Resource list for my sermon series on anxiety

Resource list for my sermon series on anxiety

Last month I preached a sermon series that I had been working on for months, if not nearly a year. In 2019, I decided to only preach out of the 4 gospels. As I was preparing for this series in late 2018, I knew I wanted to collect a few of these passages and preach on anxiety. Little did I know that I would go through a major health crisis in just a few months, and one of the main causes of it would be my ability to process anxiety and stress in my own life.

I finally preached the series in November of 2019.

Here are the messages on anxiety

What is Anxiety

The non-anxious presence of Christ

Filling the gaps in our mind

Resources Used

I wanted to make sure I had a good grasp on the theological idea of anxiety as well as what some Christian pastors AND mental health practioneers had to say. I also interviewed a good friend who is a Doctor and professional, licensed mental health practitioner. I knew the church had done some pretty bad job of talking about depression and anxiety before. I wanted to try to avoid those mistakes.

The Christian and Anxiety – Hans Urs von Balthasar
This is a theological treatment of anxiety and Christianity. It is a deep, but short theological aesthetic of anxiety and how it relates to the Triune God. It is an academic text, but was extremely valuable.

Balthasar and Anxiety – John Cihak
Because Balthasar is a rather complex work, I ended up also using this book that digs into the ideas in Balthasar’s own writing and explains it a bit.

The Anxious Christian – Rhett Smith
I picked this up on title alone. It was a good book, but over the course of my study, I found it to not be exactly what I was looking for.

My Name is Hope – John Mark Comer
I was reading Comer’s book below and enjoying it. I was doing a quick Kindle search to find a book to read in the deer stand and came upon this book. It was a fantastic glimpse into anxiety and super practical. It gave great tips for understanding and overcoming anxiety.

The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry – John Mark Comer
I was excited about this book releasing, and it came out right before I started preaching the series. I quickly devoured it and found it to be a fantastic companion to the practical side of these messages. It was extremely helpful for the last message.

Thanks for checking out these resources. I hope they and the messages are helpful for you.

The Officials Son | Behind The Sermon Vlog

The Officials Son | Behind The Sermon Vlog

Earlier this summer I spent a week recording what I thought would be a fantastic vlog in the behind the sermon series. And it just got posted. This was the vlog that would never end, and I probably uploaded it around 12 times before everything was good.

In other words, this might be the last one, because it was a massive headache. Or not.

If you want to catch the whole sermon, here it is.

 

Behind the Sermon | Everybody is a Neighbor

Behind the Sermon | Everybody is a Neighbor

I’ve started a new experiment. I’ve been thinking of vlogging these last few weeks, and ultimately, after pouring over youtube, realized I wanted to start working through an honest week of sermon writing. I couldn’t find pastors regularly vlogging, so I am curious how this all works out.

So without any added fanfare, here’s the first episode of Behind the Sermon. If you dig it, please subscribe on youtube.

 

 

And here is the sermon this week produced.

 

3 Resources to Add Spark to Your Sermons

3 Resources to Add Spark to Your Sermons

 

Does preaching every get dull to you? Better yet, do you feel your sermons are making folks a little too comfortable in the pews? Here are 3 of my top posts on preaching to help you remix things up a little. Each one of them is a little different, from the practical to the unorthodox (with a little non-traditional preaching environment mixed in). The biggest tip I have found to keep your sermons running great is to always be working on making them better!

3 Resources to Add Spark to Your Sermons

serial podcast

3 Things the Church can learn from the Serial Podcast.
Did you get sucked into Serial last year? We certainly did. One of the best things about Serial is how it showed a dramatic amount of social change-and this is good for preachers and anyone else who is a narrative communicator.

These 3 things make us ask these two questions:
1. How can my church create or adapt a content strategy influenced by power watching/listening and the consumption of narrative media.
2. Do we speak the communication language of Generation X and the Millennials or are we still directing our digital media towards the style of engagement created by older generations.

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Productive Pastor 20: 5 Keys to Effective Sermon Preparation
How do you prepare a sermon well? There are plenty of ways. These are the five tips I like to give people.
1. Read
2. Have a Holding Tank
3. Have a Preaching Calendar
4. Ask Others
5. Find/Build a Preparation Rhythm.

retreatimage

Teaching a Retreat? Here’s How I Plan
Have you ever taught for a retreat? Or maybe preached a quick succession of sermons?

Prepping for these type events can be stressful or it can be really cool. Let me clue you in on a few tips and ideas. Many of these will also work for planning an entire season of preaching…although since folks are hearing them several days apart you won’t get the level of familiarity.

3 Things the Church Can Learn from the Serial Podcast

3 Things the Church Can Learn from the Serial Podcast

At the end of 2014, Meredith and I traveled. We probably spent close to 20 hours in the car driving. Both of us love podcasts and we decided to power listen to Serial, the breakout podcast hit of the fall.

If you aren’t familiar with Serial yet, it is a long form, narrative style podcast from the This American Life family. In 12 episodes it told the story of a murder suspect and the crime information that didn’t necessarily match up. The New Yorker called Serial “the Podcast to end all podcasts.”

It was a break out hit and one of the most innovative pieces of media in 2014. There are several lessons the church can learn from the podcast. I think now is the time for any local church to begin learning some lessons from new media.

