I love everything about preaching—planning sermons, studying and research, Sunday delivery, feeling spent on Sunday evening—all of it. I’d love to do it every Sunday, but I believe that it’s not best for me to do so. It’s also not the best thing for our church community Austin Mustard Seed. As I have written before, we believe that our liturgy …
Ask a ‘missional church planter’ about how they plan to do ‘Sunday worship’ and the response might range from leery to apologetic to an explanation about how it might be a necessary evil. My own journey has reflected some of this. Having seen churches focus almost entirely on the weekend experience, I found great hope in these words from Jurgen …
After seven articles, and almost as many months, we finally come to the end of this series on Sermon Preparation for the Missional Pastor. While the last article was on the actual development of a sermon outline, I suggested there is one more step that’s all too easy to overlook: Evaluate. So may I offer you four questions to ask …
In third grade, our teacher assigned us to read a book by the author of our choice, and follow up with a letter to the author. I have no idea what book I read, except that it was part of a series. I have no idea to which author I wrote. I have no idea if anyone else received a response. …
I’m a stubborn fellow with a lot of books on my wish list, so I’ll often need to have a book recommended 3-4 times before I get it pushed to the top of the pile. That was the case with a book on public speaking called Resonate, by Nancy Duarte. It didn’t hurt that it was, and still is, offered …
God and I have a little game we play with each other. Truth be told, I think it’s more of a game that God plays with me, and it’s called “You’re not as necessary as you think you are.” Here’s how it works: Often, when I preach and I think it goes well and I had good things to say, the …
In the previous post in this series, I wrote about a state of mind that is helpful for the ongoing work of sermon preparation. I talked about the need to Attend, to pay attention to what was happening in soul, text and culture. This time around, things get more practical, moving from an abstract posture to a tangible activity. I’m …
This post is part two in the series Preparing to Preach in the Missional Church. You can read part one here. For a missional church planter, sermon preparation as a way of living within the larger set of responsibilities. It’s not just a list of steps to work through as much as it is a cycle of actions and postures — a …
Sermon Preparation is different in the Missional Church My favorite day of the week is Sunday. Our young church, Austin Mustard Seed, has been doing Sunday liturgy for six months. We are blessed to have a meeting space that is mostly setup so we can focus on relationships over tasks. We are new enough that we have little to no baggage, and …