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Welcome to Preaching Prof!

This site exists for preachers … new preachers, old preachers, preachers-to-be — anyone who wrestles with the challenge of standing before a group of people with the weight of speaking a word from God into the lives of contemporary hearers. Watch this brief introductory video, and look around for anything that might be helpful to you!

Help for Preachers

Book Reviews

We should never stop learning. Here are resources old and new that have challenged and inspired me along the way.

Sermon Seeds

I won’t give you sermons, but I will give you seeds that you can plant and cultivate in the soil of your own heart and ministry.

Blog

Tips for beginning preachers as well as seasoned veterans, and other longer articles on various topics related to preaching.

 

Towards Preaching that is Bible-Based, Gospel-Driven, and Story Shaped.

 Featured POsts

Featured
Preaching on Money, Part I
Preaching on Money, Part I

As a young pastor, I was reluctant to preach about money. At the time, however, I knew several older preachers who relished any opportunity to tackle the subject. I wondered why this was so. Did they just not care who they offended? Were they jaded to the financial demands on their hearers? Did they just not know that they ran the risk of feeding the “money-grabbing-preacher” stereotype that already existed in peoples’ minds?

Now that I’m an older preacher, I think I understand. The longer I live, the more I realize that the only thing that really matters in my ministry is to make disciples. And the longer I try to make disciples, the more clear it becomes that how we use our money is the truest measure of our discipleship, because it reveals where our treasure really is.

Warriors, Pacifists, and Diplomats: Preachers and Culture
Warriors, Pacifists, and Diplomats: Preachers and Culture

A handful of choices define every preacher. From where will the message come? Will it offer answers gleaned from the social sciences, public opinion polls, celebrity talk show hosts, or political dogma? Or will it flow from the acts and words of God discovered and experienced in the Scriptures? What will the preacher’s sermons do? Will they instruct, leading to better informed hearers? Should they offer perspective, encouragement and comfort, leading to better adjusted hearers? Will they admonish and exhort, leading to better behaved hearers? Or will they seek transformation, leading to simply better, reborn, hearers?

These and other key issues fill the pages of every good Homiletics textbook. One question, however, which can, in subtle but powerful ways, define and drive a preaching ministry, is often overlooked: What is the preacher’s, and the sermon’s, relationship to culture? The answer to this question will make all the difference in the direction a preacher’s ministry will take.

“Big Story” Preaching: Making Disciples in a Post-Christian World
“Big Story” Preaching: Making Disciples in a Post-Christian World

How do we make disciples in a post-Christian world?” I am convinced that the answer must begin with the story we tell. I’m not talking about merely “telling stories,” that people like to hear. We must tell the story — the grand narrative of the Scriptures that shapes our view of the world, of ourselves, and of history. Why? Because the single most important factor for forming identity, character, and purpose is how we answer the question, “In what story am I living?”

Story-Shaped Preaching, Part I
Story-Shaped Preaching, Part I

I believe that preaching in a post-Christian context will require, as a rule, a story shape. I have some good reasons for this, which I will share, but I recognize that I am swimming upstream in our Evangelical sub-culture. The weakness of some narrative preaching is no reason to discard the Bible’s most prominent form

Perhaps the best starting point for this series of posts on Story-Shaped Preaching is to define what it is, and what it isn’t. I’ll do this by answering three myths that I sometimes hear about narrative preaching.

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Recent Posts

Featured
Review: Practicing The Preaching Life
Review: Practicing The Preaching Life

Who among us has not heard (or preached!) sermons that were exegetically accurate, homiletically correct, thoughtfully applied and adequately delivered, yet which still seemed to fall flat? All the essential pieces are in place, yet there is a sense that some intangible quality (Authenticity? Credibility? Wisdom?) is missing. David Ward, Professor of Homiletics and Practical Theology at Indiana Wesleyan University, addresses this problem with the principled assertion that “preaching is more about life than it is about skills.”

ACT III: Redemption
ACT III: Redemption

Regardless of the sermon form you are using, the part of the sermon you need to plan most carefully is the end. This is the moment of highest intensity, the time for decision, the point at which the truth of the sermon comes either to a triumphant climax or a tired fizzle. It is time to “land the plane” and if you do not have a checklist to follow, you may well find yourself circling the runway (or just flying out to sea) until you run out of gas and sputter to a crash landing.

I find it best to have a clear sequence to follow when planning the end of the sermon. This is as true for a story-shaped sermon as it is for a deductive one. Here is the sequence I recommend for Act III:

Homiletical Conclusions
Homiletical Conclusions

Homiletical Conclusions are the last stop before we begin the actual work of shaping the sermon. As a matter of fact, we could say that the Homiletical Conclusions mark the starting point for building the sermon.

Act II: Quest
Act II: Quest

Act II is the quiet, persistent workhorse of the three-act plot. Act I grabs attention, introduces conflict and makes promises about where the sermon will lead. Act III gets the thrill of a climactic gospel turn and resolution. Act II inherits the expectations of Act I and carries the longest stretch of the narrative while laying the groundwork for the grand revelation of Act III. It is like a dutiful middle child, living in the shadow of the highly successful older brother while deferring attention and resources to the darling younger sister.

The work of Act II may not be as glamorous, but it is just as essential to the transformation we seek in the story-shaped sermon. It has several important jobs to do.

The Application Question
The Application Question

No sermon is complete that does not apply the truth of the biblical text to life. No gospel-driven theological reflection is complete that does not ask the Application Question.

As we seek the gospel-driven path from text to sermon, we have so far explored three questions. The fourth and final question provides a fitting culmination of all of these by applying the message in light of the gospel as well as the biblical metanarrative: How does this text invite us into God’s Story?

Act I: Fall
Act I: Fall

This is the job of Act I in a narrative sermon: to create interest through urgency by placing us in a story where the message really matters. How do you accomplish this? Here are four steps for stirring interest through urgency.

The Redemption Question
The Redemption Question

If we preach an entire sermon and never mention the Christ, can we claim that it is a Christian sermon? I have come to a firm conviction that our preaching should always, ultimately, be about Jesus. Surprisingly, this conviction is not necessarily shared by all Christian preachers.

Focus, Tension, Discovery
Focus, Tension, Discovery

Before we begin to plot our story-shaped sermon, there are three preliminary items we need to define. Consider these to be narrative “add-on’s” to our Homiletical Conclusions. Taking aim in these areas before you begin will save time and establish clarity from the start.

These three components will help you establish the focus of the sermon, the tension of the sermon, and the moment of discovery that will help you get to the sermon climax in the end.

The Brokenness Question
The Brokenness Question

As preachers, whether our objective is to evangelize the lost, to encourage the struggling, to comfort the suffering, or to disciple the growing, the path towards an experience of the gospel will always pass through an awareness of our own brokenness. Most often, this is where it will begin.

The Sermon in Three Acts
The Sermon in Three Acts

“Plot” is the sequence of events through which a story moves. Aristotle saw two fundamental movements common to all plots: the complication and the dénouement. (Poetics, XVIII) Contemporary fiction writers expand the list to five events. It is no coincidence that these correspond almost precisely to the five movements described by Lowry as the “homiletical plot.” (The Homiletical Plot: The Sermon as Narrative Art Form. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001, 27-87) They are time-honored and universal—prominent in all narrative genres and media, from simple storytelling, to literature, to the silver screen. Film makers arrange these five movements into three acts.