Are you finding the quotes I’m sharing from Preaching That Matters by Dr. Lori Carrell helpful? I know I am! Here’s another short section to whet your appetite as we wait for word from her publishers that the book is now available.

Predictability may be comfortable for you and a subset of listeners, but using the same shape for sermons every week does an injustice to the richness of the text and the diversity among your parishioners. Though the content all comes from the same (vast!) collection of scripture, your texts are different in shape, sound, and content. And importantly, your listeners are also incredibly diverse—in cognitive styles, learning preferences, cultural backgrounds, relational circumstances, spiritual journey stages, life experiences, ages, and an endless list of other variables. Using a variety of sermon shapes over time can help you address listener differences and keep you grounded in your text. Such variety honors the diversity that is inherent in sermon communication. Larry Samovar and Edwin McDaniel, authors of Public Speaking in a Multicultural Society remind us:

[Our] experiences have taught us to string ideas together in a manner that, while familiar to us, is not universal. … It would be easy to assume that everyone in the world organizes their thoughts in the same manner, but this is simply not the case.

Some preachers say, “I’m not creative” or “My listeners will complain if I make a change,” while others continue to resist any change that takes them away from their expectations for exposition. However, a primary reason that pastors organize sermon content in the same way week after week is a lack of knowledge about other options.

———————————————

Sunday’s coming. Do you have your sermon ready? Is it relevant? Will it effectively motivate your congregation to walk more in step with the Master? What about that Sermon Series you’ve been thinking about?

Or, if you’re someone who plans well ahead, have you asked yourself what you will preach for your Easter Sermon, your Advent Sermon, your Christmas Sermon?

David Mains and Mainstay Ministries can help. We offer a wide variety of Sermon Starters and Full Sermons that will give you Sermon Ideas to help you prepare for regular Saturday or Sunday sermons, Mid-week Bible Sermons, and Sermons for special occasions.

We also offer assistance as you create Topical Sermons, Sermons Series, and sermons for special times of the year. We have resources available to help you with Advent Celebrations, Advent Sermons, Christmas Sermons, Easter Sunday Sermons, Patriotic Sermons, and more.

For more information on how to create better Bible Sermons and how to turn Sermon Ideas into Sermon Outlines, and then into effective, meaningful Sunday Sermons, please click here to visit David Mains’ website.

You will also find a variety of resources for pastors and congregations at the Mainstay Ministries website. Just click here.

Share and Enjoy

Guarding Self-Respect – Part 5: You Are Somebody (continued…)

When we don’t continually remind ourselves that our worth comes from God, we tend to look to others for affirmation. And if they don’t say what we want to hear, we attempt to resolve the problem on our own:

• We say in self-pity, “I’m not appreciated at this place the way I should be.”
• Or we boast, “You should have seen the changes in the way that committee functioned once I became chairperson. I tell you, it was awesome!”
• Or we fish for a compliment: “Did you like the table decorations at the Sunday School banquet?”

Rubbish. Do you know what rubbish is? It’s not the garbage, the food waste. Rubbish is the trash, the household things we throw away because they’re worthless.

Well, that’s what you can do with the affirmation needs you have, once you truly understand who you are in God and in Christ. You can take those desires for approval from others and toss them in the trash.

The truth is, the ultimate compliment is to have the God of the universe say, “You have great value.” And the supreme irony is that, for whatever reason, many of us are not able to hear His words of affirmation.

Are we special because of what we’ve done? Of course not. Our worth is based on God’s opinion of us and, more specifically, on what He’s done in our behalf through Christ. We “glory in Christ,” writes Paul in Philippians 3, and “put no confidence in the flesh.” The apostle continues: “If anyone else thinks he has reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more.” And then he reluctantly lists his credentials. But of those accomplishments Paul comments, “I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ” (vv. 3-4, 8).

In other words, Paul is saying, “That list of what I’ve done, spiritually speaking, is trash to be tossed out and never again sorted through. Let the waste company figure out what to do with it. I’m paying them to pick it up as junk. Rubbish! Because here’s who I am (and I am somebody): I am God’s child! Nothing can top that!”

We might say something similar.

• If I am affirmed by the media as talented, successful, important, but God is nowhere to be found in my life, is that a good position to be in?
• If I have a wonderful, high-paying job, but a terrible relationship with the Lord, what good is that?
• If friends fill my life, but when I’m alone I have no one to turn to who will hear me pray, what have I gained?

——————————————–

Sunday’s coming. Do you have your sermon ready? Is it relevant? Will it effectively motivate your congregation to walk more in step with the Master? What about that Sermon Series you’ve been thinking about?

Or, if you’re someone who plans well ahead, have you asked yourself what you will preach for your Easter Sermon, your Advent Sermon, your Christmas Sermon?

David Mains and Mainstay Ministries can help. We offer a wide variety of Sermon Starters and Full Sermons that will give you Sermon Ideas to help you prepare for regular Saturday or Sunday sermons, Mid-week Bible Sermons, and Sermons for special occasions.

We also offer assistance as you create Topical Sermons, Sermons Series, and sermons for special times of the year. We have resources available to help you with Advent Celebrations, Advent Sermons, Christmas Sermons, Easter Sunday Sermons, Patriotic Sermons, and more.

For more information on how to create better Bible Sermons and how to turn Sermon Ideas into Sermon Outlines, and then into effective, meaningful Sunday Sermons, please click here to visit David Mains’ website.

