Free Republic

NEW HAVEN, Conn. (RNS) The collected works of Jonathan Edwards, the 18th-century preacher and one of America’s most famous theologians, are now available for download thanks to Logos Bible Software. But for those who don’t want to cough up $1,289.95 to purchase them, there’s good news: The Jonathan Edwards Center at Yale Divinity School lets you view them online for free. The colonial preacher was instrumental in America’s Great Awakening and is known for fiery sermons such as “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” The 26-volume collection, “The Works of Jonathan Edwards,” comprises more than 10,000 sermons, articles...

With the in-your-face display of greed and arrogance of the so-called pastors on the reality show Preachers of L.A., I began to wonder: when will black Christians wake up and say enough is enough?  Although there are some white pastors of mega-churches who have a net worth of almost triple their congregants as well, I want to focus on the plight of the black saints who sit under the ministry of black pastors (and some white pastors) Sunday after Sunday and continue to live paycheck to paycheck.After some years of attending mega-churches pastored by both black and white men and...

“You’ll find our text this morning in the Old Testament…” I know this is a rare announcement on a Sunday morning, but when you heard it last, what did you think? “Oh no! Not another historical lecture.” “We’re going to get a whipping with the law today.” “Why? I came to church to hear about Jesus.” “What’s Israel and Babylon got to do with my family struggles?” Or maybe you didn’t just think it. You said it or emailed it to the pastor afterwards. And pastors are feeling the pressure. Some surveys put the ratio of Old Testament to New...

A Gallup poll released May 30 showing large majorities of Americans now agree that homosexual relations, contraception, divorce, and fornication are "morally acceptable” highlights the need for strong preaching on moral issues, says the president of Human Life International. “The acceptability of these evils is a direct result of people not being engaged in public debate against those trying to force us to accept these issues,” Father Shenan Boquet told LifeSiteNews. “That’s why it’s so important for faith leaders to speak out and find new ways to help the public understand moral teachings on controversial issues.” Father Shenan Boquet, president...

It is well and good for the preacher to base his sermon on the Bible, but he better get to something relevant pretty quickly, or we start mentally to check out.” That stunningly clear sentence reflects one of the most amazing, tragic, and lamentable characteristics of contemporary Christianity: an impatience with the Word of God. The sentence above comes from Mark Galli, senior managing editor of Christianity Today in an essay entitled, “Yawning at the Word.” In just a few hundred words, he captures the tragedy of a church increasingly impatient with and resistant to the reading and preaching of...

Pope Benedict XV . . . Poor Preaching Responsible For Fall Back Into Paganism February 12, 2014 Frontpage No Comments By PAUL LIKOUDISThe horror of World War I, preoccupied with massive humanitarian projects on behalf of widows, orphans, and prisoners of war, engaged in intense diplomatic initiatives to defend the rights of the Church in Europe, Russia, and the Middle East, Pope Benedict XV issued an encyclical Humani Generis Redemptionem on June 15, 1917, which blamed ineffective preaching by priests for the decline in morals and civilization’s backsliding into paganism. Pope Benedict reminded bishops that their foremost duty is...

When was the last time you heard an archbishop discuss preaching this way: Lingayen-Dagupan Archbishop Socrates Villegas has urged Catholic priests to always prepare and think carefully about the content of their homilies, saying delivering “boring” sermons is unjust to God and the churchgoers. deliver better quality preaching. These included, he said, their failure to prepare for the liturgy. Drawing from his own experience, Villegas attributed his long and winding homilies to his failure to “know my people well.” “In other words, I was speaking about hunger when I did not feel the hunger myself. I was speaking about death,...

So, how do we break into the lives of people who are immersed in this postmodern reality? How do we reach them for the gospel? Do we find ways to show them how the gospel is existentially satisfying? Do we offer therapeutic entertainment to draw them in? Nope. Instead, we do the unthinkable in our modern age. We preach.

Therefore they that were scattered abroad went every where preaching the word.Then Philip went down to the city of Samaria, and preached Christ unto them.(Acts 8:4-5)But when they believed Philip preaching the things concerning the kingdom of God, and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized, both men and women.(Acts 8:12)Phillip, as we have noted earlier was not one of the apostles, nor at this point was he a noted evangelist. Rather, he was a servant of Jesus Christ, in practical matters of the church, involved in the distribution of relief to widows. But when a very zealous Pharisee...

God created government. So preached Pastor Jack Hibbs of Calvary Chapel Chino Hills in the days leading up to the presidential election. Hibbs has joined with nearly 1,600 pastors across the country and about 140 in California in the Pulpit Initiative, a legal effort aimed at protecting the free-speech rights of pastors in the pulpit. Hibbs' sermons in a series called "Politics and Faith" may have been enough to let the church know which candidate he supported. Or at least who he didn't. He preached about politics and Israel. And politics and defending the pre-born. Hibbs was emphatic during an...

