Preaching Conference

We just finished holding a three-day event that we called an Evangelism Conference and Preaching Academy.  It was held in Dallas, and the response to it was fantastic.  Particularly exciting is the response to the preaching part of this event.  We had two of the best-known preachers in the country who spoke to us about preaching, John Ed Mathison and Jim Moore.  We also had the associate pastor at First Church Arlington, Estee Valendy, a 28-year-old clergy in her beginning years of preaching, who spoke to us about preaching to the younger generation.  Alyce McKenzie of Perkins School of Theology, Bill Lawrence, and David Mosser spoke about preaching today in a variety of ways.  We held panel discussions and had numerous workshops.  One of the really helpful aspects was a workshop with noted speech and drama teacher, Diane Stamper, who really provided coaching.  The response by the participants was fantastic, and the evaluations showed how helpful this was. 

I want to do it again, and I’d like your ideas.  We’re currently working on getting a brand new, redesigned website up and running, so check back with us soon here and let’s dialogue about what is needed to help all of us to do a better job of preaching in this highly secular world.  Even better, let us know on our Facebook page or email me.  

Needs-Based Preaching

Too often, our ministry does not relate to the real needs of those we are attempting to minister to.  The power of Jesus Christ is the power to relate to where we are and where we hurt. Jesus said in Luke 4:18, “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free.”  If this was His ministry, and if He asked us to follow Him, then the Church ought to be doing the same thing.  We need to be responding to the real needs of our society.  Too often, when we prepare sermons, we do it to share the particular ideas that we feel are important but which may have nothing to do with the needs of the people.  We share concepts of doctrines and principles that may be important in a scholarly discussion in seminary, but, for a young mom who is struggling to raise her children, they are irrelevant.  So often, we explain and proclaim as if we were motivating other clergy rather than laity who live in a very secular world where most of the vocabulary of the Church is misunderstood or irrelevant. 

We are called to respond to the needs.  In Matthew 25, Jesus said, “If you have done it for the least of these, you have done it for me.”  The standard of being okay with God is to be a sheep instead of a goat – meet needs.