In Depth:  Jon Barrett

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How questions about the resurrection are changing in 2025
the ENd word

How questions about the resurrection are changing in 2025

Jon Barrett
Jon Barrett

Alistair Begg recently said that preaching is often “less about telling them something new, but more about reminding ourselves what we mustn’t forget”.

He’s right. As a preacher I’m well aware that, to borrow a line from Oscar Wilde, “I have nothing original in me but original sin.” That’s not to say that I steal other preacher’s sermons (I don’t), but is an admission that I’m very unlikely to spot something brand new in a text that’s never been spotted before by anyone else. The truth has already been “once revealed to the saints” and my job is to bring out the meaning of what God has previously made known in the pages of Scripture.

How vulnerable was Jesus?
the ENd word

How vulnerable was Jesus?

Jon Barrett
Jon Barrett

One of the habits we’ve developed as a church staff team is to have a book that we commit to reading and discussing as part of our weekly staff meeting. Normally we opt for something theological but occasionally, to keep things lively, we go a bit rogue.

Recently we’ve been on one of our excursions into left field and have been working through Brené Brown’s bestselling book on the subject of vulnerability, Daring Greatly. In all honesty, to employ a clerical metaphor, it’s a bit of a curate’s egg of a book.

Why is some ‘sound’ expository  preaching just so dull and boring?

Why is some ‘sound’ expository preaching just so dull and boring?

Jon Barrett
Jon Barrett

‘The preacher pulls the little cord that turns on his lectern light and deals out his note cards like a riverboat gambler. The stakes have never been higher.

‘Two minutes from now he may have lost his listeners completely to their own thoughts, but at this minute he has them in the palm of his hand. The silence in the shabby church is deafening because everybody is listening to it. Everybody is listening including even himself. Everybody knows the kind of things he has told them before and not told them, but who knows what this time, out of the silence, he will tell them?’

Have we lost sight of the central message of salvation?

Have we lost sight of the central message of salvation?

Jon Barrett
Jon Barrett

Converted aged 20, I’ve been a Christian for 34 years and an ordained minister for 24. Add to that the fact that I was brought up in an evangelical family and you’ve got over half a century of life lived in and around the evangelical world.

Recently, I’ve found myself spending quite a bit of time ruminating on how evangelistic preaching has changed over that time period and how- much to my concern- it now tends to focus almost entirely on the benefits of the gospel at the expense of the substance of the gospel.