One of the dirtiest little secrets about preaching is that many preachers are using what we used to call in radio “a service.” There are, or at least there used to be, businesses that sell jokes and one liners and gags and the like to “radio personalities.” We referred to these business as “a service” as in, “Wow, his show is terrible.” “Well, I’m not surprised, he uses a service.” If a “personality” needs a service he isn’t really much of a personality is he?

Preaching magazine editor Michael Duduit takes on the challenging task of naming the most important preachers from the recent past. When Preaching magazine was launched in 1985, a look at our list of contributing editors gave you a sense of who would be listed among the most influential preachers in America. That original group included Stuart Briscoe, Maxie Dunnam, Jim Henry, David Allan Hubbard, John Huffman, D.E. King, James Earl Massey, Calvin Miller, Lloyd John Ogilvie, Stephen F. Olford, Haddon Robinson, J. Alfred Smith, John Wesley White and William Willimon, along with several more.Thankfully, many of those preachers are still...

There are four aspects of powerful preaching displayed by Jesus in this passage. As such, Jesus is not just a powerful preacher himself, but also models what it means to be a powerful and effective preacher.In using the word “preacher” here we ought to be careful not to reduce preaching merely to what takes place in a church. For surely the clergy have churches in which to preach. But every Catholic parent ought also to learn from Jesus here, for they have the church of their home in which to preach, and the pulpit of the dining room table,...

Life sure can be funny.  You have ups, you have downs, and you have to be certain not to get hung up anywhere along the way.  I have been blessed over the years to teach, preach, and write for a variety of venues.  Whether it has been large or small congregations; classrooms with little kids, teens, or adults; a prison facility; outdoors in a park; VBS gatherings; camps; senior centers; online forums and websites, or in someone’s home, the gospel has been spread in earnest.   Sometimes folks grab on to the gospel with complete gusto!  Most times they can...

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. – The killing of Osama bin Laden, a man who was America's face of evil for nearly a decade, left Christians, Jews and Muslims relieved, proud or even jubilant. For their religious leaders, it was sometimes hard to know just what to say. There is at least some dissonance between the values they preach and the triumphant response on the streets of New York and Washington to the death of a human being — even one responsible for thousands of killings in those areas and around the world. "Justice may have been served, but we Catholics never...

Those of us who are entrusted with the task of expositing the Scriptures in a local church must take care to verify our sources, illustrations, and stories. No matter how helpful an illustration may be, it is dishonoring to God if it is untrue. Here are a number of urban legends that get repeated in sermons. Some are more pervasive than others, even appearing in commentaries and scholarly works. 1. The “eye of the needle” refers to a gate outside Jerusalem. ...

Preaching the Word of God has been an integral part of God’s plan of redemption since the very beginning of time. Paul told Timothy to preach the word. If you don’t teach, people will turn aside. II Timothy 4:2-4

The Thomas More Law Center (TMLC) announced today that the City of Dearborn, its Mayor, John B. O’Reilly, its Chief of Police, Ronald Haddad, 17 City police officers, and two executives of the American Arab Chamber of Commerce were named as defendants in a ninety-six page federal civil rights lawsuit filed in the Federal District Court in Detroit this morning. The lawsuit, brought by TMLC and co-counsel and Sharia law expert, David Yerushalmi, stems from two separate police actions at the June 2010 Dearborn, Michigan Annual International Arab Festival. Richard Thompson, TMLC President and Chief Counsel, commented, “Muslims dominate the...

Police have been ordered to pay compensation to a Christian street preacher who was hauled off in handcuffs for saying that gays will go to hell. A judge condemned the arrest of Anthony Rollins, who quoted the King James Bible on the subject of the ‘effeminate’ as he preached in Birmingham. Mr Rollins was handcuffed and then held in a cell for nearly four hours after a passer-by dialled 999 and complained that his language was ‘hugely offensive’. The ruling – which ended with West Midlands police ordered to pay more than £4,000 in damages to the 45-year-old preacher –...

I often hear the question, "how do you apply the text in an expositional sermon?" Behind this question may be many questionable assumptions. The questioner may be remembering "expositional" sermons he has heard (or maybe preached) that were no different from some Bible lectures at seminary—well-structured and accurate but demonstrating little godly urgency or pastoral wisdom. These expositional sermons may have had little if any application. On the other hand, the questioner may simply not know how to recognize application when he hears it. William Perkins, the great sixteenth-century puritan theologian in Cambridge, instructed preachers to imagine the various kinds...