Vetrean Pastor, Life time Learner, Problem Solver, Servant-Leader and Motivational Speaker.

The State of the Union and the State of the Pulpit | Ordinary Pastor

1. People are not idiots. We can and should expect them to listen when we have something to say.

2. Persuasive presentations are still effective. Otherwise he would just blog the thing.

3. Preparation actually matters. Whatever you want to say about the POTUS and his teleprompter, guess what? He knew his speech. He had thought it through and had it down.

4. Thoughtful preparation matters. He knew who he was talking to and what he wanted to say.

5. Fear is healthy. Let’s face it, the President has a job to do and an election to win. He doesn’t want to stink it up.

If you are a pastor, keep preaching. And keep expecting people to listen. But, please, please, please, could you make sure that the sermon is actually in you before you give it? Make sure it moves you. Have convictions, be persuasive, get after it. What a shame it would be if the president was more thoughtful, diligent, and committed in his presentation to the people of the country than we are to our congregations before God? What an indictment this is to us who bye the lie that preaching is irrelevant. No, boring is irrelevant. And so is tired, lazy, unprepared, unmoved, wimpy  guys who have nothing to say.

via www.ordinarypastor.com

Maybe I Do Want Topical Preaching? | 9Marks

Yes, thank you, give me Christ-centered sermons. But if Jesus is Lord, shouldn’t that fact affect how I go to work on Monday, and speak to my little girl, and spend my money? What does the gospel have to say to me in all those places? What does the gospel say to me about stress, and retirement, and serving in government, and talking to my friend with a gambling addiction?

It seems to me that your gospel-centered expositional sermons should get to all the stuff that topical preachers preach about, right?  Your preaching should be giving people all that and more. I think you call it sermon “application.” Shouldn’t your applications make expositional sermons topical, so to speak? Shouldn’t they, over time, cover all the topics of people’s lives? Shouldn’t the members in your church feel like they’re not missing anything?

 Okay, okay, I know there’s still a huge difference between your average topical sermon and your average expositional sermon, which is crucial. The Bible doesn’t exist, and church gatherings don’t happen, and sermons aren’t preached, simply to help people like me do this or that better. And a steady diet of topical preaching can make it seem that way—like the point of the whole church exercise is to improve my daily life. When really, the whole point of gathering and listening to preaching is to behold God, and to hear whatever he wants to say. I know that. I know I need his Word exposed, no matter what it says. I know I need to hear all of it, even the parts that seem obscure and irrelevant.

I’m just saying that I need you to show me how those obscure bits are relevant, even if those Hebrew chiasms are as naturally fascinating to you as they are to my Sunday School teacher who doesn’t get out much. I need you to show me how those chiasms help me to trust more, hope more, love more, and what that faith, hope, and love look like in the different areas of my life. Make sense?

Connect the dots for me. How do I get from justification by faith alone to being a manly man who cares well for his aging parents?

Okay, I admit, I don’t really want you to give up the expositional thing. I just want more from you. I want to have my cake and to eat it, too. Call me biblically greedy. I want you to apply your sermon in my life so that I’m learning all the helpful stuff they’re learning over at Topical Tommy’s church.  Okay?

Thanks for listening, Mr. Young Expositional Preacher. For real, I thank God for you, and the fact that you’ve chosen the harder, more faithful path.

via www.9marks.org

THANK YOU NORTH MASON BIBLE CHURCH!!!!

 

Inisight full article about: "Things I learned from Irene | Relocating To Elfland

Wonder of wonders, with more time has come more connectedness with people. Yep, it’s true: Dad has more time with his kids when he isn’t sending emails and they aren’t watching a movie. We’ve raked the yard together (twice!), played dominos together, read books, and – shockingly! – enjoyed three meals a day together. My five-year-old commented particularly on this last phenomenon: “Dad, how come you’re eating with us all the time?”

Or let me speak of time with my wife. Deprived of the never-ending voyeurism of Facebook, away from the mental burps of the Twittersphere and the relentless incoming surges of email, we have found ourselves face-to-face – and not out at a restaurant, in our own home! After the kids were in bed last night, we danced by candlelight to 1930′s music (played on a battery-operated radio) in the living room. That would never have happened if the Internet was working.

The connections have been more than just domestic. No one from the church could get a hold of us yesterday, so a family actually came to the house last night to check on us. I can’t express how moving that was. Not a text, not an email, not even a phone call – an unannounced visit. It meant the world. So have the kindly visits since then, dropping off packs of ice for our food supplies. Real-life, real-time, face-to-face community. I mean, it’s not quite the same as a poke on Facebook, but we’ll get all that back shortly.

Did I mention that I met my neighbor? Ran into him out on the street last evening (I haven’t seen this many people out walking in our neighborhood since the block party), and he needed a three-prong adaptor for a pump he was trying to run in his basement. I happened to have one, we struck up a conversation, and by today we were raking our lawns together while our kids played in the leaf piles rained down by Irene. For a moment or two, it was like living in a real neighborhood, where people across the street know each other by name and have something in common besides a ZIP code. Why? Well I, for one, had the time. Nothing else more urgent to do. My brain wasn’t plugged into the data-force that is the modern world. I was . . . available.

