Sloppy Preaching and Teaching

This post is for preachers and teachers of God's word.

1) If you are to communicate the Gospel on a regular basis, please make every effort to learn and apply the basics of the language you'll minister in. For most of you, that will obviously be English.
It can be quite distracting to hear the rules broken throughout a message. I think the most common violation is the interchanging of singular and plural forms of words, such as, "You should look your child in the eyes and be firm with them." (When you don't know the sex of the subject, the male form of the word is appropriate. The quote should have used "him" instead of "them".)

2) Don't teach things that you don't know for sure are true. This can apply to such things as your interpretation of a Bible passage, an alleged celebrity quote from some website, or an anecdote you heard yesterday. For example, I've heard preachers teach the supposed "law of first mention" dogmatically numerous times, but I can think of several exceptions to this "law". If you think you know what a certain horn on a beast in Revelation represents, admit that it's your opinion. I once heard a teacher say emphatically that the "little horn" will be Yasser Arafat, but Arafat is dead now.

3) When you read a Bible passage to your flock, and then tell them that "this is mistranslated; the Greek here really says...," are you certain that you know ancient Greek better than the respected scholars who worked for years on that translation? Do you want to sow doubt in their hearts about how many other parts might be "mistranslated"?