In Ministry: It’s an Online World

As computers and the Internet consume more and more of our waking hours-from writing sermons to managing membership to keeping up on Facebook-another digital dimension is confronting pastors and church leaders: online education.

Preaching in a Missional Church: An Interview with Reggie McNeal

Reggie McNeal is one of the key thinkers and authors about the future of the church. He spent more than 20 years in local congregational service, was founding pastor of a church and has worked within his own denomination. Now he is serving with Leadership Network, working with missional strategies and issues. His newest book is The Missional Renaissance (Jossey-Bass). He recently visited with Preaching Executive Editor Michael Duduit.

Preaching to Connect: An Interview with Perry Noble

Perry Noble is founding pastor of NewSpring Church, a church that has exploded in growth in the past decade. Preaching to a congregation of predominantly young adults, he is known for his bold and candid emphasis on the truths and the demands of the gospel in our lives. He recently visited with Preaching Editor Michael Duduit.

Made to Stick

Chip Heath is Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University and co-author with his brother Dan of Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die. In a Preaching podcast interview with Michael Duduit, Chip shared some helpful insights about crafting ideas that stick with people:

Sermons that Stick

Most of you have 30 to 45 minutes each week to speak into the lives of every person who attends your church. You can't spend 30 minutes each week with every person in the church personally applyng God's Word to God's people, but you do have an opportunity to open up the Word of God and speak into their lives each week. It is the prospect that all teaching pastors have to make a message stick because they are applying eternal truth to earthly circumstances. The hope is that the time is used by God to shape lives and influence the direction of the congregation by clarifying who God is, what He wants from us and what He has done for us in Christ.

Orality and Preaching

David Dorsey wrote: "Humans need and appreciate communication that is arranged and organized." He makes the claim in the context of his discussion of biblical literature having been written not to be read but to be heard, even when read. "The Bible was written for an oral culture; the text was heard before it was seen; it was intended to be read aloud." This, by the way, is the best way to hear the message of the last book of the Bible, the Revelation of Jesus Christ. Read it out loud. "Blessed is the one who reads and those who hear the words" (Rev. 1:3). It takes about 90 minutes to read orally; but it is worth the time to hear what is hard to see.

Disciple-Making Churches

In a recent article for ChurchCentral.com, Thom Rainer writes: "As we heard from churches across America, we began to see a common pattern in churches that were more effective in making disciples. The attendance rate of members of those churches was higher, and the dropout rate was lower." Some of the common traits in such churches included:

Distracted

Learning that repeated calls from controllers to the cockpit of an Airbus A320 operated by a reputable airline, flying at 37,000 feet and moving at 450 miles per hour tends to grab your attention. It also leaves you feeling very vulnerable. Now, at least in this case, we know the truth. What is it? Well, the answer doesn't exactly put us at ease; and we kind of figured that it would be that way. Planes just don't keep flying past Minneapolis when they are supposed to land there.

Empathy, Netanyahu, Despots and Chimps

One thing I have learned as a pastor is that one cannot reason with madness, but only treat it with Truth. If that were the proposed aim of our desire to show empathy to dictators and those who deny the rights of Israel, who call the president of the United States, "Satan" (though now they call our new president, "our son"), then I could understand; but I see nothing that demonstrates such Reagan-like resolve in dealing with these thugs and killers. The question is: Why are we not showing empathy to Israel, Poland or the Czech Republic? We read about empathy everywhere, but the empathy is misplaced; it is empathy distorted.