do Not Relent
Relent? I haven’t even lented the first time. Having arisen this morning, I was greeted with a couple of Ash Wednesday posts in my feed, and so thought that this might be some kind of guidance. I therefore thought I would just outline a few Presbyterian caveats about why I don’t feel the traditional Lenten …
Two Adams
“At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore” (Ps. 16: 11) The Basket Case Chronicles #181 “But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept. For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even …
The Rosetta Stone of Sermons
“We ought to preach in such a way that, if Jesus has not been raised from the dead, then our sermons are utterly incomprehensible” (Willimon, Proclamation and Theology, p. 83).
In Which Stephen Fry Steps In It
If you would be so kind, I would like to ask you to view this brief bit of blasphemous cheek. It’ll just take a few minutes. Now then, all set? Let’s break this down into two basic parts. The first part is that Stephen Fry is given a thought experiment, and we should take a …
Mission, Vocation, and Body Life
Introduction: As you have heard here before, mission is not something the church does on the side. Mission is at the heart of what the church is. And so, outreach, mission, evangelism, church planting all amount to the same thing. In this fallen world, the church should be about two things—birth and growth, and mission …
Tasting a Saving Act
Our God is a Savior, and because our need of salvation is something that is expressed in history, our God is the God of saving acts. God establishes the story, the end from the beginning, but God has also written in the story in such a way that requires Him to intervene in it. When …
Celebrity Chefs and Raw Foods
Architecture needs to be, like all other forms of human expression, honest. There must be no pretense, no sham, no attempts at misdirection. Centrally, when we are talking about the architecture of a church, the honesty must be of the kind that plainly recognizes that God is God, and we are not. When you come …
So Not Just an Indoor Job With No Heavy Lifting
“Preaching is hard work, requiring the cultivation of a host of skills that are difficult to develop” (Willimon, Proclamation and Theology, p. 72).