Preaching
This section of my site is a large collection of Preaching resources, including a collection of my sermons. To see the listing, use the pull-down navigation bar in the upper left-hand corner of this page. Then click on any item to open up that web page.
by Tim Isbell
I developed and preached about 900 unique sermons over 18 years. Approximately half of these were in the last 10 years of my preaching ministry when I used the Revised Common Lectionary framework. The other half are topical, seasonal, or based on various biblical books.
After retiring in 2010, I polished one or two sermons for each Sunday of the entire 3-year lectionary cycle, and several from sermon series that I inserted in the calendar along the way - and posted them on this site.
Below is a synopsis of what is in this Preaching section of the website.
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Sermon Storehouse
This part of the website collects the sermons into lectionary seasons for each year of the 3-year calendar. It also gathers some sermons by topic, such as Money Sermons. And, occasionally I'd interrupt the lectionary calendar to preach a sermon series. So I've posted these series as "collections" on this web page, too.
Thanks to some NorCal Nazarene pastors, here's a list of popular benedictions.
Preaching Strategies
As a local church pastor for 18 years, I wanted to make sure I used a broad range of preaching techniques in order to communicate to the broad range of parishioners and visitors. And I also wanted to hold the attention of regulars. So I compiled a file of Crib Notes to keep me from falling into the preachers' rut of always preaching in the same style/format. Then, every week I'd read a small section of these Crib Notes, which God used to keep me out of a preaching rut. These Preaching Crib Notes web page is that file. I think you will find help in it.
Ever wonder how much time to factor into your schedule to preach a 30-minute sermon every week. Check out this link.
This is a tutorial about the lectionary. I placed this in the Biblical Resources section of the website because it is useful for parishioners and Bible students, as well as preaching pastors.
Here is a resource especially for preaching pastors. It explains the advantages of preaching the lectionary calendar and all you need to know to give it a try.
Preaching is almost always uni-directional: the preacher prays and prepares and then delivers what he/she believes God wants to say to this particular gathering. But occasionally it's good to preach interactively. Click the link to learn more.
Other Worship Elements
For some parishioners, the worship prayer time is the only time in the week when they quiet their hearts and pray. Others pray throughout the week but are stuck in a dry routine of delivering lists to God. So why not use the pastoral prayer time to model and teach people to pray in ways that enrich their prayer lives throughout the week?
I'm not suggesting that we package a mini-sermon every week on prayer into the worship flow. But we can use a two or three minutes before we lead the congregation in prayer to set the stage for something we are about to model and invite the people into. To do this we must spend half an hour each week in preparation, most of it in quiet, reflective prayer asking God for direction. When I take time to do this, God always directs and it invariably leads to a rich congregational prayer time. And I'm sure God looks forward to these prayer times with his people, too.
For ideas on how to do this, click on the link to Prayer Time Teachable Moments.
Worship Design
Thoughts from Nancy Beach in An Hour on Sunday (Zondervan):
“Aim to make Sunday worship the best hour of the believer’s and investigator’s week.” Nancy Beach.
Leaders' part in worship: select and craft great material, design the best flow possible, point people to God, and make room for attendees to respond to what they experience.
Design worship so transcendent moments can happen; then let them happen. God does more in a 2-minute “divine moment” than we can do in 6 months.
The primary reason real Christians come to church is not to get something out of it, or to enjoy the fellowship, or to watch a good program. The primary reason is to gather with others each Sabbath to concretely give our worship and praise to God.
A key physical manifestation of worship is the praise of his people, for he promises to inhabit these. One way we praise God is in song – not listening to songs but singing them. Some other ways to worship God are to kneel before him, give tithes and offerings to his church, and witness to others about what God has done in our lives. These are the ways we actually worship God, as opposed to just being spectators of the worship of others.
The Advent Season begins each Christian year and is the 4 Sundays leading up to Christmas. Every fall worship leaders and pastors start searching for new Advent Readings to use. Follow the link to 4 original sets of Advent Readings that you can use. Each one has a reading for the 4 Sundays, and a 5th reading designed for Christmas Eve (or Christmas morning, if you have a service then). We used all of these over various years at New Life Nazarene Church.
A note about Attribution
If you choose to use any of my material in your sermons, including entire sermons, you do not need to credit the material to me. Just make it your own.
For 18 years I felt the pressure to preach a fresh sermon every Sunday. It was a bit of a matter of pride (probably not healthy) that I never repeated a sermon.
The only way I could stay fresh was to stay in the scripture myself, read good writers, pray a lot, and take a look at what others are preaching (especially on texts that I know I need to preach anyway). So I constantly listened to sermons as I drove around, or I read them in text form. Sometimes I started out thinking I could almost just preach that sermon, but it NEVER worked out that way. By the time I preached it, it was revised to the extent that even the original preacher may not have recognized it. Other times I used some of their framework (outline, in deductive sermons), but seldom all of even that. Occasionally I used an illustration that I picked up in this process, but the best sermons usually have personal illustrations - so I used a lot of those. Still, a preaching pastor's illustration often triggered something in my own history that I used quite effectively. And there's always Preaching Today, a well-indexed source for good illustrations. I needed about 15-18 hours of sermon development each week in order to effectively preach a 30-minute sermon each Sunday. Not all these hours were for the upcoming Sunday, but always well more than half.
Very often God used other peoples' sermons to help me understand a theological concept that I would otherwise miss. These were often very important insights for our parishioners. These theological insights are the most valuable things I got from experiencing other peoples' sermons.
Since leaving my role as senior pastor at New Life I've had a chance to visit several other churches. I am encouraged by the quality of sermons I've heard. I often go home thinking, "Why am I posting sermon material online? These preachers are preaching better sermons than I can post, anyway." Then the Lord whispers in my ear, "Just keep posting."
So... I just keep posting.
Use whatever you find on my site that works in your situation, without any concerns about attribution. I know that by the time you stand in front of your congregation you will have made it your own.
Blessings, Tim