Theocentric Preaching

The Center for Preaching at Gordon-Conwell has launched a new weekly podcast for preachers:

The Preaching Points podcast is a weekly program that provides brief reflections on preaching that points you to preaching excellence. Each Monday, you will be able to download and listen to fresh insights on preaching from our faculty at the Center for Preaching, as well as professors and friends of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. By subscribing through iTunes, you can automatically receive the latest podcast.

This podcast is designed to provide regular inspiration and encouragement for preachers. We want to reinforce the basics of Biblical Preaching, along with stimulating your thinking with clear and powerful ideas on preaching. You can expect quality teaching, as you will hear from Dr. Haddon Robinson, Scott Gibson, and Jeff Arthurs each week.

You can find out more at their website.

I am determined to preach no sermon, or even to write one, unless I am motivated by the glory of God and love for the people to whom I speak. (Jonathan Edwards)

I have on my desk a book that challenges preachers to apostolic preaching - preaching that is “Christ-centered, redemptive-historical, missiologically communicated, and grounded in grace.” If you’re looking for a book that shows you how to preach in a God-centered way, then this volume is for you. It’s Him We Proclaim: Preaching Christ From All the Scriptures.

The author, Dennis E. Johnson, says, “If we settle for anything less than living for God as the center of our life, then we’re settling for second best. We’re selling ourselves short…To be God-centered is to be exactly what I was designed for.”

For a sample of what you’ll find in the book, you can listen to an interview with Johnson on White Horse Inn:

If the main focus of a sermon is to preach Christ, what do we do with the book of Proverbs and a host of other Biblical texts that seem to focus on wisdom for life, or our own personal growth in holiness, etc? That’s the focus as Michael Horton talks with Dennis Johnson about his new book, Him We Proclaim: Preaching Christ in All the Scriptures.

The interview, and the book, are well worth the time.

Steve Mathewson, author of The Art of Preaching Old Testament Narrative, is blogging on how to preach God-centered sermons at the Preaching Today blog.

From part one: “The vision of God is the aspect of God’s character which serves as the focal point of the text…When I preach a text, I’m trying to demonstrate that human responses to problems, temptations, opportunities, or challenges emerge from a vision of God’s supremacy and majesty.”

From part two: “Identifying the ‘depravity factor’ will help us keep our sermons from being so “God-centered” they’re impossible to relate to or to apply.”

in his excellent book Preaching for Revitalization, Michael F. Ross describes a shift in literature on preaching. Prior to the twentieth century, books did not indicate that preaching was in decline or a question in people’s minds. “Rather their emphasis is on the spiritual aspects of preaching: the minister’s life and heart, prayer, Spirit-led preparation, the hope of the gospel, and so forth.”

In the 1930s and 1940s, books began to describe a decline in preaching.

Ross describes how the emphasis has shifted in response to this crisis in modern literature:

Overall, the current works focus most on communication theory and practice - style, SAIs (stories, analogies and illustrations), voice methods and time usage - while the earlier works dwell and content, theology, spiritual motivations and the character of the minister.

Ross argues that we need to look beyond communication skills if we want to see a revival of biblical preaching:

The crisis of the American pulpit is not one of communication theory, but rather one of content, conviction, and consistency of theology and life…This is not to say that communication theory and practice are not important, but rather to keep two concepts separate: homiletics and preaching. Good homiletics does not necessarily result in good preaching. Homiletics does not transform the soul; true preaching does!

Selected quotes from an excellent article by Marianne Meye Thompson:

To preach the gospel is to proclaim the accounts of the Scriptures in light of the fact that their central character is God, and that the gospel is from God and about the God who is Father, Son, and Spirit.

It is so easy to make the most powerful of Gospel stories center on human action and not on God, to think that somehow our actions, our decisions, are the heart and center of the gospel story. To make that move is to sell out the gospel.

To be guided by the gospel is to remember that the gospel is first and foremost about what God does, and not about what we do.

Preaching should help people locate themselves in the context of the biblical story of God’s creation of the world, call of Israel, sending of Jesus Christ, and promised consummation, because it is there that we find our identity and purpose. Preaching helps people to identify their stories with and submit them to God’s grand story as found in the Bible; to find their identity, meaning, and hope in the purposes of God. Preaching narrates our individual, particular lives into the grand narrative of God’s purposes and work in the world. Often, however, our stories get the banner headlines, whereas God’s story is delegated to small print on the fifth page. It ought to be the other way around: God’s story deserves the banner headline; our little stories deserve far less space.

Presbyterian theologian John Leith once wrote a book subtitled What the Church Has to Say That No One Else Can Say. This subtitle is an obvious pun: the church has as its gift something to say; but the church has that something as its responsibility or obligation as well. Advice columns can advise people about their problems; therapists can help us in our relationships; but the church can help people to situate their stories in the biblical narrative in a way that illumines their meaning. The church can and must speak the gospel. That is to say, the church articulates what it means that we live in a world created by God, tainted and marred in every way by sin, and straining for redemption.

Preaching helps people to understand this story, this “gospel of God,” and to see their own stories as part of the larger story that begins with God’s action and longs for the time when “God will be all in all.”

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