How emotionally connected to a congregation does a preacher need to be? Now that I preach in a variety of settings rather than in one church each week, that connection is more difficult to establish. I was thinking about this recently when reading about ChatGPT, an AI information-gathering and writing…

As a parent and grandparent, one of my favourite requests is, “Tell me a story.” This weekend the power of story came home to me again while preparing to preach on one of the parables of Jesus. It is one of the smallest of Jesus’s parables and focuses on something…

Yes, it is that time of the year again. How many times have you heard those words or said them in the past few days? For me the “Happy New Year” of New Year’s Day turns in the happy birthday of the 2nd of January, which is my birthday. Sometimes…

This week on my last day of a teaching trip to Latvia I had the great privilege of spending a morning with a group of Lutheran pastors. We were talking about ten tips on preaching Christmas. Christmas preaching only rolls around once a year, but it does seem to creep…

This weekend I have been in Latvia surrounded by snow and immersed the Old Testament Prophets. If I might be allowed a confession, I have always found the Old Testament Prophets some of the most difficult books to preach on. There are a variety of reasons for this. These include…

After the U.S mid-term elections in November one commentator wryly observed: “The people have spoken but we are not sure what they are saying!” Perhaps the same could be said about the results of the 2021 census in England and Wales. The results came out last week and the news…

How long should the ideal sermon be? That may well be like asking the question, “How long is a piece of string?” What got me thinking about this was an article in the Financial Times entitled ‘Swift is perfect at the three-minute Spotify song’. Taylor Swift’s song Anti-Hero (with a…

What do you think when a preacher begins a sentence with the words: “In my opinion?” Some congregations might well breathe a sigh of relief that at last their preacher has jumped off the fence and brought some clarity to an issue. Some people don’t like their thinking to be…

It was good to attend the annual FIEC (Fellowship of Independent Evangelical Churches) conference in Blackpool last week. This is the first such gathering since 2019 so it was a great opportunity to catch up with old friends and make a few new ones. …