The And Of The Preachers

The Art of Personal Evangelism: Sharing Jesus in a changing culture By Will McRaney, Jr. Nashville: Broadman & Holman Academic, 2003, 268 pp., $19.99 paper.

In regard to sermon design, Eswine offered several new ideas and concepts. First, he suggested that preachers ask, “Could I now reach who I once was?”. Normally preachers observer their listeners; however, this question causes preachers to exegete themselves, motivating them to recall their journey along the path of sanctification. “Remembering where we’d be without God and then ministering to others out of that knowledge” promotes empathy with listeners (11). As a result, preachers are able to construct sermons tailored to meet the needs of their listeners since they can relate to their struggles and situations as well as their questions and concerns.

Christine Caine’s speech at Passion is geared toward ending modern-day slavery and sex trafficking, and she makes her argument through the rhetorical development of the Christian Identity. Caine seeks to encourage her audience to adopt Christian values to change communities around the world. In positioning herself as a Christian, Caine works to establish credibility by using the Bible, assuming her audience will find the embodiment of truth within her speech. Caine makes her argument without using any statistical information to center the focus of her argument on scripture. Through referencing this scripture and offering anecdotes, Caine’s position then becomes powerful by equipping her audience with the ability to become directly involved

These are the issue that the modern African American pastor must address currently. His/Her preaching must speak true, authentic words for the oppressed, the down-trodden, the deprived, the captives, the poor, the rich, the illiterate, as well as to the intellect. Presently, the hostile moment of worldliness is a belief that life is to be realized at any cost to self. Thus, here lies the Christian paradox: through the Gospel we have to see Jesus as a truth relevant to humanity’s need to rise higher. The Gospel is to be preached to all. It is a Gospel to save the humanity of African American people but the gospel is beneficial for all. Therefore, the African American preacher’s message must have within its content something more than that which causes the people to enter in a foot-patting, hand-clapping, highly emotional, ecstatic worldly experience, but also a content which serves to balance the life of God’s people on earth.

Jarena Lee was born in the late 18th Century as an African American slave into a society that was against her from the start. After becoming free and struggling through suicidal thoughts for years, Lee finally set out to accomplish what she felt God had called her to do: to preach and spread God’s word. Despite having no real religious background and encountering obstacles that would cause many to simply give up their goals, Jarena strived to preach and eventually broke through and spoke her first sermons, one of many to come. Over time she started to garner a following of hundreds of listeners, all keen to listen to Lee as she proclaimed God’s gospel. This achievement helped to weaken the barrier that originally separated women from fully participating in religious societies and would serve as a focal point of women’s rights, even in modern times.

Preaching to a Post-Everything World began with a question: “Could I now reach who I once was?” With this question in mind, Eswine unpacked his homiletical philosophy. He believes that to effectively communicate the gospel to a lost world, preachers must remember who they once were. With this in mind, Eswine emphasized the process of sanctification and defined reality of a “post-everything” world. As a result, a framework developed that allows preachers to exegete their context, without loosing touch of

What people expect from us is to be witnesses of living faith that is rooted in prayer and scripture (52). Ruddy’s brings into consideration what Paul VI said in his apostolic exhortation Evangelii Nuntiandi that: “modern man listens to witnesses more than to teachers, and if he does not listen to teachers, it is because they are witnesses.”

J. Daniel Baumann asserts that a preacher, therefore, should be a good craftsman, but never a mere technician. He should not devote too much time to form and too little to content, if a preacher studies the use of form as something apart from content, then he may become a rhetorician, an attractive speaker, but will turn out to be something less than a preacher of the gospel. God still intends for preaching to be a part of the church’s ministry (Hamilton).

The reader is challenged to reflect on a personal God who is both very far away and very close at the same time, how to effectively minister in times of personal crisis, and to identify neighbors and community. Most important to me; however, is the question: “Now that women have been ordained for a number of decades…do they engage in ministry differently from their male counterparts?” This latter question is especially important to me given that I come from a faith tradition where women were not invited to the pulpit, women were not accepted into

I decided not to write about my pastor but one of our minister, Leah Smith. She is a very energetic person at all times. She is always wearing a smile while being a motivator and demonstrating God’s love. She is the definition of Virtuous Woman of Proverb 31.” I mediate on your precepts and consider your ways. I delight in your decrees; I will not neglect your word.” “I’m not going to sugar coat this message to please you but I will give it to you as God as given it to me,” is what she will advise at the beginning of her sermon. She has served in US Air Force for twenty years and recently retired as a Section Chief of Strategic Movements. While traveling around the world to protect the country for the US Air Force, she was soldier in God’s

I really clicked with the last speaker, Reverend Jae Quinlan. I am not sure if it is because we are soul sisters from a past life, or because we share the same name, but I adored her persona. Upon reflection, I wasn’t too sure what the overall message of her speech was. I really enjoyed her different perspective on religion, and engaging with a feminist pastor was refreshingly different. In the essay entitled “Religion” in Critical Terms for the Study of Gender, Regina Schwartz discusses the evolution of religious belief, highlighting that “the wide range of meanings of religion has tended to be more productive than confusing for religions, affording opportunities for change within cultural formations that would otherwise be stable and conservative”, making these rigid belief systems

When it comes to preaching, there are a variety of styles, techniques and methodologies to consider. From my own experience, I have found that however a person chooses to preach, there is no one size fits all approach; meaning that each preacher needs to find their own personal style. I think of a sermon like a softened ball of clay; each preacher has their own unique mold that will create a particular impression into one side of the clay when they preach a sermon. The congregation receiving the sermon then also has a mold that will leave an impression on the other side of the clay. Both molds shape the clay, or in other words, both the preacher and the congregation play a role in how the sermon is given

Pre-evangelism should be treated as an art and tailored individually. Part (3) deals with new challenges facing Christianity. In this section, John Carson rightly explains that “there are no silver bullets” in apologetics and that we ought to focus on the resurrection of Jesus as a tool to bring the gospel to a new generation. Hot-button cultural issues such as racial tension, gender equality and

Michelle Armster was the speaker for the first worship service. Her sermon testified on the defiant and courageous actions of Christian women, from Mary and Martha to members of the church many centuries later. She reminded us that Jesus’s ministry was not intended for those who are accepted or comfortable within society, but for those who are oppressed and marginalized. Jesus’s ministry challenged the iniquities of corrupt institutions and enabled the silenced to boldly testify for God.

Active listening - “Active listening” is highly needed for evangelists and pastors. For example, Jesus didn’t preach to the Samaritan woman (John 4). In fact, she speaks four times as many words as Jesus does; He spends 80 percent of His time listening and understanding this woman- how she thinks, lives, and feels. Furthermore, Ford derives the theory out of the story; “Jesus took time to get inside her worldview and look at life through her pain- and shame-tinted glasses. Then, after He had listened to her, He was able to tailor His story to her worldview and her needs: she was thirsty and He was the living water”.