Preaching from Luke/Acts

David Fleer, Dave Bland

• Publisher: Abilene Christian University Press
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9780891121350
• eBook ISBN: 9780891128786
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

The context for this book is rooted in the life of the local church. We desire to integrate biblical scholarship and homiletical theory with the task of preaching Luke/Acts. Our prayer is that the responsible integration of these resources will increase the ability of the Holy Spirit to empower preachers for faithful proclamation of God's word. To that end we give God the glory.- From the editor's Introduction.

Part I
The Task of Preaching Luke/Acts

Chapter One: Tension In Preaching

DAVID FLEER AND DAVE BLAND

Tensions persist in preaching today. Preacher and congregation feel these tensions every Sunday morning when the minister lays out notes, opens the Bible, and announces the sermon’s text. One tension remains fixed in the mind of the preacher and in the hearts of the listeners. The pre acher’s desire for sermons to faithfully reflect the message of biblical texts stands at odds with the congregation’s pleas for self-help homilies that address her most pressing personal problems. Another tension resides in the audience feeling the need to hear sermons that reflect the “old paths” which strain the preacher’s understanding of what the “good news” really entails. Even within the reflective preacher’s mind, the conflict between what the Bible appears to say and what the meaning is for the congregation creates a holy tremble for this one who claims to speak for God. The strain not only pulls preacher from congregation but creates tension among competing camps within the church. These tensions are maintained, in part, by our understanding of how the Bible is supposed to function in the sermon.

One of us recently experienced this tension while listening to a sermon developed from 1 Samuel 17, David’s battle with Goliath. The preacher paraphrased the story raising historical/textual questions (just when did Goliath die?), narrative curiosities (why five stones? how large were the stones? how fast were they slung?), and psychological insights (what was Saul thinking as he watched David? Who are the Goliaths in our lives?). The preacher developed the sermon in quite an interesting manner. But, the sermon ignored the movements and emphases of the text. For example, when noting the battlefield dialogue of David and Goliath, the preacher concluded, “David ‘one-upped’Goliath.”

As the preacher moved on to other historical developments and cultural observations, I stayed with Samuel, reading closely the language of David. What I noticed was not so much the verbal superiority of David but his covenantal language. Not only was Goliath an “uncircumcised Philistine” but the Lord would prevail against all apparent odds. God talk is in every line that David utters.¹ These details should have cast the sermon in an entirely different direction and should have superseded the psychological bent of the sermon’s application. The biblical text before me was more interesting and held more promise for matters of import than the sermon.

This instance of sermon-created tension grew out of differing expectations for the sermon. I came to the service desiring challenge or uplift. I received neither. I wanted to be reminded of the reality of God through a strong prophetic word. I received instead “trivial facts” and psychological insights. Any preacher who dares to conduct an exit interview with frustrated members hears and feels this tension. Whether the disgruntled church member leaves for more relevant climes or transfers to a congregation where he or she can hear “the Truth,” at the heart of the matter is the role of the Bible in preaching.

The crisis is not new. In the Restoration Movement we have long thrived on the injunction to preach from the Bible to the needs of the church and society. We have long desired that our preaching be faithful to Scripture. Yet, we have consistently wrestled between the ideals of “good news or old paths,” or “personal needs or living in the text.” We have struggled with the place of the Bible in the pulpit. Consider two approaches to preaching that have characterized our movement.

Concordance and Expository Preaching

Early in the Restoration Movement “concordance preaching”² dominated the way in which Scripture was used in the sermon. Verses of Scripture were viewed as pieces of a puzzle the preacher put together in a correct pattern around a specific subject such as baptism or repentance. The sermon became a litany of verses quoted from all over the pages of Scripture. The preacher, functioning each Sunday like a systematic theologian, reached the pinnacle of his homiletic skills when Scripture quotations were uninterrupted by commentary. J. W. McGarvey even pronounced, “When preaching thus, we are preaching the Wo r d.”³ This style of preaching, while popularized within the Restoration Movement through Alexander Campbell and other pioneer preachers, continues through some Schools of Preaching and remains a staple in other Evangelical traditions.

The concordance sermon, however, has met with some criticism. For example, such sermons can become nothing more than a catalogue of rational arguments and appeals.⁴ The content of the concordance sermon also serves as a way for some preachers to disguise their own theological orientation (or bias) through a Scripture-quoting mosaic.⁵ Today, many auditors claim that they can identify a preacher’s School of Preaching background from the theology embedded in his sermons .⁶ David Bartlett summarized this “honorable tradition” of preaching as one which “overwhelms and under illumines the mind.”⁷ Indeed, who among us has the theological skills to follow the contours of such a journey through texts?

Another approach popularly labeled “expository preaching” has thrived throughout the twentieth century. While the meaning of the term varies among its exponents,⁸ the characteristic understanding of an expository sermon gravitates around its focus on a specific unit of biblical text in context, often ending with application. At the heart of this didactic approach lies the commitment to unpack the meaning of a particular text in its literary and historical context.⁹ The result of such a commitment often leads preachers to devote a significant portion of the sermon to sharing important background information on historical events or cultural customs that shed light on a darkened text.

A generation ago Harry Emerson Fosdick led the attack against expository sermons with the memorable observation, “Only the preacher proceeds still upon the idea that folk come to church desperately anxious to discover what happened to the Jebusites .”¹⁰ We might add, “…or to know the speed of David’s rock.” Again, at issue is the tension between the preacher’s understanding of what it means to be faithful to Scripture and the desire to address the felt needs of the audience. Fosdick criticized expository preaching because he saw it as irrelevant to the needs of contemporary hearers.

