Skip to main content

Top Ten Things People Really Mean When They Say "I Enjoyed that Sermon"

10. “I liked that joke.”

9. “I liked your informal delivery; it was almost like you had done no preparation at all.”

8. “Thank you for affirming my preconceived notions on that subject.”

7. “I appreciate you not saying anything that had anything to do with me.”

6. “Now that’s entertainment!”

5. “Thank you for not keeping us here past noon.”

4. “I didn’t understand a word you said.”

3. “If you were a real preacher you’d give us 3 or 7 or 9 ways to do—well, something.”

2. “Just because Jesus suffered and died and said we were to take up our cross, deny ourselves, and follow him doesn’t mean that you have to talk about it every Sunday.”

1. “Clearly, I wasn’t listening.”

Comments

  1. dabar96April 26, 2012 at 12:31 PM

    11. "You really got after 'em today, preacher! It's too bad some more of those other people (not like me) who needed to hear this weren't here today."

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Living Dangerously (2 Corinthians 4:5-12; Mark 2:23-3:6)

(Preached at First Baptist Church, Columbus GA, on June 3, 2018) Do you give much thought to what it means to live as a Christian in our present context? I do. It’s something we should always think about no matter what our circumstances are. And as we determine what it means to live as a Christian, we should always be doing something about it. Questions we should ask ourselves include: how do I best follow Jesus? How do I best bear witness to the God that Jesus revealed to us? How do I in my unique life have Christ-like motives, think Christ-like thoughts, say Christ-like words, and carry out Christ-like actions? It is vital that as we develop answers, we act on what we realize. It is also vital that as we live our lives, we continually adjust and adapt in light of our continuing reflection and our experiences. So do you give much thought to what it means to live as a Christian in our present context? We really should. Here’s another question: do you give much thought to ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Jesus Was a Refugee

(A sermon based on Matthew 2:13-23 for the First Sunday after Christmas) I have never been a refugee and you probably haven’t either. There have been times for many of us when we “had” to leave home but we did so because we chose to get an education or to take a job or because our parents told us it was time. Oh, there is a sense in which many of us feel a restlessness and rootlessness and feel like we are on a constant quest for home. But the facts remain that we have never been driven from our home or from our hometown or from our homeland because of warfare or famine. We have never been driven away because of our ethnicity or our politics or our religion; we have never been forced out or forced underground because we are a threat to those in power. Millions of people are refugees, though. According to the United Nations Refugee Agency, there were at the end of 2012 15.4 million refugees—people who have fled their country for another because of war or persecution—in the world....
Post a Comment
Read more

An Experiment in Preaching

A friend who in his late fifties took a new pastorate said that he had written the last sermon he ever intended to write, meaning that he planned to use the vast collection of sermons that he had built up over his career and produce nothing new. I have in my paper and electronic files every sermon I have ever written; I even have the outlines, some of which were lifted straight out of the back of my trusty Thompson Chain Reference Bible, from my first halting efforts, which were quite different than my later halting efforts. I have at times “re-preached” some of my “greatest hits”; in so doing I heeded the wise words of my wise father who once told me, “If it was worth preaching once it’s worth preaching twice.” And if it’s worth preaching twice maybe it’s worth preaching thrice or more! Over the last twenty-five years I have written full manuscripts for 99% of the sermons that I’ve preached and 90% of the time I’ve taken that manuscript into the pulpit with me. Last Sunday I began an...
3 comments
Read more