Southeastern Theological Review 13, 2 (Fall 2022)

The most-recent issue of the Southeastern Theological Review is online, containing the below essays centred around preaching – and particularly preaching Christ from the Old Testament. It is available as a pdf here.

Ronjour Locke

Introduction: Preaching the Word

Eric C. Redmond

The Use of Psalm 68 in Ephesians 4: A Typological Approach Toward a Solution

The grammatical changes Paul makes to the Greek quotation of Ps 68:18 (Ps 67:19 LXX) in Eph 4:8 raises a question about his hermeneutics. Some scholarly proposals for a solution include Paul’s misquotation of Scripture, a nuanced reading, a “reading” as opposed to “exegesis,” or use of an unknown Hebrew manuscript. At question in Paul’s quotation of the OT verse also is the identification of Moses as the ascending one in the Targum tradition. The Targum reading provides an avenue to consider Paul’s use as a typological reading of the exodus narrative in light of viewing Christ as the final ascending Moses in the work of redemption.

Ryan Ross

About Whom Does the Prophet Say This? The Implications of Prosopological Exegesis for Christ-Centered Preaching of the Psalms

Modern advocates of Christcentered preaching have championed typology as one of the best strategies to preach Christ from the Old Testament. In this article, I seek to show that when it comes to the book of Psalms, prosopological exegesis offers a better way to preach Christ from many of the Psalms than typology. To demonstrate this claim, I first define prosopological exegesis, then provide examples of the practice from early church Fathers. After this, Psalm 22 and 69 are used as “case studies” to demonstrate instances where the apostles interpreted the Psalms prosopologically. Finally, I discuss the implications of prosopological interpretation for Christcentered preaching of the Psalms, showing how it supplements typology as another exegetical practice to preach Christ from the Old Testament, and in many cases, provides a richer way to preach Christ from the Psalms than typology.

Jared Bumpers

Christ Crucified: The Necessity of Preaching Christ from All of Scripture

Must every sermon contain the gospel? This question has frustrated homileticians for the last several decades. While some homileticans argue preachers have a responsibility to preach Christ in every sermon, others argue preachers have a responsibility to preach the text (although they would affirm the importance of preaching Christ often). This article argues Christian preachers should preach Christ in every sermon and provides three reasons to substantiate this claim. First, the pattern of preaching in the New Testament was undeniably Christ-centered. Jesus, the apostles, and Paul embraced and practiced gospel-centered preaching. Second, Christ-centered preaching benefits the church. When Christ is preached, unbelievers are certain to hear the gospel and struggling Christians are comforted. Third, failing to preach Christ every week negatively affects the church. Christless preaching robs unbelievers of the opportunity to believe the gospel and withholds the true source of change from believers.

Adam Hughes

Expository Preaching with Biblical Contexts on the Horizon: Hebrews as a Sermonic Model

The rationale for and benefits of expository preaching have been well established in the field of homiletics. If a fair critique exists for this philosophy of preaching, however, it is that it is often seen as less applicable to the lives of the audience and therefore less effective in producing life change. One reason may be the hesitancy of practitioners to employ contextualization in their preaching. Perhaps the hesitancy lies in the concern that to do so could corrupt the meaning and intent of the pericope in the sermon. In this article, the author addresses this perceived and potential deficiency by arguing for the use of multiple levels of contextualization in expository preaching. In order to do so, four aspects of contextualization will be identified. Then, by using these aspects as a guide, the book of Hebrews, which has been recognized by contemporary scholarship as being sermonic, will be analyzed to offer both a biblical precedent for and model of a fourfold aspect of contextualization in expository preaching. Finally, five implications for contemporary preaching will be offered.

James R. Newheiser

Balanced Preaching: A Four-Legged Stool as a Model

While consecutive expository preaching has become the norm in many conservative churches, different preachers have different emphases. Some focus upon detailed expositions of the text so that their sermons sound like running commentaries. Other preachers emphasize certain favorite theological themes. Some rush straight into application, with little explanation of the text. In recent years, preaching in which the focus of every sermon is how the text fits into the history of redemption has become popular in certain circles. I have developed a model for my students in which each of these four emphases is treated like the legs of a stool. While some texts may call for more emphasis on one “leg,” every good sermon should have all four elements. Further more, over time, one’s preaching ministry should be balanced among these four aspects.

Interview with Jim Shaddix 

Book Reviews

God is in the House

John Woods, God is in the House: A Fresh Model for Shaping a Sermon (Carlisle: Langham Preaching Resources, 2022).

I was asked to provide an endorsement for the above book, and did a long and a short version for the publishers – both are pasted below. In the interests of full disclosure, John is a personal friend, but the commendation is from the heart.

