May my name be found amongst them

Posted on May 3, 2013 by John Samson

Someone wrote this…..

“I used to do a lot of pulpit supply and I wanted to be funny, cool and popular. One evening I was visiting with an older preacher and he said, ‘When a man enters the pulpit, he stands between God and God’s people.’

That changed me forever.

The next time I entered a pulpit, a dread fell on me, I knew that there were lost souls listening to me. My knees and hands trembled, my heart broke and the Gospel became an urgent necessity. I never preached another sermon without a path to the cross, without a clear proclamation of the Gospel and rarely without hot tears.”

God bless the faithful pastors who preach the Words of life.

May my name be found amongst them.

Luther and Preaching

Posted on March 21, 2013 by John Samson

Carl Trueman’s inaugural lecture as the Paul Woolley Chair of Church History at Westminster Theological Seminary (March 20, a good grasp of the technical skills necessary: ability to handle the biblical text, to communicate well and to speak with conviction on things that count. But it also depends upon a second, equally important but often neglected point: the need to understand preaching as a theological act. Only when this is done, when the preacher accurately understands what he is doing will he really do so well and with the confidence necessary.

And what better way to reflect upon preaching in Protestant context than to spend a few moments thinking about how Luther, the founder of the Protestant preaching feast, understood preaching as a theological act?