“Fasten yourself to the center of your ministry; not to some point on the circumference. The circumference must move when the center moves”
Phillips Brooks, The Joy of Preaching, p. 82
Aim Higher
“The bringing of truth, of Christ the Truth, to man, of the whole Christ to the whole man, you can think of no work larger in its idea than that.”
Phillips Brooks, The Joy of Preaching, p. 80
On the Calendar
“The great procession of the year, sacred to our best human instincts with the accumulated reverence of ages—Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Good Friday, Easter, Ascension, Whitsunday—leads those who walk in it, at least once every year, past all the great Christian facts, and, however careless and selfish be the preacher, will not leave it in his power to keep them from his people”
Phillips Brooks, The Joy of Preaching, p. 79
The Prophecy of Micah [1]
Sermon Video Introduction: Micah was a younger contemporary to the prophet Isaiah, and he ministered across the reigns of Jotham (c. 740 B.C.) and Hezekiah of Judah (who died in 687 B.C.). Other ...
If You Want the Congregation to Apply, Show Them How
“These last times grow very frequent with some men, till you have the race of clerical visionaries who think vast, dim, vague thoughts, and do no work. It is a danger of all ardent minds. The only salvation, if one finds himself verging to it, is an unsparing rule that no idea, however abstract, shall be every counted as satisfactorily received and grasped till it has opened to us its practical side and helped us somehow in our work”
Phillips Brooks, The Joy of Preaching, p. 77
The Nephilim, Hades, and Other Oddments
Introduction: The first thing to get out of the way is why I might want to address this subject at all. Don't we have bigger fish to fry? Well, yes, we do, and they are all Nephilim fish. That's why ...
Audio Reading of Post
The Rope and the Needle
For the Bible Reading Challenge this summer, I decided to read George Lamsa's translation of the New Testament—meaning a translation into English from an early Aramaic version. And for the most part, ...
Permit the Children
Sermon Video Introduction: This is a remarkable period in the history of our congregation. We have never seen growth like this before, and all of us are getting used to the new situation. Of course, ...
Too High and Too Low
“It seems to me that a large part of the troubles and mistakes of our pastoral life come from our having too high an estimate of men’s present condition and too low an estimate of their possibility”
Phillips Brooks, The Joy of Preaching, p. 73
Inspiration, Not Comfort
Ineffective pastoral care “tries to meet the misfortunes of life with comfort and not with inspiration . . . The truest help which one can render to a man who has any of the inevitable burdens of life to carry is not to take his burden off but to call out his best strength that he may be able to bear it”
Phillips Brooks, The Joy of Preaching, p. 71