This is a great idea from Andreas Köstenberger, about his church, Richland Creek Community Church, and its Kingdom Family Sunday School class, which is

focused on households, whether families, singles, widows, divorced, and others. We are a multi-generational group of believers because we believe that in this way we can best reflect the type of learning and growing Christ desires for his church in the body of Christ. We study the Bible together, are interconnected with each other during the week through prayer and fellowship gatherings, and actively engage in and support evangelistic and missionary efforts through outreach, prayer, giving, and help. We would love to have any interested individuals or families join us. We are looking for a few kingdom families who share our vision of multi-generational, aimed at reaching entire households.

This Kingdom Family Sunday School class grew from this:

I believe that the purpose for every family should be exactly the same as for the church: families devoted to worship, discipleship, evangelism, fellowship, and so on. If so, church leaders should ask themselves the question: How are we encouraging families to grow in their worship? How are we helping parents to become more committed disciples and to help their young people grow in their discipleship? How can we help make families evangelistic units where service of others and sharing their faith becomes a way of life, a genuine desire, and a matter of commitment and priority?

Looking toward planting a church, this is a very interesting idea. How different would the church look to the world if entire families spent more time togehter worshipping and learning and growing?

From Russell Moore, Dean of the School of Theology and Senior Vice-President for Academic Administration at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He also serves as a preaching pastor at Highview Baptist Church, where he ministers weekly at the congregation’s Fegenbush location.

The best way to outwit the Evil One is to anticipate how his powers will seek to counter-act your preaching. It’s helpful for me to think as I’m preparing to preach of all the ways my own heart seeks to evade the truth of the text. Once, as I was studying to preach on a Beatitude, I realized that I was treating the text exactly the way a liberal would treat a passage forbidding women in the pastorate: “Well, it can’t mean that, what it appears to say, so…”

The more you know your people, their struggles and triumphs, and the more you know human nature, the better you’ll know how to preach sermons that can pierce through strongholds, and gain attention. That doesn’t guarantee that people will like what you say; but it helps ensure they’ll hear it being said.

Also, remember you are speaking for Christ. There’s a passion and a gravity that ought to come with one standing in the place of the One who has been granted all authority.

Beyond that, but a sermonic information dump—with PowerPoint outline point by sub-point by sub-sub-point can “safely” distance your people from Christ. A sermon that simply collates and regurgitates what you’ve read in commentaries can make the Word of God a matter of cognition not submission. A strung-together list of life tips can make it easy for your people to disregard this word just like they disregard the weight loss plans commercials on television or the flossing ad campaigns they see from the dentist’s chair.

The devil doesn’t mind boring sermons, so long as you allow him to preach too. He’s doesn’t mind the Word being heard so long as it’s the appetites that really enliven his people. And he doesn’t mind the gospel going forward as long as God’s people hear his accusations of them (and they’re all expository and biblically-based!).

But if you grip people with the drama of the gospel of Christ, if you jolt them into seeing the ancient newness of the Word of God, then you’ll have a demonic insurrection on your hand.

You preach verse-by-verse through the text? You do well. The demons, they preach also—and they’re boring.