Summary: Familiar biblical texts, especially those that appear each year in a lectionary, often pose challenges for preachers. How might our sermons encourage people to explore new dimensions of these well known passages?
This video was prepared for those who preach or teach. Watch it at Working Preacher.
Summary: Online biblical commentary can and should be different from the biblical commentary that accompanied printed Bibles. This post describes the potential of the ON Scripture project to help people make connections between the Bible and their lived experiences.
Read this post on the blog of the New Media Project at Union Theological Seminary.
Summary: I wrote this piece soon after the launch of the website Working Preacher; it aims to help preachers think about how they craft sermons. The Revised Common Lectionary assigns four different texts to be read in church each Sunday. That’s nice, but I worry about sermons that try to cover too much ground and lead their congregations into more than one text on any given Sunday. I encourage preachers to dwell deeply in a single biblical passage. This makes for better preaching, and it helps churchgoers gain a better understanding of the Bible and its contents.
Read the full article on Working Preacher.
Preaching During Lent
Summary: I confess, I don’t think much of Lent. Most people, I suspect, already live pretty aware of their brokenness and mortality all year long. I yearn for churches to spend more time talking about how this life matters and how we can encounter and even bear the Divine amid all our brokenness. Lent seems a good time to do that. I wrote this essay to help preachers think about preaching the gospel texts assigned by the lectionary during Lent (Year C in the three-year cycle of the Revised Common Lectionary).
Read the full article on Working Preacher.
Bible commentary: preachers & teachers
John 12:1-8 lent luke 13:1-9 luke 15:11b-32 luke 3 luke 9:51 preaching revised common lectionary year c