God willing, I will continue my series on "Total-Life Stewardship" this Sunday. I am nearing the end. And it is pretty interesting how this series has been growing on me as the weeks have gone by. Sunday's message will be the next to last in the series. I plan to speak on the stewardship of our (spiritual) gifts. 1 Peter 4:10-11 is the foundational text for this message. It says: "As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God's varied grace: whoever speaks, as one who speaks oracles of God; whoever serves,...

At the end of Rediscovering Expository Preaching, John MacArthur answers the question: What is the ultimate key to effective preaching? His answer is: “Very simply, stay in your study until you know that the Lord will gladly accept what you have prepared to preach because it rightly represents his word” (p. 348). MacArthur then follows this advice with a plan for making a preacher out of your pastor, written by an unknown parishioner (pp. 348-49): Fling him into his office. Tear the “Office” sign from the door and nail on the sign, “Study.” Take him off the mailing list. Lock...

I usually give a “State of the Church Address” each year at Mt. Sinai, during the first midweek service resumes. We call it our “Vision Night” service. But I chose to delay that message this year, not really knowing if I would ever actually get to it. Our congregation is in the midst of a relocation process. The Lord has been answering our prayers and doing great things on our behalf. But these first weeks of the new year have also been rather challenging. We delayed our final planning that would have been completed in October or November, trusting that...

We were blessed to have a special day of worship at Mt. Sinai yesterday. First of all, we one first Sundays, we celebrate the Lord's Table together, which is always a special time in the life of our congregation. Likewise, our fall semester of small-groups began on yesterday. But what really made the day so special was the presence of Dr. Ray Pritchard, president of Keep Believing Ministries, who preached in both of our morning services. As I mentioned in an earlier post, Dr. Pritchard spent Saturday morning with us, giving practical advice for faithful and effective preaching. But, come...

Dr. Ray Pritchard, president and featured speaker of Keep Believing Ministries, is our guest at Mt. Sinai this weekend. This morning, Dr. Pritchard, led a conference in which he gave us practical tips for regular biblical preaching. There were only a few people present – MSMBC associate pastors and one local pastor. And I was a little disappointed that more brothers didn’t take advantage of this opportunity to meet Dr. Pritchard. But I understand how busy pastors are – especially on Saturdays! And so we had a small, intimate setting in which we were able to learn from Dr. Pritchard...

We will resume our Tuesday night worship services tonight, after being "dark" on Tuesdays for the past two months. Throughout the summer I have been thinking about what I would teach when we resumed. And I decided several weeks ago that I will pick up our exposition of Ephesians that I had started earlier on Sundays. I plan to preach Ephesians 2:14-18 tonight, and finish chapter 2 with verses 19-22 next week. I look forward to getting back at it. Please pray for us. Sunday. Sunday. Sunday. What can I say? I had been working on Joshua 4 for weeks....

Yesterday, I ranted about the fact that pulpit plagiarism is unethical. Today, I want to take it back, sort of. Indeed, a man should do his own homework and come to the pulpit with the fruit of his own labor. However, as I said yesterday, no one is original. And, ultimately, no preacher should try to be. It should be our goal to simply be faithful and clear when we stand to preach or teach. The Lord really doesn’t ask us to be cute, clever, or creative in our ministry of the word. Now, that doesn’t mean that we should...

I had an interesting experience last week that I keep thinking about. The first night of the meeting I was preaching, I stood to and called my text. And there was a weird response by the congregation. Something strange was happening, but I didn't know what. Lots of thoughts flooded my mind. But I really couldn't catch the vibe. The congregation, to whom I had preached the past four years, was quite tentative throughout the entire message. But I couldn't figure out why. A few minutes after a sat down from preaching, it all became clear. One of the pastors...

I heard a Charles Haddon Spurgeon quote this week about the importance of biblical preaching that has been very challenging and convicting: "Life and death and eternity and worlds unknown may hang on the preaching and hearing of one sermon." Amen.

I am a manuscript preacher, sort of. Usually manuscript preachers write out the sermons in full and then take them to the pulpit and preach from them, word-for-word. I am a manuscript preacher in that I write out my sermons in full (most of the time). But I rarely take my manuscript to the pulpit. I would quite say that I memorize my sermons anymore, either. I use a word association method to remember the major progression of my argument. Likewise, most of my sermons are verse-by-verse expositions of some passage. So the structure of the message usually revolves around...