A veteran pastor took me to lunch yesterday. As preachers tend to do, we spent most of the lunch talkingabout preaching and preachers. The conversation continued as he drove me back to my office. The last preacher he brought up, as we were turning ontoBeaver Street, was the late Dr. S.M. Lockridge. Dr. Lockridge was the pastor ofthe historic Calvary Baptist Church in San Diego, a well-respected preacher,and noted denominational leader. The veteran pastor recalled the first time he heard Dr. Lockridgepreach. It was at a Southern Baptist Convention event. He said it was thegreatest sermon on the Lordship of...

I am in Oxford, England, participating in the Proclaimer’s Place, led by Dr. Joel C. Gregory. It is four days of study for preaching, with about twenty-five ministers from around the United States participating. Each day, we take a text of scripture and study it together, with a view toward preaching. Yesterday, we studied Exodus 13-17-22. Today we will study 1 Thessalonians 2:1-11. Malachi 3 and Luke 1 will follow in the days to come. I am being refreshed by the study and the fellowship. In baseball, hitters take batting practice and constantly work on their swing. The same is...

Several weeks ago, I completed a verse-by-verse exposition of the Epistle of James for my congregation at the Shiloh Metropolitan Baptist Church. My faith was enriched by this personal study. And I trust my congregation was built up in their faith, as a result of hearing these messages. I have been thinking about this series over the past several days - not necessarily the spiritual experience of studying James, but the practicalities of preaching through it. Here are some of my reflections. Why James? I love the Epistle of James. I think it is James’ “in your face” style of...

This Sunday, God willing, I will resume my verse-by-verse exposition of the Epistle of James. This past week was Prayer Emphasis Week here at Shiloh. And I have preached on prayer the past two Sundays. I am now heading back to James. This Sunday’s message will be on James 2:1-13 – The Sin of Partiality. It will be the first of two sermons on James chapter 2, the second will be on verses 14-26. Interestingly, it took me nine sermons to get through chapter 1. But I plan to get through chapter 2 in two sermons. The two passages in...

People have short attention spans. You cannot preach long series any more. It is best to keep sermon series short – six weeks at the most. Many who preach and many who teach preaching have concluded that society in general and congregations in particular have short attention spans. Churches cannot endure long sermon series anymore, they say. This conclusion is stated as an irrefutable fact. And it goes unchallenged. But is it true? Every pastor must make a personal decision about how long to spend on a particular book, theme, or biography. And there are many factors that go into...

It was youth Sunday afternoon. I was hanging out on the church grounds with my dad, waiting for the youth musical to begin. A car pulled up and a woman got out and walked up to me and asked, “Are you ready?” She was the lady assigned to pick me up to preach the youth service at her church that afternoon. The service my father forgot to tell me about. As a boy preacher, just into his teens, this was an indescribable crisis. But I got through it. Barely. This early experience taught me to always be prepared to preach....

"You have to do whatever the Lord says you have to do in order to preach that Bible." When I heard a friend say this in a conversation with a group of preachers, I laughed. He was asked his philosophy of sermon preparation. Specifically, they wanted to know what steps he takes to get from text to sermon. How long does it take him to prepare? Things like that. His answer: "You have to do whatever the Lord says to do in order to preach that Bible." I laughed. (Some things we laugh at because they are funny. Some things...

I am in Oxford, England. I am participating in Proclaimer’s Place – a week of group Bible study and seminar of sermon preparation led by Joel Gregory. I flew all night Monday night. I was armed with books, magazines, calendars, notebook, and study tools. I boarded the plane with big plans to get a great deal of study and reading done during the uninterrupted quiet time. But I basically went to sleep not long after the flight took off. It was 6:30 AM when I arrived in London (five hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time). The ride from London to...

I am attending the E.K. Bailey International Expository Preaching Conference in Dallas. Pastor Bryan Carter and the Concord Church host this conference. The theme this year is “Preaching Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:5). The late Dr. E.K. Bailey, the founding pastor of the Concord Church, established this conference. In a recent article by Michael Duduit, Dr. Bailey was listed among the twenty-five most influential preachers of the past twenty-five years. I fully agree. My own commitment to expository preaching was sealed as a result of hearing Dr. Bailey preach. He is one of my homiletical heroes. And his conference has been...

I think that there are people who enjoy Bible study the same way that other people enjoy filling out crossword puzzles. Get all the parts and get the thing completed – they find satisfaction. I think there are people that study the Bible that way. They can see how it relates to its context and how its details work to get across the concept. But if it never gets into your life, if it never really touches your experience, I doubt seriously that you can call it a study of biblical truth, because I think God’s truth is always designed...

The modern obsession with "user-friendly" ministry has stoked the fear of preaching into a pervasive phobia. Seminaries these days train men to be storytellers, entertainers, and motivational speakers - and discourage them from dealing with profound of difficult theological concepts from the pulpit. Suddenly "too much Scripture" is deemed a greater homiletical faux pas than a whole sermon with no reference to Scripture whatsoever! Seriously, in some circles it is perfectly acceptable to give a motivational lecture of comedy routine practically devoid of any biblical content, but a verse-by-verse exposition of Scripture would automatically be deemed too weighty and (this...

We do not choose what we preach as ministers of the gospel. We do not have a choice of what we preach week by week. There are times in my study when I am absolutely overcome when I sense that God has spoken to me through his word for our people. Pulpits are not private platforms to espouse personal philosophies or political views. The only preaching God honors is "the message that I give you." In my pulpit I preach from the Bible for two reasons. First, I am not smart enough to preach anything else. If I were to...