Longer version

Do yourself a favour and read this. Doing so will place you in the presence of a seasoned preacher and a skilled teacher of preachers. Through the familiar but evocative image of a house, John covers all the facets of the preaching task, from preparation to delivery, with helpful suggestions, gentle challenges, and fresh insights from Scripture along the way. Read it yourself. Read it with other preachers. Reflect together on its significance for your practice of preaching, for the good of your congregations and the greater glory of God.

Shorter version

Do yourself a favour and read this. Doing so will place you in the presence of a seasoned preacher and a skilled teacher of preachers. Read it yourself. Read it with other preachers. Reflect together on its significance for your practice of preaching, for the good of your congregations and the greater glory of God.

Journal of the Evangelical Homiletics Society 22, 1 (March 2022)

The latest issue of the Journal of the Evangelical Homiletics Society has been posted online with the below articles (with the first few paragraphs of the pieces, or abstracts where available). The individual essays are available from here, and the issue as a whole is available as a pdf here.

Scott M. Gibson

Preaching Plus

There might be variations of homiletical math. In my teaching of Haddon Robinson’s philosophy of preaching I instruct my students that to get the idea of a passage one uses the following homiletical math formula: S + C = I. That is, subject question plus the complement answer equals the exegetical idea. But it strikes me that we can apply homiletical math to other areas of preaching. We could call this formula “preaching plus.” That is, preaching can be considered as an addition to a given area of study. For example, preaching plus history directs us to discover how and if preaching has had an impact in historical development in any culture or context. Preaching plus psychology may help us to discover how preaching intersects with the field of psychology. Further examples may come to your mind. But the point here is to help us to see that the intersection of preaching with other fields and situations or contexts is far-reaching.

Scott M. Gibson and Gregory K. Hollifield

Wanted: Catfish for Our Think Tank

What is needed are holy healthy places for thinking, interaction, and engagement without intellectual prejudice or divisiveness. We need think tanks more than we need labs. Our Evangelical Homiletics Society is not so much a lab as it is a think tank. A think tank consists of a body of experts who share ideas and advice to advance a chosen field of research and application. Unlike medical labs, think tanks are messy places. Not all ideas gain traction there. Advice can come off as criticism. Sacred cows get slaughtered. Presuppositions are called into question. Novelty is neither embraced for novelty’s sake nor rejected on the same grounds. Catfish swim freely in healthy think tanks. By their presence, resistance, and “convince me” attitudes, they keep their colleagues’ minds from growing soft and mushy.

Matthew D. Kim

Preaching to People in Pain

For this conference, Jesse Nelson asked me to speak about a new publication, Preaching to People in Pain. This book released in May of 2021 with Baker Academic. It’s a book that has long been on my heart as someone who has pastored people who are broken and hurting. How many of you have broken and hurting people in your churches today? I can assure you that all of us do. I remember pitching the book idea to Baker initially proposing the title of Pain-Full Preaching: Sharing Our Suffering in Sermons. For whatever reason, the marketing team relayed back that Pain-Full Preaching may not sell so why don’t we title it Preaching to People in Pain: How Suffering Can Shape Your Sermons and Connect with Your Congregation. Steve Norman is a pastor who has been writing thoughtfully about preaching. In his new book, The Preacher as Sermon, published by Preaching Today, he shares a mantra for his ministry which is this: “Never underestimate the pain in the room.” This evening I don’t want to underestimate your pain or the possible pains that you’ve been going through over the past two years or more. They’ve been a very difficult two years for many of us. Ministry has not looked the same for any of us.

Ken Langley

Preaching Hope and Lament from the Psalms

“Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God. My soul is downcast with in me; therefore I will remember you from the land of the Jordan . . . Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls; all your waves and breakers have swept over me” (Psalm 42:5-7). Hope and lament. Usually, the order is reversed, as in Psalm 130: “Out of the depths I cry to you, O LORD,” verse 1. Verse 7: “O Israel, put your hope in the LORD, for with the LORD is unfailing love and with him is full redemption.” Lament and hope. In psalm after psalm we find this pattern: the petitioner begins: “How many are my foes! How long will you hide your face from me? Why do you stand afar off? God, I don’t understand, I don’t like, and I’m not about to acquiesce to this current state of illness, distress, injustice, persecution, danger, loss. But—(so much Gospel in that little word!)—I trust you. I know you are faithful to your promises. I wait in hope for the LORD, he is my help and shield. I am confident of this: I will see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living. Be strong and take heart all you who hope in the LORD. Lament and hope.

Ezekiel Ajibade

The Culture of Note-Taking and Effective Sermonic Technique

Sermon note-taking has long been practiced in various “church cultures,” and some may wonder about the future of the practice. Challenges to note-taking include secondary orality, the emergence of the digitoral generation, and the technologization of the world. This paper, engages with homiletics, systematic theology, communication studies, and discipleship studies to demonstrate the relevance of note-taking for enhancing listener engagement during the sermon. First, ,this paper will suggest a biblical and theological premise for note-taking. Second, it will investigate the relationship of note-taking to good listening and journaling. Third, it will describe methods of effective note-taking for both oral and digitoral sermon hearers. Fourth, it will discuss the criticism that note-taking is a distraction to the listeners. This paper will show that note-taking is still practiced by church-goers, and that while it should be encouraged, it should not be forced on worshippers in any way.

