Category: Preaching

Audio of my wife Amy Rowell preaching on suffering in Taylor University Chapel

Post author By Andy Rowell
Post date October 6, 2006

My wife, Amy Rowell, spoke in chapel Wednesday at Taylor University. I introduced her. Amy has her Masters of Divinity degree from Regent College in Vancouver, BC and has served on church staff in a number of capacities including pastoral care, children's ministry, adult education, women's ministry and preaching. Like me, she is serving as a professor of Christian Educational Ministries at Taylor. She and I share one full-time position and take turns hanging out with our one-year-old Ryan.

The text she chose was Mark 5:21-43 which includes the healing of the bleeding woman and the daughter of Jairus. Through expositorily preaching this narrative, she outlines a realistic and robust theology of suffering. She specifically reflects on the untimely death of her mother in April. She had three main points. Here is my paraphrasing of them: (1) Jesus is compassionate and has the power to heal. (2) Sometimes Jesus doesn't heal at the time we'd like. (The daughter of Jairus died when Jesus stopped to heal the bleeding woman). (3) But Jesus walks with us on the road and heals when we eventually arrive home.

The mp3 and streaming audio are available at Taylor's website here. Sadly, the video folks had the day off so didn't get her filmed.

This is a photo of us after a wedding in August 2006.

How to find movie clips to use in your sermon

Post author By Andy Rowell
Post date August 3, 2006

I recently had a student who told me she loved movies. This woman watched lots and lots of movies. I was wishing she would read a few more books and go out more often with friends. But I also encouraged her to write down a movie clip she could use in teaching for each movie she watches. One of my students emailed me that she is sometimes doing this. (See the end of this post).

I don’t have this habit down myself but I would like to! Movies can be a big waste of time but if you are reflecting on them, they can be edifying.

You can send those clip descriptions into Preaching Today and get paid $75 for each one! See here for a list of their illustrations which you have to pay to access (but you can still the list). See here for their guidelines on submitting articles.

Or get some practice and share your insights with the world by starting a free blog entitled "______’s Movie Illustrations" on Blogger.com.

I gave my students a Movie Clip assignment in Teaching and Learning Strategies The Microsoft Word assignment sheet is available free for download at the following link: Download mfilm_clip_assignment.doc

There are a few examples at Leadership Journal’s Website . Search for “Movie Clips to Show or Tell”.

Here are some books which give movie clips for sermons:

Movie-Based Illustrations for Preaching and Teaching – Volume 1 by Craig Brian Larson
More Movie-Based Illustrations for Preaching & Teaching: 101 Clips to Show or Tell (Movie-Based Illustrations) by Craig Brian Larson
Videos That Teach 4: 75 More Movie Moments to Get Teenagers Talking by Doug Fields
Videos That Teach 3: 75 More Movie Moments to Get Teenagers Talking (Youth Specialties) by Doug Fields
Videos That Teach 2 by Doug Fields
Videos That Teach by Doug Fields
Group’s Blockbuster Movie Illustrations: Over 160 Clips for Your Ministry! by Bryan Belknap
Group’s Blockbuster Movie Illustrations: The Sequel by Bryan Belknap
Group’s Blockbuster Movie Illustrations: The Return by Bryan Belknap

I have created an Amazon.com Listmania! list entitled "Using Movie Clips in a Sermon" if you want to see the covers of the books.

The reason I mention all of this is that I got an email from Kerrie Schene, one of my students from that class. After the course had ended, she thought of two movies that could serve as illustrations. She didn’t put her email to me in the "correct form" for the class assignment but I still thought it would be worth sharing with you. I’m proud of her for watching movies and thinking about the themes and how she might use them in teaching.

Hey, Andy!

How’s it going? I hope your summer is going well with Amy and Ryan in Upland. I hope you guys are getting some good relaxing time amidst plans for this fall.

This is random, but there were two times this past semester when I had seen movies/remembered movies with good scenes in them that reminded me of our movie scene presentation in Teaching & Learning. So, I’m not sure why, but I randomly remembered those just now and wanted to send you them before I forgot once again!

Okay, the first one I saw over Christmas break-"Christmas with the Kranks". The basic gist of the movie is a married couple in Suburbia boycott having Christmas and decide to skip the traditions and go on a cruise instead. Then, their daughter decides to come home for Christmas at the last minute so they scramble to make it a good Christmas for her. The main scene that I thought was really good was one that parallels Christ’s gift of mercy, redemption and grace to us. It’s one of the last few scenes in the movie. Tim Allen’s character decides to give his obnoxious neighbor and his sweet wife (who has cancer) his cruise tickets. His neighbor refuses to take them and insists that he can’t pay for them, though Tim repeats that they’re a gift over and over and finally the neighbor takes them in amazement. After I saw that, I said, "That is such a perfect scene to teach God’s free and undeserving gift of Jesus to us!"

