Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from June, 2009

Sermon application 1: towards persuasive preaching

Over the last month I’ve been leading seminars at MEPC on how to preach. Preparing for them was both intimidating and rewarding. It was intimidating, because I’m only a novice preacher myself. I don’t have a wealth of experience to draw from. It was rewarding because I could draw on what I’ve been taught about preaching, thus refreshing and consolidating my own preaching. Over the next few days, I’ll put up some posts on what I said about application. It’s a framework which tries to make application compelling, motivating, persuasive. It’s an attempt to bridge that ugly ditch between head and heart, between information and transformation. I’d like your feedback on it. Ephesians 4:22-24: 22 You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; 23 to be made new in the attitude of your minds; 24 and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness. Application needs to be both...

D. A. Carson articles on-line

Don Carson has had a key impact on worldwide Evangelicalism for years. The Gospel Coalition has just made dozens of his articles available on-line for free . Read, mark, learn. Incidentally - Andreas Kostenberger, a former student and colleague of Dr. Carson, has written a detailed biography of him. PDF file.

PY Winter Camp

Sorry for the long silence, everyone. Been writing essays for college, then got knocked over with a virus. Anyone, I’m firing on all cylinders again now. Tonight, I’m off on the Presbyterian Youth (“PY”) Winter Camp. It goes for the whole long weekend, and draws together young people from the whole of NSW. The camp's grown so much that this year they've had to split it over two locations. I'm going on the senior camp, which is at Port Hacking - an excellent, scenic site. The theme is mission, the talks are from the book of Jonah. The junior camp is in Stanwell Tops - which, come to think of it, is also an excellent, scenic site... PY has good taste in campsites... Camps have always been a key part of state-wide Presbyterian youth ministry. Two years ago, I wrote an essay on the Presbyterian youth movement for an assignment at Moore College. One of the people I interviewed for that essay (Simon Fraser, currently the NSW Presbyterian Church’s law clerk) said: My involvement w...