You will also find a variety of resources for pastors and congregations at the Mainstay Ministries website. Just click here.

Share and Enjoy

Guarding Self-Respect – Part 4: You Are Somebody

Know this: You are still somebody. You are the marvelous product of an infinite God’s creative genius, and He doesn’t make cheap stuff. Yes, a sin defect showed up in you as in everyone else. But the Lord went to great pains to correct that problem as well. Why? Because you’re someone special.

The world may say you’re just another nameless nobody.

You’re not handsome.
You’re not beautiful.
You’re not brilliant.
You’re not highly talented.
You’re not wealthy.
You’re not famous or powerful.

Maybe you’ve been lead to believe you’re second class because:

 You’re not employed.
Or you’re not married.
Or you’re not white.
Or you’re not male.
Or you’re not a graduate.
Or you’re not an adult yet.
Or, for one reason or another, you’re not worth paying attention to!

To survive those kinds of messages, you need to keep telling yourself the truth.

 I am somebody.
I am not a product of mere time and chance.
I am God’s child, by birth and by rebirth.
I have great value.
I should not sell myself short.
I must guard my self-respect.
I won’t always be in this tough spot.
The Lord is working in my behalf—I know He is.
I am a favorite of my wealthy Father.
In fact, I have a robe, a technicolor dream coat He’s holding for me.
And I will live this day with that truth fixed in my mind.
I would be a fool to do otherwise.

“Know this …” writes the psalmist, and I repeat his words. “Know that the Lord is God. It is He who made us, and we are His.” Reciting words of affirmation, as Jesse Jackson taught, was a survival skill for many poor blacks in the 1960’s. Today, this skill can prove a valuable help for another wide swath of God’s people, as they say to themselves, Know this: I am somebody! I am God’s child.

——————————————–

Sunday’s coming. Do you have your sermon ready? Is it relevant? Will it effectively motivate your congregation to walk more in step with the Master? What about that Sermon Series you’ve been thinking about?

Or, if you’re someone who plans well ahead, have you asked yourself what you will preach for your Easter Sermon, your Advent Sermon, your Christmas Sermon?

David Mains and Mainstay Ministries can help. We offer a wide variety of Sermon Starters and Full Sermons that will give you Sermon Ideas to help you prepare for regular Saturday or Sunday sermons, Mid-week Bible Sermons, and Sermons for special occasions.

We also offer assistance as you create Topical Sermons, Sermons Series, and sermons for special times of the year. We have resources available to help you with Advent Celebrations, Advent Sermons, Christmas Sermons, Easter Sunday Sermons, Patriotic Sermons, and more.

For more information on how to create better Bible Sermons and how to turn Sermon Ideas into Sermon Outlines, and then into effective, meaningful Sunday Sermons, please click here to visit David Mains’ website.

You will also find a variety of resources for pastors and congregations at the Mainstay Ministries website. Just click here.

Share and Enjoy

Guarding Self-Respect – Part 3: I Am God’s Child (continued…)

Down through the years, many believers have been imprisoned unfairly. It’s a humiliating experience, to say the least. Do you suppose some of them have repeated:

I may be in jail. I may be in jail.
I may be treated unfairly. I may be treated unfairly.
But I am still… But I am still…
Somebody. Somebody.
I bear the mark
MADE BY GOD.
And though broken because of sin,
I’ve been restored by Christ.
Hallelujah! Hallelujah!

In time, Joseph is released from prison and made the number-two leader in all the land of Egypt. Everyone knows his name and his face. A chariot races down a government street. The rider reins his horse. When the dust settles a bit, you see the license plate—“No. 2.” That’s Joseph. He’s somebody, and everybody agrees with that assessment.

But Joseph is the same person who not long ago was in prison—and before that was standing on the auction block. He hasn’t changed, only the circumstances have. In God’s eyes he’s always been quite special!

Have you learned the Joseph lesson? At work it doesn’t matter whether someone answers to you or you now answer to that someone. Those kinds of things shift a lot. Maybe you’ve been laid off because, with new technology, your best skills aren’t needed anymore. Or maybe you’re a professional musician whose style was popular for a season but not anymore.

——————————————–

Sunday’s coming. Do you have your sermon ready? Is it relevant? Will it effectively motivate your congregation to walk more in step with the Master? What about that Sermon Series you’ve been thinking about?

Or, if you’re someone who plans well ahead, have you asked yourself what you will preach for your Easter Sermon, your Advent Sermon, your Christmas Sermon?

David Mains and Mainstay Ministries can help. We offer a wide variety of Sermon Starters and Full Sermons that will give you Sermon Ideas to help you prepare for regular Saturday or Sunday sermons, Mid-week Bible Sermons, and Sermons for special occasions.

We also offer assistance as you create Topical Sermons, Sermons Series, and sermons for special times of the year. We have resources available to help you with Advent Celebrations, Advent Sermons, Christmas Sermons, Easter Sunday Sermons, Patriotic Sermons, and more.

For more information on how to create better Bible Sermons and how to turn Sermon Ideas into Sermon Outlines, and then into effective, meaningful Sunday Sermons, please click here to visit David Mains’ website.

You will also find a variety of resources for pastors and congregations at the Mainstay Ministries website. Just click here.

Share and Enjoy