Presby-Musings

Today we are going to be exploring the third of a five part sermon series for the month of January--a series we've entitled Foundations.  The basic idea behind this series is pretty simple:  We want to explore what we need in order to have the best foundation to step off in the right direction for 2017.   As we learned the first week in this series, it's important to take a good first step in the right direction because--as Pastor Andy Stanley wrote in his fine book The Principle of The Path --"It's your direction, not your intention that determines your destination."  In other words, it doesn't matter how good your intentions are, if you step off in the wrong direction, you won't get where you want to go.  The last two weeks we've learned some valuable lessons.  We learned that we need some solid foundations stones--faith and trust to be precise.  Today we're going to be focusing on the foundation stone of Hope.  I want you to remember o...

Welcome to Part 4 in the "Recovering The Sermon" blog posts--loosely based on a preaching workshop I facilitated recently for pastors, preachers and communicators. In this post we get down to the nuts and bolts--the old nitty gritty-- where the proverbial rubber meets the proverbial road.  I can't think of any more cliches. We're going to begin with antennae. A few posts ago, I mentioned that when you are planning your sermons or talks several weeks or months in advance, you will find that you walk around with your antennae up, so to speak. But I would argue that the great communicators always have their antennae up--they are always open to seeing God, truth, Jesus , hope, beauty in the world around them. "Have your eyes open to the world, be alert to the things that are curious, that speak.  If you find the world interesting, you will be interesting." - Rob Bell Rob Bell famously uses a term called "buckets" to describe where he s...

This week we are beginning the first of a three part series, featuring " I Am Second ," a unique program that is designed to help connect people to Jesus in a very earthy, messy, awesome way. So what does it mean to say "I Am Second?"  For me it means that I am constantly being reminded of my place in line when it comes to the things that truly matter.  It's a new way of knowing and being known---which is the fundamental desire of all human beings, really.  It's a new way of living life to the fullest, free from the burdens of doubt, fear and the expectations of others.  It's a new way of being defined by the relationship we have with Jesus... not by religion. Jesus didn't come to live, die and be raised from the dead to form a religion.  I know that sounds kind of heretical to say---but there you go.  I have a t-shirt that has the word "Heretic"emblazoned on the front of it.  I was wearing it when I met Andy Stanley , the pastor of on...

I recently attended the Newspring Leadership Conference and got the chance to listen to some of the greatest preachers in America for nearly twelve hours of worship and learning. I wanted to share some of the things I gleaned from this conference, and I thought I would begin with some straight up wisdom on preaching that Andy Stanley, pastor of Northpoint Church in Atlanta laid on the crowd of nearly four thousand. Northpoint Church was started some seventeen years ago with a particular focus:  to be the kind of church that unchurched people would love to attend.  Northpoint is now either the second or third largest church in the U.S. with multiple campuses and over 30,000 members, and still has that same focus. Andy Stanley has recently written a book entitled, "Deep & Wide: Creating Churches Unchurched People Love to Attend," that chronicles the journey of Northpoint, and offers some guidelines for church leaders who truly want to reach people who aren't act...

I recently attended the Drive Conference at Northpoint Church in Atlanta.  During one of the breakout sessions---on planning engaging sermon series---I learned that Andy Stanley , the senior pastor of Northpoint holds an annual two-day workshop with about 25 of his staff members to plan the sermons for the entire year.  The Northpoint staffer leading the workshop told us that the purpose of doing the planning sessions collaboratively rather than just leaving them up to Andy was fairly simple:  meeting congregational needs.  When more people were involved in the process, she told us, they were better able to determine what the congregation needed to hear, and where God might be leading the church. The moment that I heard this, I instantly wanted to try it.  The only problem was I didn't get a really good sense of how Northpoint conducted these two-day planning sessions, except for the fact that the participants were all staff members. I don't have 350 sta...

  Weird: Because Normal Isn't Working by Craig Groeschel I just finished Craig Groeschel's newest book, Weird: Because Normal Isn't Working .  It took me a while, not because it was a hard read (it's not), but because I was busy doing ministry, going to school, being a father, husband, son and countless other things. For those of you who aren't familiar with Groeschel, he is the lead pastor of LifeChurch.tv , a mulit-site megachurch in Oklahoma.  LifeChurch also has the distinction of being one of the most innovative, creative and open source-minded evangelical churches in the U.S.  They routinely give away potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of teaching and preaching material a year---not to mention over 2 million downloads of the Bible.  Groeschel is the author of several books, a frequent speaker at church leadership events, a husband and the father of six.  Back to my review...  Ironically, the sort of busy-ness that kept m...

"Opening The Books"  So, I am preaching about money for the next four weeks.  I know that some folks might question the wisdom of doing such a thing.  "If you talk about money too much from the pulpit, people will think that's all you care about," they might say.   I say "might" knowing full well that people have said such things when I have preached about money in the past.   Here's the thing... Lots of Christians are uncomfortable when their pastor preaches on finances, but you can't ignore the fact that Jesus had so much to say about money that you can't be a follower of Jesus and be irresponsible financially.  In fact, Jesus said more about money than he did about heaven and hell combined, and more than any other "secular" topic.   Also, there is a relationship with the way you handle your money and your devotion to God.  I know no one wants to hear things like that---especially Christians--but it's true.   Full...