Chalmers' Blog

Saturday Snippets (September 25)

As well as reading a lot of books, I also read a ton of articles every week. Here are some of the articles that I’ve read recently and have found interesting, helpful, challenging and encouraging. I hope that they will be the same for you, my dear readers…

Leaders Need To Lead

Over the past few weeks I’ve been involved in multiple discussions around the issues of pastors, and others in church leadership, being unprepared and ill-equipped for the role that they fulfil. It’s actually really easy for pastors to not lead, but instead to simple be liked and to do the bare minimum. But we are called to do more…

Saturday Snippets (September 18)

Show Your Scars

Scars tell a story. Every scar, whether seen or unseen, tells a tail of the ups and downs of life. Some scars are visible whilst some are hidden. Some are self inflicted whilst some are forced upon us. So often we feel the need to hide our scars. We feel the need to hide our stories of pain so that we present a picture of happiness and health to the world. But there’s a better way, a way that’s more helpful for us and for our listeners…

There Came a Day

Stories are powerful. When you hear someone’s story you get much more than what they think or believe. A story is an invitation into the heart and emotions of a person to rejoice and weep with them. Here’s a story that I read yesterday.

Saturday Snippets (September 11)

Why bother?

I’ve been blogging for about four years. During that time people have asked me for advice, recommendations, help and people have also criticised my blog. When you put something online you’re inevitably going to get kick back. I receive kick back, or a general dislike of my blog, for a variety of reasons both online and offline. So the questions naturally comes to mind, why bother? I thought I’d give you a short insight into why I started, and have continued, this blog.

Know Your Enemy

Each of us fall into sin every day. We can try our hardest to be good, but we will always fall. It should be a daily reminder to us that we cannot do it by ourselves. But, we can equip ourselves and know our enemy.

Saturday Snippets (September 4)

Prep, Preaching and Practice

I’ve the last few weeks, preaching has been on my mind a lot. Stephen Kneale posted an article about his own sermons prep. At the time, mid-August, Stephen was finishing off his sermons for November. The guy plans ahead. But also the other day I came across someone quoting John Stott. Apparently Stott said that a preacher needs to dedicate one hour of prep for every 5 minutes of preaching. That sounds like a lot, initially, but that’s only 6 hours prep for a 30 minute sermon.

Realistically every preacher is different, so I thought I’d share my prep for you. I’m not a renowned preacher, I don’t have decades of experience, but this is the pattern that I’ve found work for me best.

The most important thing in all of this is constant prayer. If a sermon isn’t coming together, it’s normally because in my pride and busyness, I haven’t spend enough time bringing it before the Lord. I pray for the Holy Spirit to open my eyes and do a work in my heart, I pray for the congregation who will hear it and I pray that most important everything that is of me would be forgotten but all that is of God would remain and be a blessing to His people.