The best way to appreciate Sydney’s public transport.

Take someone who has never been on it before. 

(We had a great Easter Saturday)

5 things we overuse in our preaching: the printed outline

This is the start of part 2 of the Sydney Anglican preaching trilogy. (See part 1 here)

5 things we overuse in our preaching.

(Purely subjective generalisations, which is the blogger’s privilege. And I was going to list all 5 here, but I’ll do them in separate posts instead)

1. The printed outline.

I am very much a preacher on L-plates, but my sermons have yet to befriend the printed sermon outline. They just never seem to get along. They kind of politely smile at each other. But so far there has been no chemistry, they don’t click. Maybe it’s because they don’t hang out enough. My sermons always rock up to Church at the last minute, but my printed outline always needs to get there really early (like 4 days early!)

And so when I get up to preach, my printed outline shows no interest in my actual sermon. And my actual sermon has kind of forgotten about the printed outline. When the sermon is trying to bring people to repentance, instead of bringing pen to paper, the outline is trying to bring pen to paper with a note saying ‘don’t forget to repent when you get home!’. They’re not the best of friends. Maybe we should think about separating them. Or they should at least get some counseling. Maybe the printed outline might have more fun dating a lecturer or an OH&S seminar presenter.