Jesse Nelson

Sermon: The Christian’s Hope

Book Reviews

Journal of the Evangelical Homiletics Society

According to its website, the Journal of the Evangelical Homiletics Society ‘is a professional peer-reviewed international journal published twice a year and contains articles on homiletics, book reviews, and sermons’.

‘The purpose of the Society is to advance the cause of biblical preaching through the promotion of a biblical-theological approach to preaching; to increase competence for teachers of preaching; to integrate the fields of communication, biblical studies, and theology; to make scholarly contributions to the field of homiletics.’

Archived issues of the journal are kindly made available here.

Crucible 10, 1 (May 2019)

The latest issue of Crucible, published by the Australian Evangelical Alliance, is now available online here, with the below articles (abstracts included, where available). According to the Editorial, three of the articles ‘emerge from the Australasian Academy of Homiletics conference that was held in Sydney in April 2019’.

The Cauldron: peer reviewed articles

Teresa Parish

A Homiletic Investigation of Preaching with an Interpreter

Interpreted preaching embodies the Pentecost belief that all peoples should hear the good news in their heart language communicated through preachers empowered by the Holy Spirit. This paper argues that interpreted preaching is distinct from other forms of preaching. This paper is a summary of the author’s doctoral work that is the first in theology to explore the historically overlooked event of consecutive side-by-side preaching with an interpreter. Interpreters have been of historical importance to evangelism and the global church, and continue to be utilised in churches and religious contexts. The biblical foundation of this paper is that God desires to communicate with people in their heart languages. A case study of SOMA, a short-term mission organisation that regularly uses interpreted preaching was undertaken. Qualitative interviews of preachers, interpreters, and bilingual listeners were conducted to examine the homiletic process before, during, and after the interpreted preaching event. Analysis of results demonstrates that there are significant differences in interpreted preaching from other forms of preaching. Interpreted preaching requires preachers to approach the task with a particular emphasis on nonverbal communication, establish a preaching rapport with the interpreter, as well as different methodology and praxis in preparation, delivery, and reflection. Interpreted preaching also significantly affects power dynamics and roles within the preaching space, with the interpreter considered a gatekeeper and co-preacher due to their linguistic, cultural, and theological fluency. These results confirm the hypothesis that interpreted preaching is a discrete homiletic. 

Andrew J. Prince

Preaching to the Unseen: A Case Study
Brisbane School of Theology has separate English and Chinese theological programs, but runs a number of combined events including a weekly chapel service in English. The majority of attendees at this chapel are from the English program with the Chinese students representing 15%-20% of those present. The preaching is aimed primarily at the English program students with one faculty member admitting he does little to contextualise their sermons to take the Chinese students into account. While much of the contextualisation literature since its introduction as a neologism in 1972 has had a missiological focus, in more recent years a homiletical focus has developed. An evaluation of this faculty member’s homiletical approach of not taking the Chinese students sufficiently into account in light of this material revealed that it was unloving and that a more contextual approach to sermon preparation and delivery was warranted. Such an approach might include the faculty member developing deeper relationships with the Chinese students so as to better understand his audience along with his own cultural hermeneutical biases as a western, middle-aged male; using more Chinese people, places and news in illustrations; and take the collectivist and Confucianism-influenced heritage of the students into account when applying the biblical text.

The Test-tube: ministry resources

Marc Rader

Life Hacks – Studies in Proverbs

Tina Tebbutt

Local Church Ministry Around Food: An Exploration and Theological Reflection upon Current Communal Eating Practices

This article observes and outlines my personal church-based experience with communal food practices and reflects upon the wider contemporary situation. It undertakes to explain and make sense of why these practices occur by reflecting upon biblical, theological, historical and cultural influences and insights around food and eating. It acknowledges that it is not sufficient to merely observe and understand the present situation, the relevant contributing factors, and the current theological view. Instead, it sets out to consider what should ideally be taking place. This is undertaken through the use of a mutually critical correlation methodology within practical theology, which seeks to not only understand what is occurring but to change the situation if and where warranted. This article explores the current narrative around food which is shaped by secular influences such as dualism, commodification and consumerism. It reflects upon the original intention for food as a gift which honours both Creator and created. It proceeds to examine ramifications of the Fall upon the way food is understood, as well as redemptive, reconciling and restorative aspects of the food story. As this biblical narrative is explored, food begins to take on new meanings and symbols, and finally food comes to be seen not as a commodity but as communion--a gift of God for both physical and spiritual nourishment. The biblical narrative demonstrates food’s capacity to bring people together in celebration, enjoyment, connection, and unity. This ultimately signifies a powerful link between food and salvation, where fellowship with God and others is fulfilling in ways beyond the physical satisfaction gained through eating. This article proposes changes to current communal practices, attitudes and understandings around food.

