Practices of Christian Preaching

E. Alcantara Jared

Description

Leading homiletician Jared Alcántara offers a practice-centered, collaborative, technologically innovative, next-generation introductory preaching textbook. The book breaks new ground by adopting a practice-based approach to teaching preaching and by using innovative technological delivery to enhance the educational experience of learners.Alcántara introduces the basics of Christian preaching and emphasizes the skills preachers must cultivate throughout their lives. He shows that preachers can learn effective preaching by paying keen attention to five key competencies: conviction, context, clarity, concreteness, and creativity. Featuring the perspectives of a diverse team of collaborators, The Practices of Christian Preaching is designed to prepare effective communicators for the church's multicultural future.Call-outs in the book direct readers to a companion website for further information or practice. The online resources include audio and video sermons, video responses from the author, and contributions from collaborators, enabling Alcántara to coach students by showing them instead of just telling them. A Spanish language edition will be forthcoming.

Sujets

• Philosophie et théologie

Informations

• Publié par: Baker Publishing Group
• Date de parution: 17 septembre 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781493419760
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 5 Mo

Extrait

Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
© 2019 by Jared E. Alcántara
Published by Baker Academic
a division of Baker Publishing Group
PO Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287
www.bakeracademic .com
Ebook edition created 2019
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
ISBN 978-1-4934-1976-0
Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from the Holy Bible, New International Version®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com. The “NIV” and “New International Version” are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™
Scripture quotations marked KJV are from the King James Version of the Bible.
Dedication
To my daughters:
Maya, Liliana, and Evelyn
May the light of Christ burn brightly in you
and through you to others.
Contents
Cover i
Title Page ii
Copyright Page iii
Dedication iv
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction 1
1. Preach Christian Sermons 11
2. Preach Convictionally 41
3. Preach Contextually 73
4. Preach Clearly 101
5. Preach Concretely 131
6. Preach Creatively 155
Conclusion 185
Bibliography 193
Index 209
Back Cover 215
Acknowledgments
M any of the concepts and frameworks in this project originated in an Introduction to Preaching class I taught in the fall of 2013 at Primitive Christian Church, a Latinx Protestant church in New York City. That is to say, the seeds took root some years ago. Thank you to the thirteen students who interacted with me on this material in its roughest and most untested version, and thank you to the many students (you know who you are) who have helped me to hone, clarify, and improve this material over time. You have taught me more than you realize.
Although most of the content in this book is new, some sections have been adapted from papers that I have delivered at academic meetings or articles that I have published. Some of my discussions concerning Pixar Animation Studios in my chapters on clarity and creativity have been adapted from an article that I published in Practical Matters in 2015, titled “Fail Better: Or, What Can Teachers of Preaching Learn from Improvisational Performers and from Pixar?” Also, some sections from my chapter on contextualization have been adapted from a paper that I presented at the Annual Meeting of the Academy of Homiletics in 2016, titled “Teaching Contextual Responsiveness in a Preaching Classroom,” and another paper that I presented at the Annual Meeting of the Evangelical Homiletics Society in 2017 titled “Sermons with Local Soil: Cultivating Contextually Responsive Preachers.” I am indebted to Paul Myrhe and my friends at the Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning for their willingness to fund a five-week special project that I conducted in the summer of 2016 on how to teach contextualization in a preaching classroom. Their support gave me the time and space to think, write, collaborate with other scholars, and test my ideas in homiletics classrooms during the 2016–17 school year. Finally, some sections from my chapter on creativity have been adapted from a paper that I delivered at the Annual Meeting of the Academy of Homiletics in 2018 titled “Teaching Students How to Cultivate Creative Environments.”
I would be remiss if I did not express my appreciation to colleagues at two different institutions. Thank you to President David Dockery, Dean Graham Cole, and the board of regents for approving my sabbatical for school year 2017–18 when I was still teaching at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, where I served from 2014 to 2018. My sabbatical created much-needed time and space to finish this project. Thanks also to Peter Cha, who encouraged and strengthened me as a mentor, and to Greg Scharf, my friend and colleague in homiletics when I was at Trinity, who ensured that my classes and other responsibilities were covered when I was on sabbatical. I would also like to thank Dean Todd Still and my colleagues in homiletics, Joel Gregory and Scott Gibson, who serve alongside me now at Baylor University’s George W. Truett Theological Seminary, where I started teaching in 2018. I am grateful for their ongoing support, friendship, feedback, and encouragement, and I am blessed by the ongoing collegiality and friendship that I enjoy with colleagues on the faculty at Truett.
