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Had a good night Sunday but left with a question: do we need to educate people on what a good sermon is? Or alternatively, do we need to teach people HOW to listen to sermons? These questions may seem a bit banal but remember I have only recently started preaching weekly. I enjoy it a lot, but have had some interesting personal questions to ponder in recent weeks.

> Issue # 1 arose when a high quality couple presently outside our leadership team (by choice) asked the question: can we have some inspirational preaching, you know where the preacher just shares what God lays on their heart? The usual caveat about how good the "teaching" was currently was of course given! "Real" preaching is therefore not prepared. Its a stream of consciousness response to the Spirit's prompting. I decided that was pretty much a load of crap. Be interested in other views, but for me its the marriage of spirit-prompted preparation and "in-the-moment" responsiveness that counts.

> Issue # 2 revolves around the question of what makes for a good diet of preaching. I had a comment from someone that we do too much inductive preaching and that he had some (unnamed) concerns about that. I think he needs to consult his seminary lecture notes (he's a student) as to the differences between inductive, deductive and narrative preaching. We tend to mix it up. But behind it lay the question: when are you going to do some real preaching? Expository, line by line, squeeze every shred of literal meaning from the text. Like Jesus did. Hmmm.

> Issue # 3 You know when Jesus preached it wasn't the Bible. It was stories and metaphors and rebukes and warnings and wisdom...

> Issue # 4 This Sunday's message was well received. I still have some questions about its quality. Is it enough that it works? I think the reason it worked was because it was very applicable, contained a lot of common sense, had just the right amount of shock value and was often quite funny. But it contained very little scripture. Biblical worldview for sure, but overall lite...

Well, just my ramblings. The combined impact? I need to prepare better. I am concentrating on releasing more energy into my preaching. I videoed myself preaching (well I didn't actually do the videotaping) and was surprised how much better I had got. But plenty of room for improvement.

Here endeth the lesson

Jonesbore