Preaching to Be Heard

Lucas O'Neill

Description

"If a sermon is preached in a church and no one is listening, does it make a difference?"There are many expository preachers who forego dynamic delivery and many dynamic preachers who lose sight of faithfully communicating the biblical text. Too often preachers feel they have to choose one or the other. But dynamic delivery and faithful exposition are not mutually exclusive. In Preaching to Be Heard, Lucas O'Neill shows pastors that presenting engaging sermons that are biblically focused is not an impossibility. In fact, the key to commanding attention lies in the text itself. Rather than relying on tricks or gimmicks, his approach to sermon writing focuses on maintaining tension throughout while sticking close to the biblical text. Using practical examples and a step-by-step method, O'Neill shows pastors how relying on the inherent anticipation within Scripture can lead to sermons that are powerful--and heard.

Sujets

• Philosophie et théologie
• Christianity

Informations

• Publié par: Lexham Press
• Date de parution: 13 février 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781683592372
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

Preaching to Be Heard
D ELIVERING S ERMONS T HAT
C OMMAND A TTENTION
Lucas O’Neill
Preaching to Be Heard: Delivering Sermons That Command Attention
Copyright 2019 Lucas O’Neill
Lexham Press, 1313 Commercial St., Bellingham, WA 98225
LexhamPress.com
All rights reserved. You may use brief quotations from this resource in presentations, articles, and books. For all other uses, please write Lexham Press for permission. Email us at [e-mail] .
Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from ESV ® Bible ( The Holy Bible, English Standard Version ® ), copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Print ISBN 978-1-683592365
Digital ISBN 978-1-683592372
Lexham Editorial Team: Jennifer Edwards, Elliot Ritzema, and Christy Callahan
Cover Design: Jim LePage
To my wife, Tina: you are my crown (Prov 12:4).
And to my children, Raquel, Elias, Lincoln, and Elinor:
you are truly my heritage and my reward (Ps 127:3).
Contents
F OREWORD BY B RYAN C HAPELL
P REFACE
C HAPTER 1
Preaching That Commands Attention
C HAPTER 2
Discover the Problem-Solution
C HAPTER 3
Determine the Structure
C HAPTER 4
Disclose the Ultimate Solution
C HAPTER 5
Introducing Tension
C ONCLUSION
E XERCISE 1: P RACTICE D ETERMINING T HESIS S TATEMENTS
E XERCISE 2: P RACTICE C HOOSING S ERMON S TRUCTURES
A PPENDIX A: R ESOLVING TO P REACH E XPOSITIONALLY
A PPENDIX B: S AMPLE M AP OF A S ERMON S ERIES ON E XODUS
A PPENDIX C: S AMPLE S ERMON O UTLINES
N AME /S UBJECT I NDEX
S CRIPTURE I NDEX
Foreword
W e are at an opportune moment in the teaching of homiletics. We are beyond the era of Puritan messages that devised a method to wring doctrine and duty from the topical comparisons of individual texts. We are beyond the acceptance of running commentaries that claimed to be expositions of texts—though they were little more than data dumps for theological hobbyists—or weekly penance for congregants whose consciences required that they go to a church that “focused on the Bible” regardless of its apparent applicability to their lives. Thankfully, we are also beyond the so-called New Homiletic that claimed to offer a pragmatic alternative to “textual preaching” through experiential understanding of the ethical themes of Scripture.
In the heyday of the New Homiletic, those identified as the “best guides” for the future of engaging preaching were those unwilling to acknowledge—and actually were opposed to acknowledging—the reality of transcendent truth. Many would not even concede the possibility of transferable truth, denying that we could really know another’s meaning beyond our own experiential horizons.
Inductive and narrative methods driven by theories of human communication that rooted understanding in the shared experience of an existential moment were championed for their effectiveness in garnering the attention of listeners whose only measure of truth was self-significance. For the last three decades, homiletics instructors of every theological stripe joined the experimental methods of cordial and able scholars who convinced many that these methods, birthed in the waters of disbelief, could take precedence in proclaiming the message of God’s word to those who believe.
No one can deny that there is much to learn about effective communication and the hermeneutics of understanding from those who investigate the dynamics of story, conversation, and experience. However, what got lost in the scholarship surrounding the New Homiletic was a commitment to revelation, authority, and the ability of the Holy Spirit to communicate unchanging truth from the divinely inspired word, rightly divided.
As a consequence, the discipline of homiletics increasingly became an exercise in substituting
• Experience for Transcendence
• Relating for Revelation
• Engagement for Exposition
• Technique for Truth
• Style for Substance
