The Sermon Crafting Blog

by Barney Wells, DMin Director, The Fred Craddock Center for Preaching Excellence This Sunday is the second Sunday in May. Mother’s Day. That means a Mother’s Day sermon—or does it. While the role of mothers in all civilizations is certainly important, and there is certainly no doubt that mothers influence [...]

By Chuck Sackett Preaching Team-Madison Park Christian Church, Quincy, IL In my early days attending church, I went with the teens to an area youth rally. About halfway through the sermon on the second night, everything began to sound vaguely familiar. The preacher had slipped from that night’s sermon into [...]

By Chuck Sackett Preaching Team-Madison Park Christian Church, Quincy, IL Any preacher who stands in the pulpit risks being misunderstood. But what about those occasions when what the listener heard was better than what the preacher said? They thank you for your helpful words…which you are convinced you never uttered. [...]

by Barney Wells, DMin Director, The Fred Craddock Center for Preaching Excellence If you are even an occasional reader of this blog, you know that we advocate for planned preaching-knowing weeks or months in advance what text and what “big idea” from the text you are going to preach on [...]

By Chuck Sackett Preaching Team-Madison Park Christian Church, Quincy, IL As a young preacher, I stood in the obligatory position at the rear entrance to the sanctuary at the end of the worship service. I knew every face and accompanying voice that exited…except today. On this Sunday I met the [...]

by Barney Wells, DMin Director, The Fred Craddock Center for Preaching Excellence Have you ever asked yourself, “What’s the use—all this exegesis and reflection and searching for just the right word, the right story, the right question. Is preaching really worth the effort?” Maybe it’s a week when your pour [...]

By Rochelle Scheuermann, PhD Assistant Dean of Ministry and Evangelism, A. Duane Litfin Divinity School, Wheaton College (NOTE: Dr. Scheuermann will be the Lecturer for the Fred B. Craddock Lectures on Preaching on April 8 at Johnson University. See the Events tab for more details) I recently re-read Fred Craddock’s [...]

by Barney Wells, DMin Director, The Fred Craddock Center for Preaching Excellence “Call Bible things by Bible names.” That is a slogan familiar to those who are my closest spiritual relatives, and no doubt many others. The Scripture gives us many words that are not part of the common vocabulary [...]

By Chuck Sackett Preaching Team-Madison Park Christian Church, Quincy, IL My best friend in college introduced me to a whole new vocabulary, especially useful when your mind goes blank. He familiarized me with words like doohickey, gizmo, thingamajig, thingamabob, and whatchamacallit. I’ve used these words often, providing a witty placeholder [...]

by Barney Wells, DMin Director, The Fred Craddock Center for Preaching Excellence Every preacher who has been at the craft for very long has had both of two opposite but similar experiences. The first is when your work in “hard chair” and the “soft chair,” your exegetical study and pondering [...]

by Barney Wells, DMin Director, The Fred Craddock Center for Preaching Excellence Continuing our sermon-crafting journey, last week we looked at thinking about the sermon as a series of “moves” or the legs of a journey. To briefly revisit that, let’s think of what that means practically for both a [...]

by Barney Wells, DMin Director, The Fred Craddock Center for Preaching Excellence Have you spent some profitable time in the “soft chair” (see last week’s post) and figured out the sermon form that best fits your message? Let’s return, then, to the map analogy from last week. When you plan [...]