Chris Green on Six Questions to Sharpen Your Next Sermon

I find Chris Green’s blog (ministrynutsandbolts.com) enormously helpful, even if – maybe because – his posts often challenge me to ‘up my game’.

A recent one – ‘Six Questions to Sharpen Your Next Sermon’ – is no exception.

Borrowing and adapting from Andy Stanley and John Ortberg, Chris notes: ‘I’ve found that there are six questions for me to ask myself, with a bit more bite to them, which help me to focus as I prepare’:

1. What do I want people to know?

2. Why do I want people to know it?

3. What do I want people to do?

4. Why do I want people to do it?

5. What do I want people to feel?

6. Why do I want people to feel it?

Recognising the significance of preaching to the heart, I particularly value the challenge of the last two.

Malyon Preaching Resources

I’ve enjoyed receiving Malyon Preaching Resources, an online resource from the Preaching Centre at Malyon College (available for free subscription here). Each edition contains a mix of feature articles, podcast reviews, book reviews, sample sermons, and other features.

Preaching to Disciples

The below article, written with my friend and colleague Neil Hudson, has been posted on the website of the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity as a supplementary piece to the resource on whole-life preaching. It is the second in a projected series of six short pieces, the first of which appears here on the LICC website, and here on this blog.

Whether as preachers or listeners, we come to the Bible as disciples of Jesus. This may sound like a truism, but is crucial to establish, since preaching is one of the major means God has provided for us to make and equip disciples for everyday life. Seeing ourselves as a gathering of disciples of Jesus affects our posture towards the preaching task.

Here’s one way of thinking about what discipleship involves:

A disciple is someone who is learning to live the way of Jesus in their context at this moment.

We’re familiar with the notion of a disciple being a student, an apprentice, or a learner of the way of Jesus. But learning the way of Jesus is always carried out in specific contexts at specific moments.

For the people in our churches, following Jesus means working out what it means to be a disciple in education, a disciple in law, a disciple in photography, a disciple in business, a disciple in healthcare. The same applies in different stages of life – a disciple as a young adult, a disciple as single person, a disciple as a husband or a mum or a grandparent, a disciple in retirement.

Being a disciple also involves learning the way of Jesus in the specific experiences we each go through in life. What does learning the way of Jesus look like when the dream job falls through? Or when one of our children is being bullied at school? Or when we feel like we have the worst boss in the world? Or when our adult son or daughter really mucks up? Or when the test results come back and things aren’t looking good?

Following Jesus isn’t something we bolt on to those things. We’re disciples of Jesus in those things, learning the way of Jesus through those things. So, when Joe, a middle-aged plumber, married with two children, who plays hockey at the weekends becomes a Christian, he doesn’t put those aspects of his life on hold. He lives out his calling to love God and serve others in those places and in those relationships.

So what does preaching look like if this is who we’re preaching for?

It will certainly involve moments when we invite people to follow the way of Jesus. But it will also require our sermons to help people see how following the way of Jesus is significant to the situation in which they currently live. We preach with an awareness that being a disciple involves ongoing learning. We preach recognising that each context offers its own specific opportunities and challenges, that we and our hearers will be learning new lessons in different stages of life.

It also means we will take seriously the fact that the Bible was not written simply as a collection of blessed thoughts for our personal comfort. Nor is it a self-help manual, a book one turns to for practical advice about the ‘good life’. Instead, we seek to understand who God is, as revealed in the Bible, see how he has worked in the past, what these patterns of activity look like, and what his plans for us might be as our own lives get caught up in his ongoing work in the world.

In all these different ways, then, church leaders and preachers are able to see the congregation as followers of Jesus who are scattered into their everyday lives, with preaching as significant in nurturing and equipping them for that, in enabling them to live out their calling in their contexts at this moment.

For further reflection or discussion

1. Think about the last few sermons you preached (or heard):

• What were the implicit assumptions being made about the congregation?

• What links, if any, were made between the Bible and the questions that people will have been facing in their frontline contexts?

• How did the sermons help people get a bigger vision of God’s purpose, or of the part they could play in God’s purposes outside the church building?

• How far did the sermons clearly see the congregation as disciples?

2. Paul writes to a young leader who he has left in charge of a church in Ephesus. The letter, 1 Timothy, sees Paul encouraging Timothy from a certain posture, and in turn guides Timothy about the posture he is to take with the church.

Read the whole letter with these questions in mind:

• What posture does Paul take towards Timothy?

• What posture does Paul want Timothy to have toward the church in Ephesus?