In our conversations with preachers who advocate preaching expository sermons, we have detected another problem. When we question the expressed opinion, “I really like to preach expository sermons,” we often hear the preacher reveal the belief that commitment to such a method guarantees preaching’s faithfulness to Scripture. The problem, however, is that some of these expository sermons too often consist of little more than “jacking up a text and running a sermon under it.”¹¹ The text simply jump-starts the sermon. Thus, the preacher can defend his theological position on a difficult topic, by hiding behind the text: “This isn’t me preaching, this is the Word of God!” The deceptive beauty is that this style of preaching appears to give authority to the preacher.

In the Restoration movement, our commitment to the Bible has resulted in a struggle to know the place of Scripture in the sermon. How does the sermon faithfully use Scripture? Is it through concordance preaching or expository preaching or some other way? How do preachers faithfully use Scripture to speak to the needs of people today?

Seeker Targeted¹² Sermons

While preachers wrestle with their faithfulness to Scripture, congregations become more vocal in their desire to hear practical lessons from the pulpit. There are growing numbers within our congregations who passionately call for the church’s programs and the preacher’s sermons to speak directly to community needs. They demand, “We must address issues moms and dads want to hear, provide classes for their children, and advertise the event with a catchy sermon title. Then, we’ll persuade the community to come to our church.” Family members and friends will attend, they promise, if “lessons” are designed to meet people right where they live in today’s complex and confusing world.

The congregation’s request actually imitates the practical life skills found in the appealing and popular format of the Application Bibles. With their Bible’s colored boxes, fore-grounding quick lessons for improving everything from one’s sexual needs to career enhancement, Christians grow accustomed, from their own Bibles (!), to locating life lessons before even reading the text.

Congregational demands find academic support from outside the field of biblical studies. There, sermon evaluation originates from a vantage that differs from the realm of the text. For example, sociologist William Martin, in his fine overview of American revivalists, judges, “There is nothing mysterious about Moody’s success. His theology, style, and technique were perfectly suited to his age.”¹³ Billy Sunday’s career ended with “marked suddenness” when “he lost his grip on the national consciousness .”¹⁴ Martin further assesses the strengths and weaknesses of American revivalists through Billy Graham by this sociological standard: the sermon’s success in matching the desires of the audience. One expects this from a sociological vantage. But, we are not sociologists, nor are we psychologists, cultural analysts, or micro economists. We are preachers of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Martin and other social scientists aptly describe one part of the tension. They fail, however, to reveal the entire picture and the cause for the strain. The result of all this leads to some preachers embracing the social scientist’s myopic perspective and becoming audience driven as they formulate their message.

So we continue to face the reality of a tension between “gospel preaching” and “culturally sensitive” preaching. Our struggle, however, remains but a microcosm of the larger war¹⁵ waging in the Protestant Christian world. Consider, for example, the findings of USC researcher Donald Miller and his work with Southern California-rooted churches, principally those associated with Calvary Chapel, Hope Chapel and Vineyard Christian Fellowship. Miller argues that the current transformation within Christianity is not about doctrine, but the medium of Christianity. That is, “new paradigm churches” have discarded traditional habits of Protestant Christianity and appropriated contemporary cultural forms including church polity, worship and preaching.¹⁶

We can further delineate the new reality with the question, whose world counts? For many growing churches, the answer rings clear: the seeker. When an unchurched person walks through the church door, he or she asks, “Are you up to date and contemporary, or locked in antiquity?”¹⁷ In this new setting where the church building is purposely made to appear similar to corporate headquarters, or a state-of-the-art theater, the kind of preaching demanded by the contemporary listener “both identifies and aids the listener in solving the problems and crises that plague his or her life. It is the contemporary world that counts.”¹⁸ Churches find themselves shaping the worship, the preaching, the ministries of the church, and even the physical plant with the primary intention of attracting the seeker.

Listening congregations, preachers come to discover, express little interest in receiving a volley of isolated scripture quotations, nor in hearing detailed comments on large blocks of text, nor in rehearsing cultural nuances of ancient societies. Congregations demand life-related preaching which, they surmise, must be easy to obtain from the Bible. How are we to work through this apparent impasse?

The New Homiletic

About the same time individuals began to demand “need-meeting sermons,” a new way of treating the biblical text appeared in the field of homiletics. In an effort to connect with contemporary audiences, focus changed from explaining the text to experiencing the text. The catalyst for this shift occurred with the 1971 publication of Fred Craddock’s As One Without Authority. Craddock called for an engagement of preacher, congregation, and biblical text so that listeners could experience “the word of God.” He claimed, “Sermons should proceed or move in such a way as to give the listener something to think, feel, decide, and do during the preaching.”¹⁹ In recommending the active participation of the listener, Craddock suggested preachers craft sermons that enable the co-creation of understanding. Craddock explained, “Is not the real event in preaching the creation of new meaning at the point of intersection between text and listener, rather than in the carting of information from one to the other?”²⁰ To this end sermons are composed to allow the congregation to experience the preacher’s own process of hermeneutical insight.²¹ Moving away from a deductive model of presentation, Craddock’s means of engaging listeners in the active pursuit of the effect of the biblical text required an inductive presentation.²²

Craddock’s seminal work launched a creative and stimulating line of homiletic thought, appropriately termed “the new homile...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Acknowledgments
• Biographical Sketches
• Forward
• Introduction
• Part I: The Task of Preaching Luke/Acts
• Part II: Sermons from Luke/Acts