John Osborn

The late John Osborn was Ministerial director of the Pacific Union Conference of Seventh-day Adventists and was active in conducting seminars on effective preaching.

Planned Program for Church Year

What are the advantages of a planned year?

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Why Continuing Education?

A PROFESSOR in the Harvard Medical School informed first-year medical students that half the information they would receive in medicine during their four years would be obsolete by the time they completed their degree. "The trouble is," he said, "we do not know which half.". . .

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Feed Yourself First

Without devotional time for feeding his own soul, the preacher will soon be scraping the bottom of an empty barrel.

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What's the big idea?

Where does a preacher get sermon ideas? And what does he do with the ideas once he gets them?

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Pseudo-Sermons

There is a dangerous tendency among ministers to use a scriptural reference as a religious setting for their talk and by doing so to feel that they have preached the Word. An occasional text also adds a degree of palatability for the spiritual taste buds of those who still long to taste the Word of God. But are we preaching the Word when we use it only as a springboard for our religious remarks?

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Poverty in the pulpit

"If the worst thing that can be said about a teacher is that he can't teach, the worst thing that can be said about a preacher is that he can't preach."

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Bringing the sermon to a close

The author gives specific points to remember when planning the hardest part of the sermon the conclusion.

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Moving together

Transitions do for a sermon what joints do for the body—they allow it to move. Fashioning smooth transitions that carry the congregation from one part of the sermon into another calls for a true homiletical craftsman.

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Putting your sermon on target

In this fifth article in his series on expository preaching, John Osborn gives preachers some definite methods of so limiting and defining their topic that their hearers will be able to remember and state clearly its specific aim.

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