How should you end a sermon series? That is the question that the Biblical Preaching blog deals with in its latest post. Pastor Mead provides three possibilities:
Now Mead is explicitly speaking of preaching through an expository series based on a book of the Bible, but it can be helpful in any sermon series.
The next preaching pattern is the topical sermon. The topical sermon is usually based on a doctrine, teaching, or contemporary issue affecting the congregation. The preacher attempts to help the congregation understand and interpret the topic from the perspective of the gospel.
The next preaching pattern presented in Ronald Allen’s book is the Funeral Homily.
The next pattern that Ronald Allen speaks of is the Wedding Homily.
An Evangelical Lutheran Blog run by a Father Eckardt has a post up on Extemporaneous Preaching.
In the post there is first some discussion of the Eckardt’s theology and understanding of Preaching. What was of particular interest to me however was his methodology.
The next pattern found in Allen’s book Preaching Patterns is the jigsaw sermon. Here the sermon is split up into small pieces that are related to each other but the congregation can’t see the connections till much later in the sermon.
As we continue looking at Preaching Patterns from Ronald Allen we come to Preaching a Sermon on a Biblical Character. In this method the preacher looks for information on one character of the Bible throughout the Bible as well as in history and other Biblical Reference Materials. Then the preacher tells constructs the story of the Biblical character from all that material.
In many of the other sermon patterns, we looked at approaches to structure a sermon. However, this pattern is a way of sermon preparation. How do you go about preparing a sermon? This method attempts to follow a method much like that which many novelists use.
Here are 4 5-8 minute videos by Rev Robert Smith entitled Lessons in Whooping.
The next pattern found in Allen’s Preaching Patterns is entitled Sermon Drawing from the Arts. Allen notes that preachers have drawn from the arts for illustrations of sermons often. However in this mode of preaching the art form is allowed to create a world that the people will participate in.
The next pattern described in Allen’s work Preaching Patterns is Thomas H. Troeger’s approach. In this approach you preach a sermon that is composed of images described verbally. You can see the method in his work Imaging a Sermon
The next pattern in Ronald Allen’s book entitled Preaching Patterns is the Moving from First Naivete’ through Critical Reflection to Second Naivete’. The idea comes from the hermeneutical theorist Paul Ricoeur. Here the sermon takes three steps.
The Talking the Walk Blog has a post up on four ancient sermonic forms.
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The next pattern from preaching that we find in the book Preaching Patterns by Ronald Allen is Eugene Lowry’s pattern of a Homiletical Plot.