3 Things Churches Can Learn from the Serial Podcast

1. The new media critical mass has been reached.
For the last 10 years people have slowly been learning to get news, build opinions and discuss things in alternative ways. According to Everertt Rodgers’ research Diffusion of Innovation, we have reached critical mass. New media has reached the late majority level. This means the average amount of persons might not have actually engaged in a tremendous amount of new media communication styles, but they are familiar enough with them to hit mainstream. The more narrative, people based storytelling is now accepted and understood easily (rather than tolerated and confused). The 20th century was primarily a knowledge based society. In many ways it was the apex of the last 500 years of a new system of innovation begun with printing press.

If we look at communication development, the last 5 years have been a shift of innovation away from knowledge/information and back towards narrative as the dominate holder of truth. This written -> oral cultural shift doesn’t downgrade knowledge…but instead shows a development of both together. The storyteller no longer is simply a transmitter of previous information, but now holds authority by not just the truthfulness they tell…but how they tell it.

This means people have now changed the way they digest and listen to media. Think of the communication potential your church now has. Instead of reaching people living inside a knowledge based culture,we have to shift to a narrative based. But isn’t that what the gospel really is? The story of many people being reconciled to the Father, through the sacrifice of His Son and then grasped and empowered by the Holy Spirit?

2. Podcasts have now reached mainstream
Podcasts have been around for 10 years in some medium or the other. Apple iTunes has had podcast delivery built in since 2005. Even though it was almost 9 years ago, this was the first step in accessibility. In the last 5 years, the technology for listening to podcasts has changed dramatically. With the advent of smartphones (and the iPhones ability to download/stream podcasts natively) the accessibility was easier than ever before. In the past, you had to search through the store, download to iTunes and then upload the podcast to your iPod.

Serial broke iTunes download records. They reached 5 million downloads quicker than any other podcast. 15% of our population has listened to a podcast in the last month. People are moving towards podcasts as a primary source of information and entertainment. The hardest part about a podcast is finding the best way to listen.

In the last 10 years, vehicles have slowly started making connecting an auxiliary device to the stereo easier. At first it was auxiliary jacks and now it is bluetooth. I don’t think I have had a rental car in the last 5 years that doesn’t have the ability to route my iPhone audio through the speaker.

This makes it easy for your church to distribute content.

Instead of the old tape or cd based ministry, which necessitated changing delivery systems (tapes or CD’s), listeners now have the content at the same place everywhere. They can start and stop with ease.  The average commute is 25.4 minutes.

Podcast technology means your ministry can reach listeners who can subscribe to regular content and listen to it anywhere.And the average person now has everything they need to engage with your content and is probably familiar. Churches have used RSS (podcast code) technology for years to deliver sermons…but that is just the beginning. Read  “What’s Behind the Greatest Podcast Renaissance” and think about how you can take advantage of this medium

3. How Serial changed everything (in a great way).

Serial changed everything. Or maybe we can say it served as the example of the great change that has been happening over the last 2 years as far as podcasts are concerned. I have podcaster off and on for 10 years. For 8 of those it was a total bust. Getting 10 downloads was a success. No one knew how, knew what or knew why podcasts were great. It was a total niche movement.

But it was worth sticking with. Apple sat on it for years before it hit mainstream.

Serial showed us how everything changed.

It was a distinctly Generation X/ Millennial product. With the crime in Serial occurring in 1999, there are plenty of cultural references.

Sarah Koenig, the host and primary investigator speaks of adolescence not as a statistical fact, but as something mainstream.* It shows a completely perfect example of a secular moral structure…with casual drug use and sexuality on a sliding scale of acceptability. Language isn’t edited out. One particular person involved coined a phrase used through out the show featuring the F-bomb. It was referenced countless times throughout the show. Unedited. No apologies. Besides the moral framework, the style of reporting this has completely changed. It is no longer a disapproving adult, but instead someone who remembers (and even identifies) with the subjects. I can’t imagine Barbara Walters doing this style of reporting.

Serial also served as an amazing example of power listening. We have been familiar with power watching, the practice of back to back viewings of entire television seasons, ever since DVD sets became affordable. Netflix, and other streaming services, have made this a regular part of life.

Serial was the first podcast to seriously look at power listening. People would plan out blocks of time (the holiday season was perfect…because the show had just ended) to listen to the entire 12 episode season.

So ask yourselves this. Are you in the content business or the sermon business?** The church has used technological advances for years in media. If fact, it’s one of the areas we have done really well in.

I think this gives us two questions to ask ourselves.

1. How can my church create or adapt a content strategy influenced by power watching/listening and the consumption of narrative media.
2. Do we speak the communication language of Generation X and the Millennials or are we still directing our digital media towards the style of engagement created by older generations.

Serial has been a great example of the tipping point of new media and any church leader needs to be asking these questions.

*Note. I don’t agree with the information below-but it’s of the utmost sociological importance.
**But let’s think about what a sermon is. It’s an intentional packaging and communication of the Story of God. For me, the basic assumption of preaching/sermonizing is the assumption and goal of a person being affected and making intentional decisions because of the word of God. The lines between the sermon and content are decently blurry.