• What posture does Paul want the church to have toward the wider culture around them?

Preaching With Convictions

I recently wrote two short articles on preaching, as possible alternatives to go on the LICC website. This is the one that wasn’t selected! The other one focuses on Scripture, and I’ll post it here when it appears on the LICC website.

John Stott said of preaching that ‘the essential secret is not mastering certain techniques but being mastered by certain convictions’ (John Stott with Greg Scharf, The Challenge of Preaching [Carlisle: Langham Partnership International, 2011], 13). That rings true. It seems somehow appropriate that the starting point in preaching begins not with ourselves as preachers, or even with our congregations, but with convictions about God himself – his gospel, his word, and his mission.

1. We see a vision – the gospel of God

What’s in mind here is a big picture view of the gospel – which involves not only the rescue of men and women from judgment, but the renewal of God’s relationship with humanity, and the restoration of creation itself. The good news of what God has done in Christ carries zoom-lens implications for the personal redemption of individual men and women, and wide-angle lens implications for the cosmic reconciliation of all things. As such, it’s a whole-life gospel. It shapes our attitude and approach to even the mundane things of everyday life, like washing the dishes and walking the dog.

So, as preachers, we first and foremost proclaim the gospel. We declare the good news of what God has done in Christ for the sake of the world. And in doing that, the purpose of the sermon is not to send people away with a list of things they must do, but with a reminder of what God has done – in Christ and through his Spirit – and with a different way of seeing God and the world and themselves, flowing out of the reality of Jesus as Lord over all things.

Then, our perspective on preaching will also be shaped by our convictions about Scripture, God’s word.

2. We hear a voice – the word of God

In some traditions, the reading of the Bible ends with the statement, ‘This is the word of the Lord’, to which the congregation normally replies: ‘Thanks be to God’. That declaration and response capture something significant about the Christian confession of Scripture – that the Bible is the very word of God, God speaking to us. And it’s to be received with gratitude – ‘thanks be to God’ – which isn’t always easy, perhaps, depending on the passage!

Paul writes in 2 Timothy 3:16-17 that Scripture is breathed out by God, and that it makes us ‘wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus’, and is useful for ‘teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness’, so that God’s people ‘may be thoroughly equipped for every good work’. And he goes on to say to Timothy: ‘preach the word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage – with great patience and careful instruction’ (4:1-2).

God has spoken in the Bible, and continues to speak through what he has spoken. That gives us great confidence as preachers. We preach what was being said in the biblical passage, so that the same instruction, encouragement, commission, warning, or promise is passed on to the congregation. And we trust that the same Spirit who inspired the text will press it home to today’s hearers.

Our conviction about the Bible as the word of God means we see it as that through which God speaks to his people today and equips us to live out the salvation brought by Jesus.

But equips us for what? Which leads nicely to our third conviction – preaching and the mission of God.

3. We receive a call – the mission of God

Mission doesn’t start with Christ’s commission to ‘make disciples of all nations’ in Matthew 28. It has always been God’s plan to bless all nations – and the whole Bible tells the story of God’s mission, which comes to its culmination in Christ and in the sending out of the whole church in the power of the Spirit.

The Bible tells the story of God’s mission, but also equips us for God’s mission. That means we can ask questions like: how does this passage help us understand God’s mission in the world? What kind of people does this passage call us to become in order to embody God’s purposes in our everyday lives?

So, if John Stott is right when he says that the secret of preaching is not mastering certain techniques but being mastered by certain convictions, what might it mean for our preaching to be mastered by convictions about the gospel of God, the word of God, and the mission of God?

It leads us to be confident about preaching in the way God works, because we’re able to see that a Christ-centred, Spirit-dependent preaching of Scripture forms the gathered people of God, a people who are then sent into the world to testify in word and deed to the presence of God’s reign, bearing witness to what God has done in Christ.

Whole-Life Preaching

I’ve been involved with a project at the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity (where I work) on Whole-Life Preaching.

LICC works with churches, church leaders, denominations, and individual Christians to explore what it means to be disciples of Jesus in the so-called ordinary, everyday life, and how local churches might best serve their people to live out their callings wherever they find themselves.

We’re persuaded that becoming a whole-life disciplemaking church is not about a programme we bolt on to a church’s activities, but about being given eyes to see what God has already put in place – in the gospel, in his word, in the church, in a people indwelt by the Spirit who are empowered to be Christ’s witnesses in their daily lives. It’s about reframing what we already do through the regular means of grace in the life of a church – how we preach, how we worship when we gather together, how we run our small groups. What are the small shifts that churches might make in these areas which, over time, will make a difference to how people are discipled for the whole of their lives?

Whole-Life Preaching flows out of that larger commitment.

It’s the culmination of several years of working with my colleague Neil Hudson, and spending a significant amount of time with preachers and leaders from around the UK from different church traditions in seminars and workshops.

