About Homiletics Online
Homiletics has been serving churches for over 35 years with fresh Sermon Preparation, Inspiration, Commentary, and Worship Resources.
We began in the late '80s as the inspiration of a United Methodist minister who believed that having engaging sermon ideas to help kick-start the weekly sermon writing process was a real need. We continue to do just that each week.
In this article
Our Editorial Basis
Having our roots with a United Methodist minister, our material falls squarely within the Wesleyan, not Reformed, tradition. But it is more helpful to say that -- going past the Reformation -- we stand squarely in the historic tradition of the church as expressed in the Nicene/Chalcedonian Creed.
Our Senior Writer
Timothy Merrill is the author of a number of books published by Chalice Press, Abingdon Press and CSS Publishing. An ordained minister, he has served churches in Colorado, Minnesota and Oregon. Timothy was born and raised in Canada, the son of a preacher. His post-grad work was done at Iliff School of Theology (Denver), and Princeton Theological Seminary. He likes to travel and his wanderings have taken him to scores of countries, especially Southeast Asia. In his spare time, he writes historical novels. Timothy and his wife, Jeanie, have been in Shanghai, China, for 12 years where he is the pastor of an expatriate congregation, Trinity Church.
Our Writers
Each weekly installment of Homiletics is written by a variety of contributors that includes current and retired pastors with decades of preaching experience. We don't credit individual writers so that the pastor can have greater freedom in adapting the words as though they were their own. If someone is to be credited for the writing, it should be Homiletics (or the writers of Homiletics), not a single individual.
Our Mission
When we first began publishing Homiletics in the late 1980s, we wanted a publication that was different than other preaching resources available at the time. Many of those publications had pre-written sermons that could be delivered verbatim by anyone.
Homiletics's concept is to provide sermon-starters, themes, illustrative material, and worship resources, not pre-written sermons. In fact, we don't refer to them as sermons -- we call them installments.
We believe that it's up to each individual subscriber/pastor to craft their own sermons -- sermons they can truly call their own. Our main goal is to light a creative spark that inspires pastors when writing their own sermons. We have more information on our website regarding the topic of plagiarism.