Spirit or Mechanics? – Preaching the God’s Sermon
The Theocentric Preaching blog has a post up entitled Good homiletics does not always lead to good preaching
In that post the author looks at Michael F. Ross’ book Preaching for Revitalization. In that book Ross discusses what happened to homiletics once that crisis in preaching happened. In the 1930s and 1940s books began to come out describing the crisis in preaching. As a result of this books began to move away from an emphasis of theology and spirituality of the preacher to mechanics.
Ross states:
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.
What Great Preaching Requires
Great preaching is requires a strong theological position. It requires a certain spirituality in the preacher. It requires conviction. It requires truth. We as preachers should study communication theory and methods for sermon construction and the like, but we must never get into the position of depending on them to do what the Spirit alone can do.
I pray that God will show up and speak through the sermons that God has given me to preach. If it ain’t the best sermon homiletically…I will be satisfied if God shows up.
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