Preach the Word series
Editor’s Note: This article is part of a preaching series from Southwestern Dean of Theology David Allen. To view the series, click here.
A text-driven sermon is a sermon that expresses the main and subordinate information of a given text so that modern day hearers understand the meaning that the original audience would have understood. One does not necessarily have to package this information in a traditional deductive outline in order to accomplish this! However, the preacher must undertake careful exegetical work in grammatical, syntactical and semantic structure of the text in order to determine what the author has encoded as main and subordinate information in the text. The sermon should stay true to the substance, structure, sense, and spirit of the text. Only when this is done right and done well can valid application be given in a sermon. Application without exposition is groundless. Exposition without application is pedantic. Both must be coupled together with clear, pungent, illustration. Read More »
Editor’s Note: This article is part of a preaching series from Southwestern Dean of Theology David Allen. To view the series, click here.
Nowadays it is not uncommon to hear some people decry the notion of preaching through books of the Bible. Naysayers inform us that congregations won’t endure such preaching; that it does not meet the needs of people; that such series take too long; that it is boring; not to mention a host of other lugubrious objections. At the same time, many churches led by men who do regularly preach through Bible books are growing and thriving. What are we to make of this? Read More »
Editor’s Note: This article is part of a preaching series from Southwestern Dean of Theology David Allen. To view the series, click here.
By sermon form I mean the way in which a sermon is structured, or arranged. Just as thought has to be ordered if it is to be intelligible, so sermons have to have some kind of order and arrangement if people are to understand them and benefit from them. Read More »
Editor’s Note: This article is part of a preaching series from Southwestern Dean of Theology David Allen. To view the series, click here.
We all know preachers who are too big for their britches. You know the type. In the extreme, this is the guy who can strut sitting down. He exudes arrogance, either in the pulpit, outside the pulpit, or both. Probably for most preachers, however, our pride is not that extreme, but it is pride nonetheless. It is difficult to remain humble when you are constantly told by church members at the end of most Sundays’ sermon something like: “Pastor, you are my favorite preacher of all time.” “Pastor, you are the next Billy Graham.” “I’ve never heard preaching like that before!” “Pastor, that was a great sermon.” Read More »
Editor’s Note: This article is part of a preaching series from Southwestern Dean of Theology David Allen. To view the series, click here.
Sometimes reading the history of preaching can make you feel like a two-talent preacher surrounded by 10-talent preaching. After all, who among us can run in the same eloquent company with a John the Golden Mouth (Chrysostom), or soar with a Savonarola, or scale the heights of imagination with a Bunyan, or melt icy hearts like a Wesley or Whitefield, or wield the sword of the Spirit like a Spurgeon? Giants all, to name only a few, in the land of the giants known as the history of preaching. Read More »
Editor’s Note: This article is part of a preaching series from Southwestern Dean of Theology David Allen. To view the series, click here.
In the great western movie, “The Magnificent Seven,” Chris (Yul Brynner) leads a band of seven hired guns to protect a Mexican village from marauders lead by Calvera (Eli Wallach). They train the villagers how to defend themselves. When Calvera and his 40 bandits ride into the village, they are met in the town square by Chris, who firmly tells Calvera: “ride on.” Calvera protests. “I’m going into the hills for the winter. Where am I going to get food for my men? Somehow I don’t think you have solved my problem.” Chris replies: “Solving your problem is not our line.” At that point, the camera cuts to a lean, cool character standing a few feet to the right of Brynner–Steve McQueen. With a you-know-I-mean- business-look and voice, he utters my favorite line in the movie: “We deal in lead, friend.” (Rent it; you won’t be disappointed.) Read More »
Editor’s Note: This article is part of a preaching series from Southwestern Dean of Theology David Allen. To view the series, click here.
If I were to personify preaching styles . . . in the not too distant past, tuxedo preaching, with its characteristic elegant and suave rhetoric and measured cadences, could still be heard in some places. In the 1980’s and 90’s, Tommy Hilfiger preaching, with its casual, open collar, boomer-targeted, “how to” sermonic style, was in vogue. With the dawn of the 21st century came tee shirt preaching, a younger, chasing cool, culturally relevant, hipster style. Tee shirt preaching spawned a smaller sub-genre: tank-top preaching; a gritty, in your face, no holds barred, crude, rude, and occasional profanity laced, preaching style. Each has its strengths and weaknesses, detractors and defenders, and each contains, to varying degrees, something worth emulating (crudity and cursing excepted of course). Read More »
Editor’s Note: This article is part of a preaching series from Southwestern Dean of Theology David Allen. To view the series, click here.
From 1968 to 1974, under the superb expository preaching of the then unknown Jerry Vines, no less than three dozen men and women were called by God to full-time Christian service out of West Rome Baptist Church in Rome, Georgia. One of them was a 16 year old junior in high school. For a period of six months, I knew that God had been dealing with me about His call on my life. On November 18, 1973, I walked down the aisle at the conclusion of our Sunday night service and told my pastor God had called me to preach. The call to preach was as clear and real to me as my own salvation experience a few years earlier. I would sooner doubt my salvation than my call to preach.
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