Preaching Topic

After preaching several times a week for almost forty years, I am not sure I could honestly say that very many of those thousands of messages were completely pure in motive. Far too many times, (especially, although not exclusively, as a young man) my motive was to impress the listeners with my eloquence, humor, or knowledge.

Worship and music are as essential to each other as worship and preaching. It seems there is always tension between time dedicated to music and time dedicated to preaching. In our world today, preaching is being shoved into a smaller and smaller time constraint while it seems the services are filled with what amounts to little more than an emotional rock concert.

Walk into any bookstore, and you will find dozens—maybe even hundreds—of books on life management. (I have many in my own library.) There are books on organizing, scheduling, budgeting, prioritizing, administrating, goal-setting, people-managing…obviously, life management is a popular and necessary skill.

I recall the first time a little girl asked me to sign her Bible after I had preached in the fall of 1972. Signing my autograph was easy, but I knew it was customary for preachers to put a verse beneath their names.