I recommend this booklet: 'Transforming Preaching'

I just love this little booklet entitled Transforming Preaching by Jonny Baker. I would say that this booklet is a must-read for preachers today. It is in a series on evangelism but it is just as relevent whether you are preaching the gospel or preaching to the church. Jonny Baker looks at how we can fully engage the interest of our listeners. It goes way beyond just having a flashy PowerPoint or the occational visual aid.

Jonny ‘slays the sacred cow’ of the sermon being a long monologue and looks at other ways to engage people in learning about God creatively and interactively. In Jonny’s ‘remix’ of the sermon things look very different. He doesn’t see the preacher as someone who merely spoon feeds information and opinions to the congregation. Instead he sees the preacher as just one voice among many as people are encouraged to take part discussing, interacting and responding in various imaginative ways. Jonny clearly outlines the principles to follow that will get you going in this direction.

This provocative little booklet is now published by Grove Books and can be purchased from them here for £3.50 or from Church House bookshop here. But I’ll let you into a secret: Jonny originally wrote this as a chapter for a book on preaching. When it didn't make the final volume he made his chapter available as a free download from his own site here.

If you have anything to do with preaching then please get hold of this booklet, read it and put it into practice.

Training Courses

As a college lecturer, it’s about this time of year that I get to go on training courses. Increasingly students need activities and support from new technology and can't cope with just lectures. But this requires skills and time. We do have staff development days at college every now and again. But it’s much better to get out and do something organised by others.

This time I’ve been to a training day at Manchester that was not just about teaching tips but also specific to my subject - psychology. I came away from Want To Be A Brilliant Psychology Teacher with a CD of presentations and resources for activities with lesson plans a bit like a cook book. Because they are all on disc I can modify them as I see fit. But if short of time there are some things that I can just use as they are. Wow!

And at the same time over the next few weeks I am doing an online course that is teaching me how to design online courses. Well, at least produce support material for my classes online using an application called Moodle. It actually produces an online environment where students can chat and discuss the material, access material and take online tests.

An increasing part of being a teacher is to update knowledge and skills. To this end all college lecturers are now part of the Institute For Learning and have been given a disc which among other things helps us to keep track of our continual professional development. So I better get working on that.