In light of these dynamics, and in faithfulness to their calling to teach others to expound the Scriptures as God’s word to us, a new generation of evangelical teachers of preaching is rising across all cultures, nations, and ethnicities that reasserts the Scriptures will garner appropriate attention if biblical exposition is rightly defined and practiced. Expository preaching is finding a new hearing and new advocates in those who not only believe that the best preaching involves the explanation and application (revealing meaning and significance) of biblical texts, but also believe that such preaching is the best method of holding the attention and transforming the lives of those in whom the Holy Spirit is active. With this book, Lucas O’Neill shows himself to be among the ranks of those who believe the word of God is bread for which the people of God yearn, if preachers treat it and them with the understanding Scripture itself teaches.
Such an understanding does not deny the importance of learning how to communicate content to a narrative-oriented culture or how to be faithful to the various genres of Scripture in form as well as in content. The prophets and apostles learned and used conventions of communication that helped their words penetrate the minds and hearts of those to whom they preached. We should remain willing and desirous of learning dynamics of preaching effectiveness, but we are healthiest when our emphasis is on communicating the faith once-for-all delivered to the saints—not simply engaging listeners with their own versions of truth.
Every generation of Bible-believing preachers must relearn that when truth is downplayed as our primary concern in preaching, then technique becomes ascendant, and when technique becomes our focus, then we and our people lose confidence in the unique power of the word. The Holy Spirit who gave it is the same Spirit who indwells us to receive it, making God’s truth both culturally transcendent and personally communicable.
Always, always we seesaw our discussions in this discipline of homiletics between an emphasis on veritas versus vehicle. Both are important, both are vital, but when preachers (and their teachers) prioritize how to derive and deliver content, rather than who has the best delivery or most winsome technique, then we serve the church best.
At this time, the discussions and debates in evangelical homiletics are more about content and how it is framed within the redemptive flow of Scripture. In part this is because the narrative/inductive enterprises have largely been spent without producing the spiritual fruit they promised in many evangelical and most mainline churches. Since that movement is “past-crest,” we are now not as influenced by it, nor do we feel the same pressure to bow to it, in order to be credible in the academic ranks. Hopefully, this clears the field for more pressing and significant debates—as uncomfortable as they may be for determining the particulars and scope of our textual priorities—about how best to be faithful to the proclamation of God’s authoritative word in both its particular and redemptive contexts. In these conversations, the best of our homiletics scholarship is devoting itself to
• Truth over Technique
• Content over Charm
• Veritas over Vehicle
• Redemptive Goals over mere Rhetoric or Rules
Our belief in the efficacy and power of the word preached binds us to the priority of exposition, not primarily to the craft of engagement. For a new generation of homiletics instructors such as Lucas O’Neill who are saying and teaching this, I am deeply grateful and profoundly hopeful.
Bryan Chapell
Pastor, Grace Presbyterian Church (Peoria, IL)
July 2018
Preface
P reachers face a difficult task. Each Sunday we have to teach the Bible to a distracted people. Today, a relentless blitz of information overwhelms our people’s eyes and ears. All week long they are targeted by customized ads and pinged by their smartphones to check incoming messages, texts, updates, and calls. Communication is increasingly image based, articles are broken down into bite-sized pieces, and vlogs are even taking the place of blogs. Yet there we stand with an ancient text in our hands, asking our audiences to sit still for thirty to forty minutes while we talk.
But is technological advancement really to blame when people find our sermons boring? To be sure, our listeners more than ever suffer from attention overload. But it was still the ’60s when Clyde Reid sought to understand why the pulpit was under widespread disparagement. He lamented that “most sermons today are boring, dull, and uninteresting.… Whether we like to admit it or not, many persons feel that preaching today fails to capture their interest.” 1 This was an issue long before we had social media or smartphone apps.
Even earlier than Reid, in the ’20s , Harry Emerson Fosdick penned his famous article “What Is the Matter with Preaching?” In it, he bemoaned what he perceived to be an epidemic in the pulpit of his time—sermons that fail to really engage the listener. There was little to be distracted with from our perspective. The problem was not the audience. These were people who took forever to do everything by today’s standards. Comparatively speaking, they had incredible patience—but not for insipid preaching.

THE PROBLEM WITH OUR EXPECTATIONS
For those who think that a sermon should be focused on Scripture, it is easy to write off Fosdick’s comments because he went on to disparage this kind of preaching in favor of a style that was more focused on the listener’s needs. Yet I still think Fosdick’s comments are tough to ignore. He was concerned with the flatness with which many preachers deliver their sermons, and we should be as well.
The problem has less to do with our audience and more to do with our expectations of them. Sure, people are very distracted. But people always have been. It is just difficult to sit and listen. We shouldn’t expect peopl