The eleventh commandment for preachers is “Be clear!” This book offers 55 workable guidelines on how this exhortation can be heeded to help with communication and preaching skills.
This volume is a collection of some of the best of the hundreds of Preaching Points that the Haddon W. Robinson Center for Preaching at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary has produced. Preaching Points is a weekly podcast that features conversations on preaching by Haddon Robinson, Jeffrey Arthurs, Matthew Kim, and Patricia Batten—all members of the preaching faculty of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, South Hamilton campus.
This book offers diverse topics based upon on how they relate to preaching—the preacher’s spiritual life, the way to preach, the way to live life as preachers, their role as a preacher, considerations for listeners, and so forth.
“The Big Idea is the dominant idea in your sermon. It’s made up by asking two questions: First, what is the author talking about? And second, what is the author saying about what he is talking about?” (Page 3)
“The Big Idea of good preaching is Preach the Big Idea.” (Page 3)
“Until we have figured out why the passage would be important to people today—not just tell them that but show them that (e.g., How would it work in their business? How would it work in their homes? How does it work in their thinking?) as we bring the biblical text and the modern world together—we haven’t done our job. So we are not preaching to people about the Bible. We are preaching to people about them from the Bible. And that means that there are two tensions: the tension of the biblical text (crucial, vital, and important) and the tension of the folks who are listening to us. Good preachers work hard to see to it that their sermons have that balance of biblical truth and contemporary relevance. That’s why being biblical and contemporary is the art of Christian communication.” (Page 10)
“the Lord?’ D. L. Moody was known to say, ‘He who kneels the most, stands the best.’” (Page 16)
“I’m talking about moral courage: to be able to speak truth with power, to be able to speak truth to people who don’t necessarily want to hear it.” (Page 11)
Scott M. Gibson (D.Phil., University of Oxford) is The Haddon W. Robinson Professor of Preaching; Director of the Haddon W. Robinson Center for Preaching; Director of Th.M. Program in Preaching; and Director of the A.J. Gordon Guild at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary.
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