Here is my latest Pulpit Housecalls Podcast on Preaching Top Ten Lists.

It may sound like a strange topic, but sometimes I use lists as introductory material to lighten the mood. They are all over the Internet. One place, I failed to mention in the podcast is Grant’s Graceland. It has a bunch of funny lists that are church appropriate. They can be funny, but no one does them like David Letterman. So, in this podcast I discuss a strategy for using lists without them sounding list-like since I usually don’t present them well as lists.

Also in this podcast I mention a new Christian artist named Carrie Petitt. She just released an album called Dream On and has released the title track allowing podcasters to play on their Internet shows. You can listen to my podcast, which has the entire song at the end. Or you can go to her website and buy it.

In this podcast I recommended John Franklin’s book And the Place Was Shaken. It is a 26 week guide for prayer meetings. I recommend it highly. If you go to the Lifeway.com page where I found it, you can download a PDF that has the outline for the first 7 weeks.

Email me with your comments, suggestions, or questions. You can also send me an audio email. I mention in this podcast, the software I use to create my podcasts. It is called Audacity and is free, open source software for editing audio.

The pictures I promised to post are here:

The above image was intented to illustrate that only the proper fruit can be produced. As Christians we must produce the proper fruit of the Gospel.

As you can guess this image is intended to illustrate the idea of keeping focused on the cross to help us get through a storm. The picture is of the cross that is in the back of our church. It was taken during a snow storm. I blurred everything around the cross and the added the text. I created this slide using Photoshop.

If you would like higher resolution versions of these email me. And thanks for listening.

If you are a regular reader of Pulpit Housecalls, then you saw my link to a page about Star Wars. I am sorry that I linked to it because it had a couple of profane words on it. They escaped my attention (I honestly think the site was changed or updated after I first saw it). But thanks to a person who read it and pointed it out to me.

I have been engaging in an interesting and I hope fruitful dicussion with Anthony Coppedge, a man who has dedicated his ministry to helping churches connect with a post-modern world. If you have never visited his web site, click the link under Blogroll to the right.

Here is the link to his Blog: Anthony Coppedge.

First let me say that I think Mr. Coppedge does a great job at what he does – stearing churches and ministers to communicating in a compelling and exciting way. I just think in this debate, he has an improper understanding of what Expository Preaching really is.

So that leads me to define it. What do I think it means to preach Expositorily. Haddon Robinson is my mentor on this subject. He wrote a book entitled Biblical Preaching. It is probably one of the best ever written on how to prepare an expository sermon. As his student, I learned that Biblical Preaching is Expository Preaching. And Expository Preaching is simply getting out of the way of the Biblical text and letting it speak for itself. In other words, get your messgae from the text and let the text speak. Of course, our job is to present it in a compelling and interesting way. We must use whatever means at our disposal that does not pervert the message. Marshal McLuhan says that is impossible. But I disagree. The medium is important, but does not have the change the message so as to pervert it.

Expository Preaching is sharing a message from a Biblical text in a way that allows that text to speak for itself, but in a form that matches the tone and form of that text. So a narrative text should preached in a narrative way. A didactic text should be preached in a didactic way. A poetic text should have some poetic form. A sermon on a proverb should be pithy. Also a passage that wows us with the magesty of God should no be preached in a prophetic, harsh tone. It should be preached in such a way that we come away wowed by God. Alternatively, a passage that is damning should probably be preached in a prophetic tone. Every passage should direct us to the glory of God and the amazing nature of His grace.

Also an expository message is preached in context. We must not distort the message of a text by pulling it out of its context. Make sure you preach it in the context of the immediate passage, the book it is in, the testament and the enirety of scripture. All four sphere’s should be considered. How does this passage fit in the passage, chapter, book, testament, and bible?

Now, the problem we have today is that many mistakenly assume that if you are preaching Expositorily, that you are necessarily not connecting with today’s audience. That is wrong. In truth, unless you are preaching expositorily, you will not likely have anything of importance to say to today’s audience and after they get over the glitz of your presentation, they will be left with little to chew on. It’s like being amazed a wonderful smelling broth only to find that there is no stock.

Alternatively, others say that if you are preaching using technology and multimedia, then you are not preaching expositorily. That is false as well. The bible is filled with non-technical forms of multimedia communication. This includes the use of a tree in the garden to impart a message of boundaries to Adam. It inclues cursing a fig tree to teach about usefulness to the Kingdom of God. It includes many more. What we do today is relate using the same media that typically interest and grab people today. We are a TV and Computer culture. Eletronic communication is the primary medium of communication today. If we do not use it, then we are failing to connect the Biblical message with our contemporary culture.

I am a Milwaukee Bucks fan and a fan of preachers. So I loved the following story about Michael Redd of my hometown team giving dad a big gift after signing his huge contract with my Bucks.

Milwaukee Bucks’ Michael Read Gives Dad a House; a House of Worship!

Cool!

Here is another sermon from last Sunday, Nov. 6. The audio quality of this one is not that good. You may have to turn things up a bit. Our church’s sound system was on the fritz the week I preached this one.

My Nov. 6 Sermon entitled We are Moving.

The sermon is on Ezekiel’s vision of the Valley of the Dry Bones in Ezekiel 37.

You might ask why there are not weekly sermons on this site. The reason is that one Sunday in October I was out of town and the other Sunday we had a guest speaker for Revival services. And the sermon following the Revival did got get recorded for some reason. Hopefully I will have weekly sermons from here on out unless I am not preaching for some reason.

On October 16, I preached a sermon on Nehemiah, entitled “Waking Up the Church”. Here it is.

Waking Up the Church – sermon from Oct 16, 2005

Just a note. I will not be producing a Podcast for this Monday due to the fact that I will be out of town for the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina’s Annual Meeting in Winston Salem, NC. If I find the time later in the week I will make an attempt. If not, look for my next one on Monday, November 21st.

If you are interested in the Convention, you can view it online at the BSCNC web site.

Our youngest son, Daniel, is quite the budding author. He writes comic books and little stories. But now he has written his first “chapter book” as he calls it.

Here it is in an Adobe PDF.
Daniel\'s story entitled \"The Purcel\'s Mean Mean Son\"

As you know I love to recommend things that intrigue me in the area of ministry, preaching and tech. I found a great article by our friends at Mobile Ministry Magazine on the subject of preaching paperless. He describes, in three parts, using a PDA to preach. No physical Bible or notes … just a PDA with Bible Software and notes in Docs to Go.

Check it out in the Mobile Ministry Forums.

Here is my latest podcast on multimedia in preaching. I discuss how God used images in symbols in communicating to His people, and why you should too. I make mention of my Doctor of Ministry Dissertation, which you can read by clicking the link below.

Read my Dissertation which can be downloaded on this page.

Download my latest podcast here.

I have uploaded some new pictures in my gallery. Many are of my two sons, but others are just nature shots or pictures of people at the park. We went for a little Father Son time at Lineberger Park in Gastonia, after lunch at O’Charley’s. Daniel picked the place to eat and I wanted to take some fall foliage shots. So here they are. I did some editing in Photoshop, but for the most part what you see is what I saw.

Here are the pictures.