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Jan 16, 2025 | 
preachingtoday.com | Lee Eclov
My Dear Shepherds,
The bouquet of red roses caught my attention. Just before Christmas two women and a little girl found seats near the fireplace in the coffee shop where I hang out. They brought the roses. One of the women, a pastor’s wife, recognized me, and we chatted for a moment. “Who are the roses for?” I asked. “We don’t know yet,” she replied.
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Jan 14, 2025 | 
preachingtoday.com | Steve Luxa |Lee Eclov |Daniel Block
It was another Monday and I was staring at a blank screen again. I had just preached a message on God's goodness from James that was enthusiastically received, and now I had to crank out another sermon and I had no idea where to start. Throughout the week the pressure to just get the sermon done only intensified because, well, that's my job. People expect it. Of course God has also called me to preach.
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Jan 9, 2025 | 
preachingtoday.com | Lee Eclov
My Dear Shepherds,
Myrrh is mine; its bitter perfume / Breathes a life of gathering gloom (“We Three Kings”)
In ways beyond the magi’s knowledge myrrh was certainly a fragrance fit for “the one who has been born king of the Jews.” It was an ingredient in the sacred anointing oil sprinkled throughout the tabernacle. It was also blended in expensive perfumes.
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Nov 14, 2024 | 
preachingtoday.com | Lee Eclov
My Dear Shepherds,
A seminary student once told me, “When I think of grace, I don’t think of my pastors or youth pastor. I think of the old ladies in my church.” He didn’t mean that his pastors had failed him but rather that those elderly women had brought him a unique gift of grace.
Psalm 92, the only psalm designated, “for the Sabbath day,” reorients God’s people to the Sabbath rest God offers when we gather each week.
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Nov 7, 2024 | 
preachingtoday.com | Lee Eclov
My Dear Shepherds,
Our neighbors do not see Christians as we really are. They may know of our faith. They may recognize—even admire—that we’re different. But we walk in convincing Halloween costumes of beggars, fools, or ghosts.
But as Halloween prepares the way for All Saints Day, we hang those lowly costumes on the foyer coat hooks when we gather for our weekly All Saints worship services. Then we greet one another in our Sunday best, dressed by Christ in resurrection finery.
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Oct 31, 2024 | 
preachingtoday.com | Lee Eclov
My Dear Shepherds,
Back when Preaching Today came as a cassette tape in the mail, I heard a Christmas sermon by Dr. Bruce Thielemann. He said that one reason “Christianity is unique among the religions of the world … is that we are a singing faith. … Christianity is the one faith that puts a song in your heart. Confucianism has no chorales. Shintoism has no songs. Islam has no glorias.
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Oct 23, 2024 | 
preachingtoday.com | Lee Eclov
My Dear Shepherds,
In my circles it used to be the custom on Sunday mornings that the pastor would sit on the platform as the pianist played a prelude and the saints found their seats. I’d watch them, nodding and smiling, and wondering what was really going on.
I knew they were like people who’d spent their week making the round of carnival rides—the Tilt-a-Whirl, roller coaster, and maybe the not-so-merry-go-round. Too noisy, too much cotton candy, too much wasted money.
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Oct 17, 2024 | 
preachingtoday.com | Lee Eclov
My Dear Shepherds,
A friend loaned me a book she really liked: Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life, by Dacher Keltner. The author writes, “I have seen how much health and well-being we gain by being amazed at things outside ourselves” (p. xxvi) (his italics). Awe, he says, is therapeutic, restorative. Here and there he mentions “the Divine” but nary a word about the glory-filled wonders of God’s gospel which ordinary preachers declare week after week.
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Oct 14, 2024 | 
preachingtoday.com | Lee Eclov
My Dear Shepherds,
It’s the humility part that’s such a pain. Most of the time we like serving our congregation. We’re grateful for our calling. It doesn’t always even require that much humility. Truth is, sometimes our work is even an ego booster.
But pastors live in the center of a congregation’s fellowship so sooner or later those relationships will demand humility, the kind that doesn’t come naturally to any of us, the kind that can just about kill us.
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Oct 3, 2024 | 
preachingtoday.com | Lee Eclov
My Dear Shepherds,
Our pastoral work would be so much easier—so much more effective, it seems to me—if we weren’t so … so human. I don’t want to sound ungrateful for the supernatural calling and gifts the Lord bestowed on us but still, this humanness we’re stuck with gets old. It’s so limiting, so wearisome, so humbling.
