An expositional sermon is when the content structure and emphasis of the sermon are drawn from and accurately represent the text. There’s what in it as content, and there’s also a structure in each text that the author has put in. If you put those two together, you’re going to get the emphasis. An application of this could be seen in Ephesians 2: 1 – 10. Paul’s emphasis can be seen here in verse 10, we are His workmanship! What He has done for us, has made us His “show-off-piece!”. Structure + Content = Emphasis.
– Listen starting at 9:26 –
As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath. But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. 6 And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. | Ephesians 2: 1 – 10
If you’re going through Ephesians, read the whole thing. That book is a letter and is meant to be read in its entirety. It’s easy for a theme to get lost the further you break it down. Really push in and listen to the text; what comes before it and what comes after it. Read it and look for sign-post words, think about basic Bible Study Methods! Listen to the Word of God as The Word of God. At the end of the day, you want people to feel as if they can understand the Bible on their own. The more we put an emphasis on the preacher being essential for discerning what the Bible means, the more we’re inhibiting our congregations.
It’s so easy for us to just put something together and preach it, without being impacted by it. The more we look around us, and our brothers and sisters are falling to questionable behavior, we ask, “how can someone, who spends so much time in the Word, fall victim to something like this?” It goes from their text, into their mind, into their arm, into their computer and never impacts their heart. Don’t preach for notoriaty, don’t preach for fame, don’t preach for a big church to be “seen”, preach because your heart gets the best benefit of your study.
1 // CONTENT
2 // COMMUNICATION
3 // CARE
Welcome back to our second episode of the Clarity Podcast! We are so excited to welcome in David Hegg for this episode, who is the Senior Pastor of Grace Baptist Church in Santa Clarita, CA. David is passionate about God’s Word and believes the greatest need in the church today is for pastors to preach the Bible the way it was written. David had a little bit of an interlude in the corporate world after he was intr0duced to the world of public speaking him, that took him on a fascinating path to where he is today.
Tune in as Craig and David dive into teaching in your private and public life, the art and science of preaching as well as what it looks like to give your movement momentum.
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No matter where you are, there are many ways to worship together. Click a location below to get more information on service times, directions, and contact information for each of our campuses.
If the fruit is good, keep watering like you are. And if it’s not that great Google watering schedule! It’s not hard to take a self-inventory of the fruit that you’re reaping, and it’s something that’s very important. When you’re working on a message, make sure you’re aware of the “soil” that the Word of God is falling on (the “congregation’s” openness to the message and how you’re preparing them for it.). At the end of the day, it’s the Holy Spirit that is taking the Word and applying it to people’s lives.
It is often more helpful to “drip” spiritual truth in 20 times throughout the year, rather than creating a message that “nails” it one time. It will have more impact! People are just looking for a healthy meal; if you’re constantly putting out a “banquet” (where you constantly tying little pieces together, make a lot of points, and intricating things that can be explained easily), it’ll make them fat and it’ll burn you out. Think about the important things that you should be saying a million times in sound bites so they can take it away and apply it.
Every sermon should end in a “so-what” that leads to a greater understanding of obedience. As a preacher, you are aiming to form disciples pointing them towards the next step of obedience that they can take.
When you’re finding your voice, only listen to preachers that administer to your heart, not ones that simply draw a crowd. You can’t help but pick up nuances and phrases from people that you’ve chosen to influence you. And if’s not speaking to you, and you’re only listening because of their congregation size, you’re going to end up being a worse “you”, and an even worse “them”. You are influenced by who you listen to, so chose wisely and carefully. Think about this checklist as you move into becoming a better preacher:
1 // You shouldn’t be everything to everybody,
2 // You have nothing to improve and no one to impress,
3 // Just teach people how to live the Christian Life using the Bible as your only authority.
Welcome to the launch episode of Clarity! Today we sit down with Larry Osborne, one of the Lead Pastors (or one of the Teaching Pastors) at North Coast Church in California for a number of years. Larry has the gift of electrifying clarity and you will be challenged and enlightened in this conversation. Larry is the author of books such as Sticky Teams and Lead Like a Shepherd (Among many others. Click the button below to see more). Join us today as we get insightful wisdom “soundbites” from this mentor and coach.
You can also find us in the following locations, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Make sure to subscribe and leave us a review!
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No matter where you are, there are many ways to worship together. Click a location below to get more information on service times, directions, and contact information for each of our campuses.
This is going to look different for everyone, but you need to find what feels comfortable for you. But there are a few things that should take form, in one sense or another, that should appear in everyone’s message development.
It can’t be the last thing you sit down to do after you’ve taken care of everything else that’s been clamoring for your time. Preaching is the primary way that you exercise pastoral leadership of a congregation. It’s just too important to be taking a backseat. And one of the best ways to tackle that is to schedule in prep time, actually mark off time on your calendar for it every, single week.
You need time to revise and practice! And you won’t have that time if you do it late in the week. The other reason is that you’re tired by the work week’s end. It happens to all of us no matter what our capacities are. Third, if you save it for later in the week, no matter how well you, “work under pressure”, your writing will feel stressed and rushed.
This is where you really need to find your rhythm. Everyone’s week to week will look different, but you need to find what works for you. Then replicate it on an ongoing basis.
We are so excited to get into our mini-series, “Nuts + Bolts”, which we have batch released wherever you get your podcasts! This is our intro to this channel, so you can get a great feel of what we’re going to accomplish on Clarity as we get into the interview episodes coming up this fall. In the meantime, if you could review us and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Also, if you have any questions, click the button below to send us an email today, or check out our Show Notes.
