Quotes List
Visual Aids – Some people have passionately tried to convince me that we should all use powerpoint in our preaching. I see as many problems as benefits with powerpoint preaching, but this is not a core issue. Can a preacher be expository using powerpoint, or giving notes to the congregation, or using video clips during the sermon, or holding a shepherd’s crook? Of course, but none are required.
Peter mead, Don’t Treat Everything As Essential – Part 2, https://biblicalpreaching.net/2008/04/23/don%e2%80%99t-treat-everything-as-essential-%e2%80%93-part-2/
Third, if you want to improve your communication, strive for clarity. When I coach our teachers around here, I always ask them two questions. “What do you want them to know? What do you want them to do?” If they can’t answer those two questions immediately, I say, “You’re ill prepared. Don’t inflict that message
Bill Hybels, the art and craft of biblical preaching, ed. Haddon robinson & craig brian larson, Zondervan, p. 46
on our people.”
So much preaching these days is meandering. It’s a walk through six or seven different tulip beds, plucking a little flower here and there. You get to the end and you don’t know what the preacher wanted you to know or do. You must pass the clarity test.
You must also devote time toward creativity. It is so easy for us to fall into ruts and never vary our styles. We urge our teachers at Willow to drop the spoon-fed approach and shake things up once in a while. We encourage them to use a question-asking style, or some props instead of just standing at the pulpit with a Bible in hand. We’ve found props to be remarkably helpful. I was talking about the pressures of life once, and I brought out a chemistry set complete with Bunsen burner. When I lit that Bunsen burner and put a beaker over it and stuff started boiling, people were really listening—all because I used that one little prop.
Another time I was preparing to teach on the tenderness of God. The idea occurred to me to preach from the passage that says, “A bruised reed God will not allow to break.” So, I got a bruised reed and held it while I said, “Some of you feel like a bruised reed today.” I talked to them about the tenderness of God while holding that simple prop.
As I visited the offices or homes of our people over the following weeks, many had a bruised reed on their desk or taped to their refrigerator. It was amazing. People remember that stuff.
Noah – big on obedience, with the biggest of visual aids, perhaps the longest preaching ministry without fruit, yet an ancestor of us all.
Peter mead, Pick a Preacher to Ponder, https://biblicalpreaching.net/2010/04/07/pick-a-preacher-to-ponder/
Be honest, sometimes you find yourself trying to make a text do something it doesn’t do. Perhaps you have an illustration you want to use, or a visual aid that would be powerful, or some other motivation. But when it comes to the text, it doesn’t quite work. You know the order is backwards, you know you don’t want to admit it, but we’re being honest here.
peter mead, Texts Only Bend So Far, https://biblicalpreaching.net/2008/05/20/texts-only-bend-so-far/
This happened to me last week. I’m not one for creative visual aids, but one came to mind. One that would be perfect and impressive and effective and so on. But then I went back to the only real text that would work with that visual aid. It didn’t work. I was trying to conform the text to the sermon, rather than derive the sermon from the text. The text wasn’t boss, and I wasn’t happy.
But I felt that the integrity move at that point was to drop the illustration and switch texts. Let’s be preachers of integrity, people who represent the text well and don’t injure the text trying to fit it into our sermon box.