Soul Preaching

Paul Reid asks this question in his blog. He answers integrity, faithfulness, intelligible, and humility. These are truly good qualities to ask of onesself when the preacher steps into the pulpit, but a couple of things came to my mind. Are these required however is a good question. I have heard powerful sermons by preachers who were not the least bit humble. And integrity is a powerful word. Can any of us really say that we are true to the message that we preach?

I was talking to a fellow student the other day about the quality of sermons that we get to hear in divinity school. You see when students are graded they put forth their best effort. That is not to say that all have been good, but most have. This past week I got to hear two sermons that were particularly interesting to me in that they both gave me models of a particular aspect of preaching that I have been working on.

Lingamish has a post up where he decries what he calls “seed-picking” in sermon presentation. Here the preacher jumps from text to text quickly and without giving proper attention to background and the context of the texts used.

we all have heard these sermons…In John it says, and turn over to Ezekiel, and this agrees with Genesis. Usually these sermons lose all context and ends up just being a mismatch of texts.