Good sermons grow out of excellent textual work. Today, however, the demands on a pastor’s schedule all-too-often mean that taking the time needed to engage the text at a significant exegetical level is squeezed out. Pastors instead opt for what is easy: pre-packaged sermons from the Internet or sermons that scratch only the surface of the text while devoting significant time to telling stories or addressing trendy topics that are considered “hot” or “relevant” in the current cultural milieu. Some preachers have even gone so far as to adopt as the “text” of their sermons not biblical passages at all but popular movies, TV shows, and rock songs. But preaching that turns away from Scripture will not feed God's people with the nourishment of the Word they need nor will such sermons be something about which one can say with confidence, “Thus saith the Lord.” This workshop will aim to return preachers to their single greatest resource and homiletical foundation: the Word of God. Frederick Dale Bruner will help pastors not only retrieve the tools of good textual work, he will make those pastors hunger to use those tools again. Scott Hoezee will then guide the process of homiletical reflection on those texts so as to assist in the development of sermons that will truly proclaim God’s Word to a world that is at once increasingly ignorant of that Word and, just so, increasingly in need of that same Word.
To accomplish this, Frederick Dale Bruner will spend the week displaying the joy and the verve that comes from opening up God’s Word through a prayerful, rigorous exegesis and study of the text. Dr. Bruner will spend each morning workshopping a text and will then launch workshop participants into an afternoon’s worth of moving from that well-exegeted text to the next steps in sermon preparation. Later in the afternoon the pastors will re-gather, this time under the tutelage of not only Dale Bruner but of also Scott Hoezee, to share together their ideas on how to move from text to sermon. Each participating pastor will go home from this workshop not only with five new sermons well underway but more importantly will return home having learned a method on how to move nimbly from text-to-sermon in ways that will serve them each and every week in their work.
For further information contact:
- Seminars in Christian Scholarship
- Calvin College
- 1855 Knollcrest Circle SE
- Grand Rapids MI 49546-4402
- 616.526.8558
- fax 616.526.6682
- seminars@calvin.edu