If you have 25 minutes to spare, and you’re on the preaching roster, you may like to listen to the podcast available at workingpreacher.org to get some background on the week’s readings. These informal discussions are only available for the week ahead, and to be honest, your time is probably better used in reading in terms of the amount of information you can absorb in the time you’re giving from your busy life – but if you’ve got good audio on your computer (or want to save the podcast onto another device) you can listen while you do the ironing! P.S. – it’s another freebie.
websites
Great clip art legitimately for free: Easter 3 & RCL Sundays
How about this for your bulletin or screen?
Jesus prepares breakfast for his disciples
Cerezo Barredo provides Gospel illustrations for free on this Latin American website. Use the link below to access the Year’s pix. [To save the pic, open it by double-clicking on it, then right-click and select “Save As” to copy it to your computer – make sure you choose a folder that you can find again!)
http://www.servicioskoinonia.org/cerezo/indexCgraf.php
Google Translate will automatically provide English captions etc – this is easy to have in your browser if you use Google Chrome [Google’s free Internet browser] (Recommended).
Desperate Preacher faced with Easter?
The Episcopal Church (USA) has a useful site called Sermons That Work, which has an example sermon for each Sunday of the RCL, and other holy days too. If you are a learner in the discipline of effective preaching (and aren’t we all, if we preach?), these sermons can provide you with some useful modelling. This sermon, for Easter day, is about the concept of Practising Resurrection. It can be used with acknowledgement.
Add breadth to your hymn and song repertoire
It’s an unenviable task being the person who has to make the hymn and song selections for Sunday worship, and it can be a long job too. Sometimes the tracks get a bit too well worn, and we need to stretch out a bit. Check out the music category in the links section for some websites which do some of the work for you: the Australian sites have the most diverse selections: see the sites of Natalie Sims, David MacGregor and Jeff Shrowder for examples. Natalie adds plenty of commentary about appropriate usage of the materials, and even quotes interesting new texts to whet our appetites.
Local Shared Ministry Resources 