By the Way

by | Jun 11, 2007 | Southern Baptist Issues

If you would like to follow the proceedings of the convention, check out the live feed at http://www.sbc.net.  Also, I and Pastor James Billings will be blogging on the convention over at our new Pastors’ Perspectives blog.  Check it...

From the Shrine of the Motherland

by | Jun 11, 2007 | Southern Baptist Issues

That’s right, I’m blogging today (and hopefully through Wednesday) from the shrine of Texas Independence, San Antonio, Texas. While I am rooting for the Spurs to take it all, I’m actually here to attend the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention. I have the privilege to attend this year with a fellow pastor, James Billings and a brother church member, Justin Peters. After a long Lord’s day, actually ending into early this morning and a few hours sleep, I joined my two other convention cohorts to make it to the Ontario Airport and begin our flight to SA via Express Jet (a new airline deserving of an entire blog-post – actually quite positive). This convention will be a little bit of a reminiscent one for me. I attended my first SBC in 1988 in San Antonio. It was amazingly memorable. Adrian Rodgers was the President, Jerry Vines was elected to become president. W. A. Criswell preached his famous “skunk” sermon, a motion was made to have a woman preach the annual sermon (it was booed and shouted down) and a small group of moderates marched out of the convention hall and down to the Alamo to publicly burn a resolution affirming pastoral authority in the local church. What a time. From what I have been reading on a number of blogs over the past week (really, over the past year), this year may not be as bombastic as the 1988 Convention, but it is beginning to heat up. For those of you who know, tell me if I’m reading things right. There is an old guard (the leaders...

Expository Convictions – part 9

by | May 31, 2007 | Preaching

So – I left off on this series a few months back and never posted what I do to actually construct an expository sermon – only what I do to study a passage. I suppose I became too busy putting sermons together to actually keep writing about how I do it. So, here’s my attempt at getting back on the saddle and finishing out how I put together expository sermons. Here’s the previous posts: PART 1 PART 2 PART 3 PART 4 PART 5 PART 6 PART 7 PART 8 Bridging from Exegesis to Exposition The next portion of my study consists of bridging from exegesis to exposition. I try to begin this process on Thursday, but it will probably happen on Saturday (I take Friday off). Here I will refine the original “main idea” statement as a result of my further study. Then I begin to write down words and terms that summarize in a contemporary way the main point of the passage. I begin constructing a one sentence summary of the point of the passage, thinking about how this theme or subject or idea could best be communicated to my particular congregation. I then construct a one sentence, present tense, contemporary statement that communicates the main idea of the passage. The most frequent way I organize and arrange my sermons is around a plural noun propositional statement. Rarely have I preached inductive sermons (i.e., a sermon where the main point is not revealed until the end of the message). I am intrigued with the idea of preaching more inductive messages, but I find that this method fits...