Does Christmas Really Matter?
The first Christmas changed everything forever.1 And let’s be clear about what that means. Christmas is not an idea, not an emotion or an attitude or an ethos or symbol. Christmas isn’t a metaphor;...
Monthly Archive: December 2022
From Paper to Pulpit
A sermon, in contrast to a paper, isn’t ordered and organized and determined by a thesis, but rather by an exhortation. The center of the sermon–the thing around which it is in orbit–is it’s exhortational purpose, not its doctrinal or exegetical content.
The Beginning of Things tells you Stuff: Determining Genre
Pay careful attention to the opening section of any discourse. The first five minutes of a movie, the first chapter or so of a novel, the opening introduction of a sermon, the first paragraph of a newspaper article—all of these “first moments” are specifically designed to orient you to the thing that you are reading or hearing or watching. Remember, authors generally want to be understood, and because they want to be understood they want to set you up to read well.