On the Biblical Preaching blog, the author is currently in a series about the different listeners in our sermons. Who is listening? There is the community of faith, not yet believers, angels,…
Category: Exegesis
When Are You Finished Preparing Your Sermon?
This is another one of the most popular questions. Whenever I have a seminar or receive questions through the mail, someone asks, “How do I know my sermon is ready for preaching.”…
Making Scripture Real In Preaching – Use Your Senses
Perhaps the most effective thing a preacher can do to strengthen the connection between the congregation and the scripture is to interpret the Bible with your senses. Here you use all of…
Stylistic Exegesis For Preaching Powerful Sermons
Exegesis is simply a close reading of the scripture so that you can extract the meaning from the text. Before you can preach a text you must understand the text. You can…
How To Connect the Bible World To Today’s World?
Often preachers can make it seem as though the Bible is irrelevant for contemporary needs and society. Part of the problem is that we don’t truly allow the Bible to speak to…
Looking at the Spaces Between the Lines
When exegeting a text of scripture, we often spend a lot of time looking at what is in the text. And this is right. We put forth a lot of effort to read the text in the original languages if we have facility in them. We put forth effort to look at the narrative, theological, socio-cultural, and other important dimensions of the text.
Exegeting a Text of Scripture – The Four Waves
Subscribers to the SoulPreacher have already received this article in the 31st edition of the Soul Preacher email magazine. In addition, those who have attended our second web seminars have seen the expansion of this concept. However, everyone else can now learn from this very powerful way of looking at exegesis of the text for preaching.
Exegeting the Text for Relevant Preaching
Frank Thomas, in his important book They Like to Never Quit Praisin’ God: The Role of Celebration in Preaching writes:
Finding the History of the Text
Ok, up to this point we have only used the Bible. We have not looked in any Bible commentaries or Bible Dictionaries. Now we want to go to these resources to find out what was going on when the text was written and why the text was written.
To understand the history of the text, we need to answer three questions as completely as possible. The first of these questions is: Who is writing the Text? The second question is: Who is reading the text? The final question is, Why was the text written?
The Stages of Exegesis – Updated
I just realized that I do not have any posts that give an outline of my method for exegesis. Here is the basic process.
- Prayer – You should not open the Bible without praying for the guidance of the Spirit in understanding the principles found in the text.
The Preacher’s Bookshelf – A Bible Dictionary
When you are preaching the Gospel, you need various tools to help you understand the Biblical text. As noted in other places on this site and others, you should never begin your preparation looking at these tools, however, you should always ensure that your preaching is in line with what is truth.
Preaching with Imagination
[amazon cover 0801057574]One of the important components of effective preaching is to help the congregation experience the sermon in as many sense as possible, not just hear the sermon. This book by Warren Wiersbe entitled Preaching and Teaching with Imagination provides an apologetic for using the imagination in preaching.
Improving Storytelling in Preaching Step 5 – Practice
The final step to preaching a sermon that effectively tells a story is to Practice.
Record yourself telling the story. Then transcribe the story from the tape into a manuscript. This practice will improve your storytelling and your preaching in general.
Improving Storytelling in Preaching Step 4 – Collect the Data
The next step in preaching an effective sermon that makes use of stories is to decide what details that you collected from steps 1 and 2 are useful to help the preacher fulfill the purpose found in step 3.
In short, the preacher should determine the feelings and the sensory data that are needed to preach a “15-25” minute sermon.