One of my main challenges since joining the staff at the Faith Mission Bible College last autumn has been the setting up of an exciting new course - a part-time Diploma in Expository Preaching - and we are now ready to run the course in the autumn of this year.

Set up on a ‘day release’ basis to enable as many as possible to benefit, and also accessible on-line or by correspondence, this two year course will provide essential equipping for all who want to hone or develop their preaching skills. Two of my major concerns about a lot of training in preaching are addressed in this course:

1. I am astonished how much training in preaching is being done by non-preachers, or at least by those who don’t preach but are actually teachers and lecturers. All three of us who teach this course are vocational preachers.

2. A lot of training in preaching is being done in what I describe as a biblical and theological vacuum. The focus and emphasis is on the mechanics and structure of preaching but no account is taken to ensure that the students have a good grasp of the big picture of the Bible as a whole or of major Bible doctrines. This Dip EP course will dovetail with our standard College course and take in Bible Overview and Systematic Theology.

A pdf copy of the promotional leaflet is available here and if you want quantities, just let me know.

About ten days ago we had the privilege of a visit from Dr Joel Beeke of the States and he preached an outstanding message on Christ-centred preaching which is available to download here.

Contrary to all the evidence, I am still around but have been too busy with my ‘day job’, i.e. lecturing at Bible College and preaching, to do any blogging for several weeks. At the moment I can’t see me getting back to regular blogging, at least not as far as much original material is concerned, but I do want to get back into the swing of posting good preaching links and higlighting good preaching related material.

This week I have several things I want to strongly recommend, beginning today wth the material from Saturday’s ‘Preach the Word’ preachers’ workshop in Glasgow. Our Guest Expositor for the day was Rev Derek Prime, a retired pastor but still very active preacher and writer whose ministry over some 50 years has been an immense blessing to many. Derek’s first session was on the importance of preaching the cross and in his second session he drew on his long preaching experience to give some very practical tips on handling the text and preparing sermons.

In the afternoon session I continued our series ‘Preparing to Preach’, looking at structuring the sermon and how to conclude.

All the material from Saturday, both mp3 and pdf, is available here