Re-imagining the pulpit: Lectures or living Words?

I wonder how many sermons you have heard in your lifetime. I reckon I have heard at least 15,000. And just a few have left such an impression that years later I can tell you what was said, who preached them and where I was.

Each of those was characterised by an earnestness - an expression of the heart of the preacher. They fed my soul, impacted my will and exalted the Lord Jesus.

The sermons that impacted me were not from a preacher seeking to merely transfer the information he had in his brain to download into my brain. They were not lectures. Neither were they simply read from a script.