Devotions in Norwegian American Weekly

Recently I was asked to do a weekly devotional piece for the Norwegian American Weekly. It is the only Norwegian heritage paper left in the U.S. I told them I would do it every other week and so far that has been a real challenge. My mode of operation so far is to find a good example and draw a spiritual lesson of some kind from it in a very short piece. Unlike writing an extemporaneous sermon you don't get a chance to change anything or make any adjustments at the time of delivery. So far it feels a little too much like coming out of retirement. It has refreshed my memory of what it is like for Pastors to be constantly under the gun to come up with sermons and devotions and all the other things they do on a weekly basis.

Lecture by Dr. John Carrick

I recently came across a lecture by Dr. John Carrick, a Presbyterian homiletics professor at Greenville Seminary, on the subject of reading sermons. Suffice it to say that he is against it. He makes the most compelling argument I have ever heard for preaching freely in the extemporaneous style. I have a link to his lecture on my web site at (http://www.extemporaneouspreaching.wikispaces.com/) or you can find it at. (http://www.sermonaudio.com/?sermoninfo.asp?SID=124092165410. I must warn you that if you are still reading your sermons you may not want to listen to this as his arguments against the practice are very compelling.

New Web Site

I recently started a web site on the subject of extemporaneous preaching. I have put a number of links on the site and hope to keep updating it as time goes on. The url for the site is http://www.extemporaneouspreaching.wikispaces.com/

It all came about when my daughter-in-law told me about wikispaces and I was able to hire my 13 year old grandson  ($5.00 / hr.) to set it up and keep it up for me. There are a number of people around the country working on the issue of helping pastors move away from reading their sermons. I hope this web site will become part of the larger resource in this area..