Preachers and Surgeons Need Specific Definitions

If you’re on the operating table, you don’t want your surgeon to say to a nurse, “Hand me one of them sharp thingamajigs.” You ...

The Silence of Ministers on the Issue of Abortion

Though the following article appeared some 15 years ago, it holds true today. World Magazine, in a piece called “Silence of the Shepherds,” ...

How God Used a ‘Dead in the Water’ Sermon

One afternoon while walking through the Norfolk General Hospital, Dr. Hugh Litchfield heard his name being called from across the lobby. As a man approached, ...

Jerry Seinfeld's Intense Dedication to His Craft

Some people make their craft look easy, but there are often years of discipline and practice behind their craft. Consider the comedian Jerry Seinfeld. ...

Bad Preaching Is More Deadly than Bad Surgery

In his essay "Sinsick," theologian Stanley Hauerwas explores the notion of authority using a medical analogy. If a medical student told his advisor, "I'm ...

The Old Preacher's 67,600 Pages of Sermons

In Marilynne Robinson's beautiful novel Gilead, the old preacher John Ames starts digging through a box of sermons in his attic. One day he figures ...

Preaching Prepared a Man to Die

During the last days of the Third Reich, as Allied bombs rained down on Stuttgart and the Nazi terror writhed in its final death throes, Helmut Thielicke ...

Filmmaker Claims Orators, Not Films, Change the World

Werner Herzog, one of Germany's greatest filmmakers and screenwriters, said in a 2011 interview: "Movies do not change anything … [that's] ...

Preaching to the Dead

Dr. Erwin Lutzer teaches preaching courses at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. Every year, he takes his students on a field trip to the local cemetery—so ...

Communion and the Sermon

The sermon should serve, not dominate in the church. It should serve the presence of Christ which we celebrate in the Eucharist.

—Wolfhart Pannenberg, ...