I had another opportunity to preach this week at church, with my Sr Pastor gone and the other associate’s wife having a baby a couple weeks ago, I was the one who got to preach. So here’s my sermon on Colossians 1:24-2:5.
All posts tagged preaching
Preaching on Colossians
Posted by mikethestrand on February 17, 2014
https://pastormikesmusings.com/2014/02/17/preaching-on-colossians/
Church Membership & EFCA Theology Conference 2014
I finally had the opportunity to preach again! This time, it was on the issue of church membership. For those of you interested in listening, feel free to click here.
And it’s also that time of year again, where I do my best to live blog the EFCA Theology Conference. This time it’s about “Christian Faithfulness in a Changing Culture.” I’m looking forward to this time, but it’s a 9 hour drive to get there! Should be a good time with my Sr Pastor.
Hope the blogging world is still alive and thriving! One of my goals this year is to get back into the habit of writing on here regularly.
Posted by mikethestrand on January 20, 2014
https://pastormikesmusings.com/2014/01/20/church-membership-efca-theology-conference-2014/
They Let Me Preach Again
I had the great privilege of preaching a couple weeks ago in church again on Isaiah 44:24-45:25 in a sermon titled ‘God Is Bigger Than the Boogie Man.’ You can listen to the sermon here.
Posted by mikethestrand on July 9, 2013
https://pastormikesmusings.com/2013/07/09/they-let-me-preach-again/
Spurgeon’s Preaching
“During the 1880s a group of American ministers visited England, prompted especially by a desire to hear some of the celebrated preachers of that land.
On a Sunday morning they attended the City temple where Dr. Joseph Parker was the pastor. Some two thousand people filled the building, and Parker’s forceful personality dominated the service. His voice was commanding, his language descriptive, his imagination lively, and his manner animated. The sermon was scriptural, the congregation hung upon his words, and the Americans came away saying, “What a wonderful preacher is Joseph Parker!”
That evening they went to hear Spurgeon at the Metropolitan Tabernacle. The building was much larger than the City Temple, and the congregation was more than twice the size. Spurgeon’s voice was much more expressive and moving and his oratory noticeably superior. But they soon forgot all about the great building, the immense congregation, and the magnificent voice. They even overlooked their intention to compare the various features of the two preachers, and when the service was over they found themselves saying, “What a wonderful Savior is Jesus Christ.””
-Spurgeon: A New Biography by Arnold Dallimore, page 216
Posted by mikethestrand on June 27, 2013
https://pastormikesmusings.com/2013/06/27/spurgeons-preaching/
How To Preach A Confusing Text
The Gospel Coalition has a great blog today on ‘How To Preach A Text When You Don’t Know What It Means.’ In it, Michael Patton (great first name!) shows the difference between preaching and teaching and lists the following examples:
- Preaching is exhortation; teaching is education.
- Preaching is the discharge of the gospel of hope; teaching is discipleship of the gospel of hope.
- Preaching puts wind in the sails; teaching put an anchor in the ground.
- Preaching raises our eyes to the things we know with great conviction; teaching helps us to understand what things we can have legitimate conviction about.
- Preaching tells you which option is correct; teaching gives you all the options.
To me, it gets down to the basic question of why do we preach? We should preach to proclaim the Good News of what Christ has done in our lives, how Christ continues to work in our lives and what Christ will eventually do when he returns. He ends the article saying,
Sometimes we need to settle for good sermons with wrong texts. Sometimes we are going to be unsure of the exact interpretation of a passage of Scripture, but we don’t have to sacrifice giving our congregations something to believe due to the obscurity of our text. We can still preach the Word with full integrity by focusing on the principles that are universally true even if we end up being wrong about our interpretation. It is important that you let people know there is some legitimate debate and what you are about to preach could be wrong. But assure them that the principles that you preach are not wrong as they are found in other places in Scripture. That is how you preach a sermon when you are not sure what the passage means.
Give them something to believe.
Do you have something to believe? Do you have the conviction it takes to preach a sermon on a confusing text or do you simply give up?
Posted by mikethestrand on May 7, 2013
https://pastormikesmusings.com/2013/05/07/how-to-preach-a-confusing-text/
Preaching From an iPad Part 2 – How To
One of my friends asked me to show him how to set up your sermon on an iPad so here is a guide for how to set up your sermon from Word to ultimately working in iBooks on your iPad.
The first thing you need to do is actually write your sermon! I use Microsoft Word for all my typing. I’ve tried using Pages and NeoOffice and just found Word to be the easiest and most versatile. Once you’re done and ready to send it to the iPad you need to save it so you’d click File -> Save As
That will take you to this screen:
Name it whatever you want to name it, and make sure you save it to a place you can easily find. I always save it to my desktop. Then click in the Format box.
Change the format to PDF, then click Save. Now is when it’s important to remember where you saved it! E-mail it to yourself as at attachment to the e-mail you can access on your iPad. I typically use this e-mail as a chance for some encouragement! Open the e-mail on your iPad and it should look like this:
Click on the attachment to download the file, it will open in a new window like this:
Once you have that open, click the arrow in the top right corner which will give you a list of available apps to open the file with.
Click ‘Open in iBooks’ and it may take a little bit to load depending on the size of your sermon, but you’ll finally have your sermon on your iPad looking like this:
One of the best things about this is you can also see what time it is and how quickly you need to wrap up your sermon! A couple thing to remember about this is typically people have their display set to go to sleep after a couple minutes. I shut mine off for this. I also turned the brightness up all the way and made sure there weren’t any lights behind me that put a bad glare on the screen. I found this very easy to use and preach from without having to shuffle through what would have been 18 pages. My iPad has a smart cover on it too which has magnets in it so when I placed it on the music stand to preach from the smart cover held it in place really well. Feel free to ask me any questions about putting your sermons on your iPad!
Posted by mikethestrand on January 14, 2013
https://pastormikesmusings.com/2013/01/14/preaching-from-an-ipad-part-2-how-to/
Preaching From an iPad
One of the things I really enjoy is technology. I love learning how to use new technological advances to make my life easier and find ways to do the things I am doing better. I love finding new recipes on Pinterest, following people on Twitter and staying in touch with friends on Facebook. This past week for the first time, I used my iPad to preach, and I loved it! I thought it was much easier than trying to shuffle through paper, and having my Bible app easily accessible was great! We also have almost our whole Sunday service automated so I can control the background music, the slides and the sound board now all through my iPad. We’ve been using a newer presentation program Proclaim for all our services and I’ve found it great to use!
So this past week I wrote out my manuscript and tried to stick to it very carefully as I was dealing with a weighty issue (worship through music). I had it all typed in Word and highlighted the main points I needed to remember, then exported it as a pdf and then preached from it using the iBooks app that apple makes. It was incredible easy. All I had to do was tap on the right side of the screen and the next screen would pop up. If you have an iPad, I highly recommend using it to preach. I even have all my music in it so I lead music for church on my iPad. It really amazes me how easy it is to use and have everything I need in one centralized location.
Posted by mikethestrand on January 14, 2013
https://pastormikesmusings.com/2013/01/14/preaching-from-an-ipad/
This is Me
Pastor Mike's Musings 