The following is from William Zinsser’s classic On Writing Well.  His comments can just as easily be applied to preaching. [T]he secret of good writing is to strip every sentence to its cleanest components.  Every word that serves no function, every long word that could be a short word, every adverb that carries the same [...]

Google Wave is a new, collaborative environment poised to recast the way we think about online communication.  It’s actually quite a difficult experience to describe.  Think email plus instant messaging with a healthy dose of Wikipedia.  It’s bizarre and surreal, but it’s cool.  So as the hoards await their invitations to the popular new technology, let’s [...]

Numbers 14:1-20 presents a somewhat difficult problem for “closed theists” – those who are not open theists. Verse 20 has thrown more than a few interpreters for a loop. The people have come to the end of their wilderness wandering and are set to take possession of the promised land.  But following a fearful report [...]

The typical knock on redemptive-historical sermons is that they are all basically the same.  They start in the garden, quickly move through whatever text is being addressed and then make a beeline to show how Christ fulfills the types, shadows and promises therein. R. L. Dabney has something to say about this single-sermon phenomenon in [...]

This is the first time these sermons from the great reformer have been translated and available.  This volume is a nicely bound book.

As Paul writes a letter of encouragement and instruction to Titus, he describes the Christian life in chapter 2.  Whenever redemptive-historical preachers arrive at passages like this, they often automatically begin thinking of the indicative/imperative relationship.  The indicative aspect of a text is the foundation or necessary state of affairs that provides the context and [...]

In his wonderful collection Evangelical Eloquence: A Course of Lectures on Preaching R. L. Dabney lays out a course in sacred rhetoric for preachers.  This is an area our American public education system has long since forgotten.  While our culture still places a premium on the skills of rhetoric, the emphases of classical education have [...]