I also owe a debt of gratitude to two granting agencies whose support helped bring this project to completion. The videography for this project was supported in part by funds from the university research committee and the vice provost for research at Baylor University. Thank you to our videographer, Matthew Aughtry, who worked tirelessly to record, edit, and produce the excellent video content that supplements this book. A Spanish language edition of The Practices of Christian Preaching is planned for release at a later date and is to be supported in part by the Foundation for the Advancement of Christianity. Thank you to Burton Patterson, the foundation’s director, who caught the vision for a multilingual resource and supported that vision.
Thank you to the entire team at Baker Academic. This book would not have been possible without your willingness to dream big at the beginning and provide support along the way! I especially want to thank Jim Kinney, Jeremy Wells, Christina Jasko, Julie Zahm, Brandy Scritchfield, and the many others who believed in this project from its inception in 2016, partnered with me to make it better, or provided much-needed help over a three-year journey. Thanks also to Pablo Jiménez and Thomas G. Long for reading drafts of this book and providing excellent feedback.
To the four excellent homileticians who collaborated with me—Jerusha Matsen Neal, Ahmi Lee, Kenyatta R. Gilbert, and Matthew D. Kim—your expertise, wisdom, insight, and investment made this resource better because of your involvement in it. I have so much respect, appreciation, and admiration for all of you. The academy and the church are better served because of your presence and ministry in both spaces.
Last but most certainly not least, I would like to thank my family, first and foremost my wife Jennifer, who, without a doubt, stands alone atop the list of those without whom this book would not be possible. Your sacrificial love, patience, cheerleading, and support helped me get through the long hours required for a multi-phase project like this one to come to fruition. I love you, respect you, and appreciate you! Thanks also to my parents—José and Susan—to my siblings, and to my extended family. I see the love and support you provide, and I do not take it for granted. I give thanks for it.
I dedicate this book to my three daughters: Maya, Liliana, and Evelyn. My prayer for you remains the same, that someday each one of you would become an eshet chayil —that is, a woman of valor (Ruth 3:11) whose strength of character, courageous resilience, godly leadership, and bold action bless those around you and change the world.
Introduction
W hat does Charlie Parker have to do with preaching? The answer might surprise you. Parker rose to fame in the jazz music world in the late 1930s and, with Dizzy Gillespie, pioneered a new sound known as bebop. According to jazz historian Thomas Larson, “Charlie Parker’s legacy continues to shape jazz. It is almost impossible to escape his influence.” 1 Some claim that Parker is the greatest jazz musician who ever lived. On occasion, if a jazz musician from a country outside the United States performs boundary-crossing music, an expert might refer to that person as “the Charlie Parker of [insert nation here].”
At first glance, the differences between Parker and preachers stand out more than the similarities. Parker hung out in jazz clubs. Preachers hang out in churches. Based on what we know from biographies, Parker would not have liked being associated with preachers; he made his distrust of organized religion widely known. Preachers have devoted their lives to Christian service. Parker struggled with alcoholism and frequent heroin use. Preachers tend toward piety. He died at the age of thirty-four and had so damaged his body that the coroner initially thought he was between fifty and sixty. Some of my preacher friends only use Christian-approved cuss words on the basketball court. You get the point. Despite the many differences, one similarity in particular brings the connection between Parker and preaching into focus, one point of convergence that can easily be overlooked. What does Charlie Parker have to do with preaching? In a word: practice.
Parker launched his career playing jazz in nightclubs in Kansas City at the age of sixteen or seventeen, and, at least at the very beginning, he majored in zeal and minored in skill. He barely kept up with the career musicians on the stage, and it was clear to everyone that he was an amateur, a boy among men. Imagine trying your luck as a professional ballet dancer on a Friday night at Carnegie Hall in New York City or attempting to shoot three-pointers in an NBA Finals game and you will have some sense of what Parker was up against at the beginning.

Figure I.1. Charlie Parker
As the story goes, one night in the spring of 1937, Parker tried his best to play the saxophone at a jam session in the Reno Club in Kansas City. The guest star at the club that night was Jo Jones, a drummer for Count Basie’s Orchestra, one of the great swing bands in the United States. When Jones heard Parker that night, he thought Parker was so bad that he stopped playing the drums mid-song and threw