You can also find us in the following locations, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Make sure to subscribe and leave us a review!
we believe in church that is
No matter where you are, there are many ways to worship together. Click a location below to get more information on service times, directions, and contact information for each of our campuses.
The earlier you start dreaming about the thing you’re going to build, the better it’s going to be. Make sure to pursue outside opinion and collaboration during this stage so you don’t succumb to any blind spots.
This is where you pull all of your tools (studies, research, readings, etc.) together begin to get a clear understanding on what is about to take shape. This is where you gain a clear understand from the text and start to gather the “materials” you will need that the text provides.
This is where you start with the rough floor plan on what things are going to look like, but you almost always have gathered more sand than what you’re going to ultimately need. This is where you’ll develop your rough draft. That can take many different forms whether it’s a bulleted list with pieces thrown in, or a whole manuscript.
This is where your castle, or message, starts to take shape, You’re mainly taking things away here. This is where you start to trim off the pieces that don’t lead us to the Big Idea, which can be up to about 25% of what you have in your rough draft.
You start to make your message, points, key takeaways, portable and bite-sized. You want your message to be memorable and this is the point in the message development where you start to add your own flair, idiosyncrasies and touches to the message to really own it.
This is where the sandcastle analogy breaks down a little bit because you can’t necessarily rehearse a sandcastle. But you HAVE to rehearse your message. The first time you give it should not be in front of an audience. You want to be comfortable and confident with what you’ve prepared and that comes through rehearsal.
We are so excited to get into our mini-series, “Nuts + Bolts”, which we have batch released wherever you get your podcasts! This is our intro to this channel, so you can get a great feel of what we’re going to accomplish on Clarity as we get into the interview episodes coming up this fall. In the meantime, if you could review us and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Also, if you have any questions, click the button below to send us an email today, or check out our Show Notes.
You can also find us in the following locations, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Make sure to subscribe and leave us a review!
we believe in church that is
No matter where you are, there are many ways to worship together. Click a location below to get more information on service times, directions, and contact information for each of our campuses.
It’s human nature. When you get up in front of an audience, deliver an incredible Introduction, nail your big idea (keep reading/listening for more on that) they’re still only going to remember one thing you spoke on. Now, you just have to ask yourself, what is that one, indispensable truth that you want them to walk away with? and THAT is the big idea of your message.
You want your audience to come away remembering that one thing. Now how do you do that? Make sure that you don’t have a lot of little points you’re making along the way that are independent of your main idea. Each point you make within your message, you want to be pointing towards that aforementioned main idea.
Don’t impose something on to the Biblical passage that isn’t what the passage is actually talking about. It’s a foundation of responsible Bible Teaching. Don’t say anything “In the name of God” that He didn’t actually say.
Don’t try and get a piece of every idea into that “Big Idea” statement. Make that truth you want them to walk away with, bite-sized, so that they will remember it. The big idea should be your hook that your audience can hang everything else on from your message.
There shouldn’t be any part of your message that doesn’t fit naturally underneath the big idea. And that requires that your big idea functions on a 30,000-foot level.
Give your audience every possible chance for your audience to walk out of your church, into the world, with your big idea in hand. Push in to see if you can make it catchy in some way that makes it memorable. Alliteration. Rhyming. “Steal” a well-known phrase people are already familiar with.
We are so excited to get into our mini-series, “Nuts + Bolts”, which we have batch released wherever you get your podcasts! This is our intro to this channel, so you can get a great feel of what we’re going to accomplish on Clarity as we get into the interview episodes coming up this fall. In the meantime, if you could review us and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Also, if you have any questions, click the button below to send us an email today, or check out our Show Notes.
You can also find us in the following locations, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Make sure to subscribe and leave us a review!
we believe in church that is
No matter where you are, there are many ways to worship together. Click a location below to get more information on service times, directions, and contact information for each of our campuses.
You want to point your audience to your topic, right off the bat. Don’t waste too much time beating around the bush, within the first piece of your speech or presentation, your audience show know the central theme or idea or topic that you will be speaking on for the remainder of your time.
Your introduction should help stir up interest in the topic so there is anticipation moving forward. You want the audience to be aware of what you’re speaking about, while their attention grows. You want them to come along for the ride with you! However, make sure that you don’t give away your Secret Sauce.
Until you have a really good idea of where your message is going to land, you can’t orient people to where you will be going.
Once you have your message developed, ask yourself, “What need does this message address?” Take the big idea of the message and have your audience sit in wonder of how the topic is going to be answered. They’re going to anticipate the closure that your message will give them upon answering this question.
In general, if your intro takes longer than 3 minutes to get through people are going to start losing interest. They’ll start thinking, “Just get to it already!”, and that’s not what you’re looking for at the beginning of your message. They won’t mentally stick with you until the end.
We are so excited to get into our mini-series, “Nuts + Bolts”, which we have batch released wherever you get your podcasts! This is our intro to this channel, so you can get a great feel of what we’re going to accomplish on Clarity as we get into the interview episodes coming up this fall. In the meantime, if you could review us and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Also, if you have any questions, click the button below to send us an email today, or check out our Show Notes.
You can also find us in the following locations, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Make sure to subscribe and leave us a review!
we believe in church that is
No matter where you are, there are many ways to worship together. Click a location below to get more information on service times, directions, and contact information for each of our campuses.