We’ve tried to capture something of that informal interaction in this resource – which is a series of 6 short videos (excellently produced by owlinspace) of us in conversation with each other, interspersed along the way with reflections from a series of experts, listeners, and preachers.

All six videos are freely available from here.

With each episode goes a downloadable pdf with some questions for reflection and discussion, and suggestions of things to try out. Our testing of the videos suggested that church preaching teams, in particular, would benefit from watching the videos and using hem as a basis for a discussion with each other, and we trust that proves to be the case.

It’s important to make clear that we’re not trying to offer a full-blown overview of homiletics in this resource! We have friends in various organisations which focus on preaching; they do great work, and we’ve not tried to replicate that.

But we wanted to dial up the significance of allowing a whole-life disciplemaking perspective to inform the preparation and delivery of sermons, of recognising that through Scripture God shapes his people for their calling in the world, and encouraging preachers to reflect on the implications of biblical passages in a way that is alert to the everyday contexts in which members of congregations find themselves.

For us, whole-life preaching flows out of a confidence in the scope of God’s loving rule over all things, from a commitment to the gospel of Christ and its implications for every aspect of life, and from a conviction that the Spirit works through Scripture to form and nurture the people of God for his good purposes in the world.

It’s in that light that we trust preachers and others will benefit from this resource.

Also on the LICC website (from here) is a set of resources on 1 Thessalonians – a pack for preachers with some background to the letter and some pointers for preaching it, and a set of Bible study questions for small groups to go alongside a series on the letter.

Trinity College Bristol Alumni on Preaching Tips

Last November, Emma Ineson, Principal of Trinity College Bristol, posted a request on Facebook for any preaching tips that college alumni and other friends could share for an Introduction to Preaching module she was about to teach.

The results, gathered together under the areas of preparation, content, delivery, afterward, and book and resource recommendations has been posted here, and is available as a pdf here.

9Marks Journal (Spring 2015) on Expositional Preaching

The latest issue of the 9Marks Journal, available here as a pdf, is devoted to the topic of ‘Expositional Preaching’.

In the Editor’s Note, Jonathan Leeman writes:

‘Nuclear bombs might split or fuse atoms. But they cannot create new-heart atoms out of nothing. Preaching the Bible can, which is why preaching the Bible is central to the life of our churches. Peter says we have been born again through the living and enduring word of God. James says that God brought us forth by the word of truth. Paul teaches that faith comes from hearing. And the apostles learned it from Jesus, who said, “The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.”

‘The preaching which possesses this greater-than-nuclear power is preaching that exposes the Bible, or expositional preaching. Man’s wisdom does not give new life. God’s Word, accompanied by God’s Spirit, does. It possesses divine power to demolish strongholds and explode hearts of stone.’

Homiletic 39, 1 (2014)

The most-recent issue of Homiletic, sponsored by the Academy of Homiletics, is available online here.

It contains the two main articles noted below, but (from my perspective) the most interesting feature of the journal is its review sections, which includes reviews of books I don’t see anywhere else.

Clint Heacock

Exploring the Use of Narratology for Narrative Preaching

Although narrative preaching as a movement may have gone out of fashion in North American homiletics more than two decades ago, there has since been a resurgence of interest in the rhetorical function of biblical narratives along with the continuing exploration of more democratic, dialogical and open-ended homiletical forms. This study, therefore, suggests that the discipline of narratology can potentially combine these two elements by replicating the dynamics of biblical narratives in a variety of narrative sermon formats. By providing an examination of the elements of narratology, this approach seeks to reunite the often-separated elements of textual and homiletical form and function. The use of these narratological exegetical tools can then allow biblical narratives to assert a greater influence upon the form of the sermon itself, create an experience of the text for the listeners, and enable them to enter into the “world of words” of biblical narratives.

Adam Hearlson

Are Congregations Texts?

It is a common sentiment among homileticians that preaching requires exegeting both the scriptural text and the congregational context. The relevancy of the preaching message, it is argued, depends in part upon a deep knowledge of the congregational culture. The preacher is therefore encouraged to “read” the culture of the congregation and discern how the symbols, practices, and actions of the congregation are used to make meaning so that the preacher might construct a fitting sermon. In this way, the congregation is likened to a text that awaits a reading by a literate observer. In this paper, I examine the limitations of such an analogy arguing that while a semiotic approach to congregations has merit it is often blind to the ways in which power and production influence the creation and reproduction of the congregational culture. Finally, the paper concludes with descriptions from recent homiletical works that offer productive alternatives to the semiotic approach to congregational study.

Homiletic 35, 2 (2010)

The latest issue of Homiletic – 35, 2 (2010) – is online.

As I think I’ve mentioned in an earlier post, perhaps the most useful thing about this journal is its reviews – which cover not only Bible and preaching, as one might expect, but media and contemporary culture, worship, and practical theology.

