Preaching Notes: Mike Bullmore

Welcome to the Preaching Notes Series. Today our featured preacher is Mike Bullmore. I've asked Andy Naselli, a member of Mike's church and a PhD candidate at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, to write an introduction:

Mike Bullmore has pastored CrossWay Community Church since planting it in 1998, and he unselfishly gives himself single-mindedly and whole-heartedly to shepherding his sheep. In addition to being a exemplary husband to his wife and father to his three children, he humbly pastors CrossWay with prayerful, earnest intensity, and the church is characterized by a deliberate, God-glorifying gospel-centeredness.

Before planting CrossWay, Mike was a professor of homiletics and pastoral theology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School for fifteen years. He also chaired the practical theology department. Prior to that, he studied at Moody Bible Institute (diploma in Bible), Wheaton College (B.A. in biblical studies), Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (M.Div., Th.M.), and Northwestern University (Ph.D. in rhetorical history and criticism). His dissertation is published as St. Paul's Theology of Rhetorical Style: An Examination of 1 Corinthians 2.1-5 in Light of First Century Graeco-Roman Rhetorical Culture (San Francisco: International Scholars Publications, 1995).

He has diligently cultivated his God-given gifts, and put simply, the man can preach! I tend to think of him as a combination of John Piper and C. J. Mahaney: warmly devotional, richly theological, pastorally practical, genuinely humble. Here are some resources:

• A collection of sermons and articles

• Sovereign Grace sermons and lectures by Mike

And here are three lectures by Mike on the subject of preaching:

• Five Convictions About Preaching, Without Which One Should Not Preach

• Things I've Learned About Preaching After Having Taught It for 15 Years

• Watch Your Preaching: Effective Sermon Preparation

His method of sermon preparation is pretty simple. He studies in a library with the text, a few commentaries, and a pad of paper on which to write his thoughts and final sermon manuscript. He typically reviews the manuscript Saturday night and preaches it in his barn in his backyard early Sunday morning, making additional notes on the manuscript along the way.

When I was a sports fanatic in my childhood, I used to sing along to the Gatorade commercial about Michael Jordan: "I wanna be, I wanna be like Mike, if I could be like Mike!" That idolatrous jingle still pops into my every now and then, but I've redeemed it by changing its referent in a non-idolatrous way. No joke. Paul was worthy of imitation, and so is Mike.