Final Blogger Blog Post

Earlier I wrote about an upcoming change of blog address. That time has officially arrived. From now on I'll continue to write about preaching at http://peltononpreaching.wordpress.com/. Thank you for studying with me. Preach well...

Three Ways Preaching Can Be Improved

This is a guest post written by Dr. Jeffrey Arthurs. Jeff is Professor of Preaching and Communication at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. We team up together each year to instruct Doctor of Ministry students in Preaching the Literary Forms of the Bible. He is the author of Preaching with Variety and Devote Yourself to the Public Reading of Scripture. I hope your enjoy and profit from his insights. I always do.

As a teacher of preaching for more than twenty years, I have listened to thousands of student sermons. Most of those sermons were biblically accurate, and most were theologically grounded. (I’m glad to see a growing trend toward Christ-Centered preaching). About half were interesting; about a third were clear; and about a quarter were applied with insight and specificity.

Here are my top three observations on how to improve:

(1) Think yourself clear. Our job is to “package” in 30 minutes what it took us 10+ hours to prepare. This demands ruthless simplicity. I’m not talking about dumbing it down. I’m talking about having your idea(s) so well in hand that you could deliver the gist of your sermon in 60 seconds or less.

(2) Be concrete in application. Come down the “ladder of abstraction” with real life examples. Show what the truth of the text looks like in actual situations for the actual people who sit before you. If the text urges us to be patient, ask yourself: when, where, with whom, how, and what hinders our patience? Read the Sermon on the Mount and notice how much time our Lord spends at the bottom of the “ladder of abstraction” with concrete application.

(3) Model. Be an example of speech, life, love, faith, and purity. Don’t be afraid to illustrate the text from your own life, either “positively” or “negatively.” To be sure, there are risks with each, but when done with humility, and when done in the context of pastoral ministry where you are more than just a talking head on Sunday morning, God’s truth through your personality is powerful. This is part of the way you can watch over their souls—by pointing out how you yourself are being saved through preaching.

Changing Blog Address Soon!

I wanted to alert you that this blog will soon be shifting over to http://peltononpreaching.wordpress.com/. Lord willing, all the old material will transfer over. I'm looking forward to enhancing the blog in this new year.

Thank you for reading my material.

Preach well...

Sincerely, (Your Name)

I was recently listening to an old broadcast of the radio show, This American Life. During the broadcast, Joe Franklin, the host of the longest running talk show in television history was quoted saying,

"The main ingredient to longevity is sincerity. Once you've learned to fake that, you've got it made."

Last evening I spent a delightful ninety minutes with the lead worshiper (a.k.a. worship leader) at our church. We talked together about how to create singing and teaching times that best facilitate worship. The first thing we talked about was our own sincerity.

When I listened to the Franklin quote, it helped me think again of the importance of responding to our own sermons in the study, long before we ask others to respond in the service. I pray that you sincerely love God, love His people, and love to teach His Word.

Sincerely,
Randal Pelton

Do You Sound Like A Contemporary Preacher?

I am enjoying reading Barth's, Homiletics. In the preface, Bromiley previews Barth's "belief that closeness to life, important though it is in the sermon, must not be at the cost of closeness to the text" (p. 14). That got me thinking about whether or not we preachers sound like our world with respect to our voice and delivery. Closeness to life is another way to speak of relevance; closeness to the text, of course, speaks of preaching with accuracy.

Lately, I have wondered if all TV news anchors and field reporters take a course in how to speak or how to sound while they're reporting the news. Listen to them and you'll discover that they all sound the same. At the risk of overgeneralizing, I'm suggesting that there are two dominant preaching styles, the traditional preacher and the conversational preacher. The conversational preacher includes the real relevant, seeker-sensitive approach.

What do you sound like when you preach? Would our listeners say that we sound like a preacher (with respect to how we say what we say)? When we report on what God has said, do we sound like all the other contemporary, seeker-sensitive preachers who evidently took the same class on how to speak or how to sound? We must be constantly aware of the tension between closeness to life (relevance, or, in this case, sounding relevant) and closeness to the text (accurate reporting). I loved Barth's advice: "For in preaching it is always better to be too close to the text than to be too thematic or too much in keeping with the times" (p. 117).

Sometimes I wished just one TV news reporter would break from that mold, be real, and talk to me about what happened.