Welcome

Proskuneo: to kiss towards or to bow down in reverence. My name is Vic Hammond and I love to curate worship experiences. In this blog you will find my thoughts and reactions to the changes going on within the church and in wider culture. You will also find a variety of resources for use in your own worship gatherings. Each blog entry is tagged with a label/category (reflection, resource, station, liturgy, and news) to make your searching easier. I hope you enjoy your visit.

If you are looking for custom worship resources, music, or booking information please contact me at vic@vichammond.com.

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Simple Suggestions (for churches with pews): The Sermon

Idea One:

Do sermon preparation as a group and not as an individual locked in an office. You might have a small bible study on the assigned passage prior to the sermon being written in order to allow the Spirit to reveal issues from within the body.

Idea Two:

When a preacher asks questions of the congregation during a sermon, the questions often become rhetorical in the silence that follows. Instead, use seeded interviews to start a conversation. Prepare one or two people with the intended question in advance of the service. Call on them to speak first. This breaks the silence and gives everyone else time to contemplate the question before answering.

Idea Three:

Expand the use of narrative especially in the sermon (or in place of a traditionally structured sermon). Abduct people’s imaginations so that they see their story within the context of the narrative being shared. People more readily walk away from a sermon with a story that is internalized as opposed to three easily forgotten bullet points.

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