Answering Hot Topics – How Long Should a Sermon Last?

Answering Hot Topics – How Long Should a Sermon Last?

by | Sep 5, 2010 | Featured Articles, Pastoral Ministry, Preaching

How Long Should a Sermon Be from Bret Capranica on Vimeo. How Long Should a Sermon Be? Here”™s a long post about long sermons. I’ve never known this not to be an issue. Some could care less how long the message is, others have firm convictions based on personal experience and contemporary studies as to how long any public address should be in order to be effectively assimilated. I want to address this issue from a number of fronts: Regular, consecutive exposition is the sort of preaching I believe is most helpful for the sanctification of God’s people. Those who know me know that I believe expository preaching is what is most helpful in the corporate sanctification of God’s people. I like to define expository preaching as sermons where the point and structure of the sermon reflect the point and structure of the biblical passage. My definition doesn’t demand long or short sermons. I think shorter sermons may be able to present the point of a passage as well, perhaps better than a longer one. However, longer sermons may prove more effective in not only presenting the point of the passage clearly, but also demonstrating how a preacher arrived at his conclusions. Nonetheless, I think, as a regular diet, moving through books of the Bible book-by-book, passage-by-passage, showing the author’s intention and clarifying the contemporary application of a text is overall most helpful in the spiritual growth of God’s people. What are the most helpful ingredients in this sort of preaching? In a typical exposition here are the elements I want to accomplish: “¢ Introduce the main idea of...
The Cross in My Preaching

The Cross in My Preaching

by | Mar 26, 2010 | Preaching, The Gospel

How significant is the cross of Christ in my regular preaching?  The following quote brings a great conviction and I pray an even greater intentionality and change: This distinction between an “objective” and subjective” understanding of the atonement needs to be made clear in every generation.  According to Dr. Douglas Johnson, the first general secretary of the IVF, this discovery was the turning point in the ministry of Dr. Martyn Lloyd Jones, who occupied an unrivaled position of evangelical leadership in the decades following the Second World War.  He confided in several friends that “a fundamental change took place in his outlook and preaching in the year 1929.”  he had, of course, emphasized from the beginning of his ministry the indispensable necessity of hte new birth.  But after preaching one night in Bridgend, South Wales, the minister challenged him that “the cross and the work of Christ” appeared to have little place in his preaching.  He went “at once to his favourite secondhand bookshop and asked the proprietor for the two standard books on the Atonement.  The bookselller produced R. W. Dales’ The Atonement (1875) and James Denney’s The Death of Christ (1903).  On  his return home he gave himself to study, declining both lunch and tea, and causing his wife such anxiety that she telephoned her brother to see whether a doctor should be called.  But when he later emerged, he claimed to have found “the real heart of the gospel and the key to the inner meaning of the Christian faith.”  So the content of his preaching changed, and with this its impact.  As he himself put it, the basic question was not Anselm’s “why did God become man?” but...
What Will I Preach? (part 2)

What Will I Preach? (part 2)

by | Mar 25, 2010 | Featured Articles, Ordinary Pastor, Pastoral Ministry, Preaching

Here the rest of the mess I started on Tuesday – how do I determine what I will preach? 4. Topical Periods. I do recognize that the summer months and holiday seasons in American ministry bring great challenges to successive exposition. I do generally plan to preach through shorter series during these periods, addressing a number of topics that I feel are critical for the congregation’s understanding – issues of which we believe exhortation and action are needed. I generally preach a message on the importance of preaching at the beginning of every year. I try to address the subject of the Lord’s Supper (what, why, how, etc.) every year. I make it my aim every year to preach a message on how to listen to a sermon. This summer I plan to preach through some of the distinctive convictions we have as Baptists. There is a waning understanding and commitment to these convictions blowing in the wind, and I want to show from God’s word why they are significant. Sometimes, a passage will lend itself to a break from the exposition so we can focus on a subject. For example, I paused the series in Revelation after preaching chapters 4 and 5 to take 4 weeks and preach a series on corporate worship. 5. Preach the Paragraph. As a general rule, a paragraph tends to reveal a significant thought, or comprise a single argument, press an important emphases. I don’t stress peaching one verse at a time as much as I want to stress showing the main idea revealed in a pericope. So, I tend to want to...