This week I am spending most of my time reveling in the annual preaching conference hosted at Luther Seminary (where – full disclosure J – I teach! 🙂 ) called the Celebration of Biblical Preaching. And it is a celebration – full of lively plenary presentations, great workshops,...
Does Your Sermon Bleed?
posted by DJL
Somewhere along the way of my early career in ministry, it dawned on me that the central task of preaching is simply to tell the truth. Actually, to tell the truth twice. The first truth is the truth of our lives. Our hopes and disappointments, our accomplishments and set backs, our dreams and fears. What matters is that it is true – deeply, candidly, courageously true. The second truth is God’s truth – the truth of God’s unrelenting mercy, grace, goodness and love. The truth of God’s acceptance of us just as we are. The truth of God’s profound and sacrificial love made manifest in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus...
Communal Preaching
posted by DJL
If I had room to add a subtitle to this post, it would be “I Don’t Know, Pt. 4.” In three earlier posts, I talked about the importance of admitting when we don’t know something because 1) when we don’t admit our ignorance, we often share bad information and miss an opportunity to...
Expert vs. Expertise
posted by DJL
Over the last two years I’ve been directing a research project at Luther Seminary that seeks to understand a little better what makes congregations thrive. Toward this end, we’ve partnered with about 40 congregations across the country and worked with them to discover what seems to work the best as they invite people more deeply into the faith. We’re at a point in the research where teams of two faculty members from Luther are traveling to visit each of the congregations. Our job, really, is just to listen to what these congregations are discovering and learn a) what we can share with other congregations and b) what we can do better at...
From Performative to Participatory Preaching
posted by DJL
ChurchNext is the website and ministry of Chris Yaw, who spent the first part of his professional life as an interviewer and broadcaster in radio and television. Now an Episcopal priest, Chris uses those same skills to interview leaders, change agents, and skilled practitioners and harvest what they know to make it available to all leaders in the church, lay and ordained. A few weeks ago Chris interviewed me – I’m not sure which of those above categories I fit into 🙂 – and he’s just posted the fruits of the conversation we had via Skype on his site. My topic: moving from performative preaching toward more participatory...
Was It a Sermon?
posted by DJL
A few weeks ago I was invited by a pastor to join him in a dialogue sermon. I’d never done that before, but I’m always talking about the need to experiment in our preaching and so figured it was time to put my money where my mouth was. We met ahead of time and talked through the contours of the biblical text appointed for that day and how it might lend itself to this kind of dialogue. While we worked through the major moves and anticipated turning points of the conversation, we left the content of the conversation largely unscripted. We also talked about the need to make sure we didn’t just talk about the text but proclaimed the Gospel...