Some will look back on lockdown with a deep sense of regret at having missed a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to grow closer to God.

Think and pray about the gaps that this unique season will create in our churches, as well as the new people that could be added.

God knows what is coming; He always has, and we never have. Maybe this can stir a greater humility in us all, even when restrictions ease.

As pastors, ministers, church leaders and preachers, we need to be very confident in God’s Word as we plunge into a global crisis.

Despair, distraction and compromise are three of them.

This situation may be new to most of us, but it is not new for most people, in most of the world, for most of history. This situation is new to us, but it is not new to God’s people.

Spirituality is not given its name because it is connected to the soul or the spiritual part of humanity, but because it comes from the Spirit of God. 

For the most part, just decent biblical preaching is the meat and vegetables your church needs to grow healthy and strong. 

The starting point is always fellowship with the Father. We cannot give what we are not first receiving.

Are you being poisoned by a sewage pipe of unhelpful input through your phone, through the internet, through what you read or what you watch?

Analysis of the five paradoxes in preaching by John Stott.

“God the Father, the Son and the Spirit are at work in our lives, through the gospel, to bring us into a relationship with theTrinity”, Peter Mead, Director of Cor Deo, says.

There are plenty of reasons why we should preach, but what would you add to this list of rubbish reasons?

While you may use multiple texts, it is not primarily to build the main idea, but rather to reinforce the main idea.

Don’t babysit children when they could be absorbing truth.

Let’s not allow the artificial and temporary newness, to take our focus away from the wonder of all that is new for us in Christ.

That is the beauty of the Psalms.  Even though our circumstances are so different, often we will find the Psalm writer putting his words right on top of our feelings.

“Our culture is looking for solutions that are not coming, because we are dealing with things of the heart. We need to reflect the hope that comes form God”, Peter Roskam says.

There is a strong connection between what is going on in the preacher and what will go on in the listeners. 

Make sure any flourishes work to support the preaching of the text, not to steal the spotlight away from it.

Surveys say a majority of society is not in favour of the changes that will be applied after March 2020. Same-sex marriage has also been legalised.

“The problem of the term is that it seems to suggest a unified translation of the Old Testament”, says researcher Peter J. Williams of Tyndale House (Cambridge).

Perhaps we too easily skim over the more minor characters that fill the pages of our Bibles?

You might be a good communicator, your message might be technically accurate in every detail, but if there is a leap from text to message, then you are undermining the foundational reality that God is a good communicator.

As preachers, as pastors, or as parents, let’s not usurp the Spirit’s role and try to force things along.