The second one came to mind on the spring CE retreat, actually. I was in the Lectio Divina room (which was awesome, btw) and my scripture to read was 1 John 3:1-3-

How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. Everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself, just as he is pure.

The word "lavished" was what stuck out to me the most from the passage and made me think of the movie "A Little Princess". I don’t know if you or Amy are familiar with it-there are a couple different versions, but I was thinking of the most recent version made probably in the mid-90’s. The main story is about a girl named Sarah who came to America from India with her father to live in a boarding school as he goes to war-WWI. He dies while she is at school and the cruel headmaster makes her become a maid at the school and she has to live in the attic with another servant girl named Becky. They live in very poor circumstances, but still try to hang to some hope despite them. They notice that a very rich man lives across the way and they can see both him and his butler, who dresses like an Indian sheik, through the windows. He sees the girls and notices their living conditions. One morning they wake up to beautiful surroundings. They have big comfy blankets, pretty robes and slippers and a table covered with hot food that they haven’t tasted in forever. The girls are so excited and try everything at once and exclaim at the beauty of it all. They end up playing and dancing in the sunlight through the windows and that was the main scene that I thought of when reading and thinking on the word "lavish". The colors and cinematography in this movie are great, and definitely help when the cold attic is transformed with beautiful colors and sunlight.

So, I hope that maybe these can help for class next year if you are teaching a section of it at all or in the future. I have just had those in my head for a while and kept forgetting to share them with you. Again, I hope you are all enjoying the sweet country summer that exists in Upland, Indiana. 🙂 See you in the fall!

Kerrie Schene
Women’s Ministry/CARE Ministry Intern
Southland Christian Church
Lexington, KY

Preaching

Should pastors borrow sermons from other people?

Post author By Andy Rowell
Post date August 2, 2006

Today, Skye Jethani posted an article on Leadership Journal’s Out of Ur blog entitled: Word for Word: what is driving pastors to plagiarize?

Skye gives us an excellent little summary of the pertinent factors that are adding to the temptation to plagiarize sermons.

I would also add that "great preachers" have four things smaller church pastors do not: (1) a research team, (2) 25 hours a week to spend on sermon prep, (3) other teaching pastors to preach Wednesday night and next week and (4) an outstanding staff who visit people in the hospital and coordinate worship details.

What else is leading pastors to plagiarize?

People explicitly encouraging them to do so. Read this article at Rick Warren’s Ministry Toolbox on pastors.com

Don’t be original – be effective!
by Steve Sjogren

Sjogren, pastor of the 6000 attendance Cincinnati Vineyard church, essentially argues that "everyone’s doing it and it is practical!" Here is a quote:

First of all, stop all of this nonsense of spending 25 or 30 hours a week preparing to speak on the weekend. The guys I draw encouragement from – the best communicators in the United States – confess they spend a total of about 15 hours preparing for their message. As I have already said, they get 70 percent of their material from someone else . . . Regardless of what you have heard or been taught – hit a homerun this weekend with the help of a message master!

Of course it is appropriate to borrow sermon ideas, quotes, and even outlines from others. It is part of research. We may also draw a quote, idea or outline from a commentary. But I think we must ask ourselves these questions when we borrow.
1. Do I feel complete integrity in this content? Am I repeating traditional American Christian cliches or is this material solidly rooted in Scripture? Am I seeking to live this material?
2. Is there an appropriate way for me to document where I have received my material? Do I put a note in the bulletin that gives credit to the original preacher? For example: "The message material today is based on the sermon series by Rob Bell of Mars Hill Bible Church in Michigan entitled ‘Where else is the cross true?’" Or do you say somewhere in your introduction "Today I’m drawing material from a sermon preached earlier this year by John Ortberg of Menlo Park Presbyterian Church in California entitled "’The Church on Monday Morning?’"
3. As the person set aside for study in this congregation and looked to as an example of integrity, am I putting aside an appropriate amount of time for preparation for building up my community in God’s word? How can I regularly inform the elders of my church about my study habits so that they can protect, encourage me and hold me accountable? "Elders, I just wanted to give you an update on this next sermon series. I’m planning on drawing 70% of what I say directly from Ed Young’s recent sermon series. I will probably be spending only 7 hours a week on sermon prep during that series instead of my usual 15. Let’s talk about it after the series again and see if you have any concerns about whether I did not spend enough time in preparation or if I should more explicitly indicate the sources of my sermon material."

Later note August 14, 2006:

See also the common sense article from Leadership Journal in 2003 entitled:

An Honest Sermon by Mike Woodruff and Steve Moore (which is available for free at the moment).