So anytime now, the electricity will come back on, and when it does, I’ll rush to post this on my blog, check my email and Twitter accounts, and read the latest avalanche of news. Life at breakneck speed will resume. And I wish it wouldn’t. I wish I could just sit here writing with pen and ink, while my wife sits on the couch near me reading, and my kids play in the yard. I wish the hum in my ears could be the katydids I hear right now, instead of the white noise that usually drowns them out. I wish I could look up through my skylight every night and see the stars the way we did last night, when there weren’t a million lights to push them out of view. I wish the quiet in my soul could go on and on, pouring out in prayer and meditation, study and observation, unhurried love for my family, and unrushed availability to my neighbor. I wish I had the fortitude to live in a world of digital speed and not lose composure. I wish I could ride the storm of hurry and not end up with hurry sickness. Ready or not, the storm’s coming back. Maybe that’s why the Lord sent me these lessons from Ire

via www.relocatingtoelfland.com

Paul Miller: “The great struggle of my life is not trying to discern God’s will.......

Paul Miller: “The great struggle of my life is not trying to discern God’s will; it is trying to discern and then disown my own. Once I see that, then prayer flows.”

1. The bible contains God's will for your life.

2. God's will is that you love Him more than life itself.

3. God's will is that you listen to Him more than your emotions.

4. God's will is that you trust Him with your "trash" and pain more than your perception.

5. God's will is that you love the people in your house not just on a mission trip.

6. God' s will is that you honor your parents especially when you do know you are right.

7. God's will is that you remember that you are not God. You did not create the universe.

8. God's will is that you learn more about Him by obeying Him.

9. God's will is that you seek to deny your self, take up your cross and follow Him every day and not just on Sunday.

10. God's will is declared and demostrated in the work, life, and words of Jesus Christ. Follow Jesus on His twitter page the Bible!!!! 

My problem is not that I do not know the will of God is that I am in love with my own will. 
Grace and Peace

Pastor James Owolabi 

Flabbergasted with God's generosity towards me and Thoughts from "Biblical Preaching by Haddon Robinson

              
    God has been melting my stony heart with explosions of His love by providing for my needs as recently as this morning during my visit to the gym. I am and will be  continually flabbergasted that His majesty the king of all creation will continually unload gifts into my backpack of life during this hike called “full-time” ministry. While I marvel at my king’s consistent and never ending acts of generosity towards me....I am simply speechless. THANK YOU ABBA FATHER!!!!!!!!!!

 

A community of faith in Portland Oregon has asked me to come and declare the impact of the Resurrection in my life. The resurrection of Jesus Christ sends rumbling across my mind, rumblings that catapult me into a lifestyle that seeks to live a new life daily. Colossians 3 will be my text this lord's day.......Prayers are needed for husbands and wives who hear the truth to allow their hearts and minds to be driven to repentance towards God. To speak with words of affection towards one another in their homes that they children might declare that God is not a joke!!!!!!!. 

This week I got hungry for a good preaching book and took my mind to seek out a book on preaching.  I preach at least twice a week. So I picked up a book from my library by Haddon Robinson titled “Biblical preaching.  Here are some thoughts from this book:

1.  Thinking is difficult, but it stands the essential work of the preacher. Let there be no mistake about the nature of the task. It is often slow, discouraging, overwhelming but when God calls men to preach, He calls them to love Him with their minds. God deserves that kind of love and so do the people to whom we minister.

2.  For some preachers, therefore fads in communication become more stimulating than the message. Multimedia presentations, filmstrips, sharing sessions, blinking lights, and up-to-date music may symptoms of health or disease. Undoubtedly, modern techniques can substitute for the message-the startling and unusual may mask a vacuum.

3.  Paul realized that some ministries simply couldn’t take place apart from face to face contact.

4.  A preacher can proclaim anything in a stained-glass voice, at 11:30 on Sunday morning, following the singing of hymns. Yet when a preacher fails to preach the Scriptures, he abandons his authority. He confronts his hears no longer with a word from God but only with another word from men. Therefore most modern preaching evokes little more than a wide yawn. God is not in it.

5.  Ultimately the authority behind the preaching resides not in the preacher but in the biblical text.   For that reason the expositor deals largely with an explanation of Scripture, so that he focuses the listener’s attention on the Bible.

6.  An expositor may be respected for his exegetical abilities and his diligent preparation, but these qualities do not transform him into a Protestant Pope who speaks ex cathedra. As Henry David Thoreau wrote, “It takes two to speak the truth-one to speak and another to hear.”

The sharp wit with which Haddon Robinson writes propels this truth into a dynamic duo: Grace and Truth. I will love to attend the shepherd’s conference this year to ignite in me a passion to speak the word of God with depth and passion. Thank you being a blessing to this African preacher.

Grace and Peace

Pastor James Owolabi

P.S. Grace......good job taking the pictures.......