Steven D. Mathewson on Understanding and Proclaiming Old Testament Narratives

Steven D. Mathewson, ‘Guidelines for Understanding and Proclaiming Old Testament Narratives’, Bibliotheca Sacra 154, 616 (1997), 410-435.

Mathewson has written more fully on Old Testament narrative elsewhere, so it is helpful to have his salient points gathered together in this essay in two main sections:

Hermeneutical Guidelines

• Interact with a story’s literary art to determine its meaning

• Follow the plot development and shape

• Observe the pace at which the story unfolds

• Focus on the dialogue embedded in the story

• Give attention to the development of characters

• Consider the significance of descriptive details

• Notice how the story uses the technique of repetition

Homiletical Guidelines

• Preach blocks of narrative large enough to communicate a big idea

• Develop an outline that will highlight the story line of the narrative

• Select the vantage point from which to tell the story

• Turn the biblical scenes into pictures that capture the listeners’ imaginations

• Hone storytelling skills

Preaching the Psalms

The Evangelical Homiletics Society has a number of papers available on preaching the Psalms. I have included the abstracts with the links below:

R. Larry Overstreet
Emotional Subjectivity in Teaching/Preaching the Psalms
The Old Testament Book of Psalms is an ongoing favorite among God’s people, including scholars, preachers, and the laity. Throughout the centuries, believers have looked to the psalms for encouragement, for comfort, for challenge, and for stimulation. At the same time, those who expound the psalms often struggle with how best to present their messages. Scholars manifest a wide divergence in their approaches to the psalms. Significant variety often exists in the structural analysis and the resulting outlines of individual psalms. Why such divergence occurs is commonly not explained. This paper suggests that a frequently overlooked, and crucial, element in the exposition of the psalms is the intended emotional subjectivity of poetry, which can make rigid structural analysis less important than in other genres of literature. Approaching the psalms with this recognition will greatly assist expositors in understanding them and communicating them.

Kenneth E. Bickel
Preaching the Psalms to the Contemporary Community: Inviting the Listeners to Experience the Psalms
The Psalms contain rich resources for people, and preaching them in ways that are honest to the text, consistent with the genre and relevant for 21st century worshipers should characterize our quest. Helping worshipers to ‘experience’ a psalm represents a model of preaching that can be both accurate and engaging for listeners. This paper offers five examples of providing an experience for a psalm, and five general encouragements for the experiential communication of these timeless biblical treasures.

Kenneth W. Smith
Preaching the Psalms With Respect for their Inspired Design
Under the Holy Spirit’s inspiration, the psalmists wrote with poetic power and artifice. The Psalms impact hearers more deeply in part because of the literary devices that the psalmists employ. This paper demonstrates the use of literary devices that may enhance a sermon’s impact on its audience.

John B. Tornfelt
Understanding Chiastic Structures for Greater Clarity
Although in ancient Israel psalms were intended to be heard primarily in a linear fashion, a number of psalms also exhibit a secondary chiastic arrangement (a-b-c-b'-a'). This arrangement was not only aesthetically pleasing to the audience but it also provided the psalmist with an opportunity to treat themes twice in a psalm. For example, when a chiastic structure is followed, the unmatched center (a-b-c-b'-a') is normally the centerpiece of the psalm and where the central truth is found. Moreover, a unit from the first half of the psalm can be considered together with its matching unit in the psalm’s second half in order to more fully understand the theme of the psalmist. By paying attention to chiastic structures, the expositor can preach from the psalms with greater clarity.

Evangelical Homiletics Society

The Evangelical Homiletics Society is an academic society ‘formed for the exchange of ideas related to the instruction of biblical preaching’. Its goals are ‘to advance the cause of biblical preaching through the promotion of a biblical-theological approach, increase competence for teachers of preaching, integrate of the fields of communication, biblical studies, and theology, and to provide scholarly contributions to the field of homiletics.’

An interesting-looking collection of papers presented at past conferences is available here.

Homiletic

Sponsored by the Academy of Homiletics, Homiletic describes itself as ‘a scholarly forum in homiletics and a review of publications in religious communication’.

Three issues are available in an archive, and it looks like future issues will also be made available.

I’ve always found this to be a valuable resource not primarily for its articles (which tend to be very few anyway), but for its book reviews. As well as reviewing works in Bible and Theology, it also devotes sections to preaching, worship, media/contemporary culture, and practical theology, meaning one finds reviews of books not always considered in standard theological journals.

John Carrick on Sacred Rhetoric

John Carrick, The Imperative of Preaching: A Theology of Sacred Rhetoric (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 2002), 202pp., ISBN 0851518265.

The current emphasis on the ‘big story’ of Scripture, seemingly coming from all sorts of theological quarters, whilst enormously helpful, might be misleading on its own or if not carefully circumscribed in certain ways.

