22 Rules of Thumb in preaching or communication

Your basic message should contain good news. Start with your audience’s needs. Start with examples your audience will understand. Speak your audience’s language. Never speak about your speech. Use witnesses. Communicate with confidence. Get it right. Do not boast; act with humility. Know when to speak and when to be silent. Be enigmatic. Listen. Ask…

Jesus started with His audience’s needs and so should you.

Heuristics is a fancy name for “rules of thumb.” Joe Carter and John Coleman share several heuristics in their book How To Argue Like Jesus: Learning Persuasion From History’s Greatest Communicator that “illuminate more fully the character of Christ’s communication and can have an enormous impact on the ways in which you communication with others” (124). One…

Doubt becomes sin when, instead of seeking truth and a deeper knowledge of God, it seeks to undermine or reject him – Barnabas Piper

This post was written by Barnabas Piper. You can find the original post here. I am grateful for Barnabas’ words of transparency; they’re refreshing and deeply encouraging. Justin pastored a mid-sized suburban church. He started as the youth pastor, weathered some leadership changes, grew in respect and influence, and was eventually called to lead the…

5 Truths of Church Discipline

Jonathan Leeman writes that church discipline aims to… Expose sin. Sin, like cancer, loves to hide. Discipline exposes the cancer so that it might be cut out quickly (1 Corinthians 5:2). Warn. A church does not enact God’s judgment through discipline. Rather, it stages a small play that pictures the great judgment to come (1…