Example Sermons
The 7 Tools for Development in Action
By Justin Rossow When we preach, we make decision about how we are going to spend our time in the pulpit. Consciously or not, we choose how we are going to help the hearer create meaning out of the sermon. If you would like to be more intentional about how you shape the “moments of meditation” […]
A Tale of Two Easters
Preachers sometimes find themselves saying the same thing over and over again. Regardless of the text or day, they feel like they are running the proclamation of the Word through the same theological ringer week after week. Yearly celebrations of the same festival can magnify that feeling: I’ve preached Easter and Resurrection 15 years in […]
Advent Sermon Structures
Variety is one of the many benefits of being intentional about the way you structure the sermon from week to week: even when there is strong unity of theme, the experience of the hearers doesn’t become predictable or rote. Our 2013 Advent series is a case in point. The unifying theme was “Beyond Expectation” and […]
Source and Target, Target, Target Domains
If you know even the basics of contemporary metaphor theory, then you know that in the metaphor “Richard is a gorilla,” what we know (or think we know) about gorillas is the “Source domain.” The metaphor works by taking what we know and expect and how we reason about gorillas and mapping those inferences and […]
Passing on the Faith
In a sermon series called “Family Matters,” we wanted to talk about the importance of passing on the faith to the next generation. But we also wanted to share some of the results of a Family Needs Survey the congregation had taken a few months before. The results of this survey showed a sense of […]
Zombies and The Lord’s Supper? You Bet!
Editor’s note: We believe in a God who actually chose to take on human flesh–and culture–in order to save. This intersection of Gospel and culture has always been a bit of a touchy subject, but one which, by definition, can not be avoided. As Lesslie Newbigin puts it, “there is no such thing as a […]
The Sanctus and Metaphor Theory
I got to preach Isaiah 6 recently; a text I love in the midst of a sermon series devoted to the biblical images that shape our worship. You can listen to the sermon below, before or after you read the comments (or both), but the sermon brings up some interesting points of metaphor and homiletic […]
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