In some preaching, for instance, the ‘big story’ approach can end up with sermons that see everything in the context of the… well, ‘big story’… which means interpreting and applying every text in the light of Jesus and the gospel. No bad thing, of course. The kind of preaching that relates every text and every passage to Jesus is sometimes called ‘redemptive-historical preaching’, and those who preach this way are rightly concerned that congregations all the time be directed to Jesus and the gospel. So, they advise, if you’re preaching from Old Testament stories, you need to be careful to avoid moralising from those stories, and make sure – instead – that you set those stories in the context of the biblical story of redemption as a whole, which means directing people ultimately to Jesus. Again, no bad thing, you might think.

Without for a moment denying the significance of Jesus and the gospel and the ‘big story’ of Scripture, John Carrick here reflects critically on this sort of preaching, and he does so by reminding us that God speaks in different ways through his word. Carrick uses the notion of grammatical moods to speak about the variety in biblical texts, a variety which should be reflected in the way we preach and apply biblical texts. He focuses on four in particular:

• The indicative. The indicative asserts objective fact. This is what the redemptive-historical advocates are most interested in. Indicatives are statements like: ‘God so loved the world’; ‘God was in Christ, reconciling himself to the world’; ‘Christ died for our sins’ (9-10).

• The exclamative. Exclamations, says Carrick, presuppose an element of emotion (30). They often begin with words like ‘Oh’, or ‘How’, or ‘What’: ‘Oh, how I love your law’; ‘Behold, how good and pleasant it is when brothers live in unity’; ‘How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news’; ‘Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom of God’ (32-33).

• The interrogative. The interrogative is used in asking a question. It doesn’t assert, like the indicative mood, nor does it exclaim; rather, it questions: ‘Shall we go on sinning that grace might increase?’; ‘What shall we say to these things?’; ‘To whom will you liken God?’; ‘Am I not an apostle? Am I not free?’. Jesus, of course, asked lots of questions: ‘Who do people say I am?’; ‘Why do you call me good?’; ‘Which of these was the neighbour?’; ‘Simon, son of John, do you love me?’

• The imperative. The imperative mood expresses a command: ‘Repent for the kingdom of heaven is near’; ‘Believe and be baptised’; ‘Offer your bodies as a living sacrifice’; ‘Put to death what belongs to your evil nature’; ‘Walk worthy of the Lord who has called you’.

Carrick is particularly interested in the first and last of the moods, the indicative and the imperative. ‘Redemptive-historical preaching’, he says, tends to focus on the indicative of what God has done in Christ. But the indicatives of God’s dealings with men and women do not exclude the imperatives of ethics. The pattern is seen in the New Testament letters themselves, where Paul regularly moves from the salvation given us to how that salvation works out in our lives. Of course, the Christian faith begins with the indicative, with what God has done. However, some redemptive-historical preachers stop there, says Carrick, and don’t apply the imperative, because they’re afraid of heading down the path to moralism, for fear of putting the gospel at risk. But such preaching can, in turn be weak for leading a congregation to self-examination and repentance.

A sizeable chunk of Carrick’s study tracks the four moods in the sermons of five well-known preachers in the Reformed tradition (Jonathan Edwards, George Whitefield, Samuel Davies, Asahel Nettleton, Martyn Lloyd-Jones), and his book effectively calls preachers likewise to do justice to the variety of the moods in Scripture.

So he concludes: ‘It is a regrettable fact that much Reformed preaching operates in a virtual mono-mood – that of the indicative – to the virtual exclusion of the imperative… It is absolutely essential that the great indicatives of Christ’s accomplishment of redemption be balanced by the great imperatives of the Spirit’s application of redemption’ (151).

Gregory W. Parsons on Understanding and Proclaiming Job

Greg W. Parsons, ‘Guidelines for Understanding and Proclaiming the Book of Job’, Bibliotheca Sacra 151 (1994), 393-413.

Parsons comments on the general neglect of preaching from the book of Job (due to the difficulty of understanding it, and of dealing with the theological and philosophical questions it raises). In this light, he seeks to offer some specific guidelines for understanding and communicating the book.

Suggested hermeneutical guidelines for Job

• Interpret individual passages in light of the overall literary structure (as a unit) and main purpose of the book

• Recognize the various literary forms and devices utilized by the author to communicate his message

• Interpret the book of Job in light of the larger context of ancient wisdom literature, both biblical and extrabiblical

• Have a proper understanding of the relationship of Job to the New Testament

Preliminary homiletical guidelines for Job

• Preach every passage as part of the whole story of the book

• In light of one’s own culture and community, utilize the universal aspects of Job (as part of wisdom literature) as potential clues for a timeless message

• Explore the New Testament as the primary key to answer Job’s questions and to make valid application for today

• Explore the use of drama as a vehicle for communicating the message of Job