Romans 8:18
“For I consider that the sufferings of the present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us.”
2 Corinthians 1:8-9
“For we do not want you to be unaware, brethren, of our affliction which came to us in Asia, that we were burdened excessively, beyond our strength, so that we despaired even of life; indeed, we had the sentence of death within ourselves in order that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God who raises the dead”
Although Dr. Gregory is one who has had a tense relationship with certain leaders of the SBC, one cannot deny his gift “to bring it home.” Even if you do not like his sermon style, you cannot deny the powerful imagery he uses.
While many of us preachers are familiar with the above sermon, it remains one of the few sermons that has you weeping in joy. Enjoy.
I couldn’t think of any better title for my random thoughts…Sorry.
1) Dissertation Update: For all who care, which I assume is a small percentage, I am in the middle of the 4th chapter where I am analyzing 260 of G. Campbell Morgan’s sermons. I should be finished with the analysis and organization of my findings by next week. Then I will begin writing the 4th ch. which will be about 50-60 pages. I will have it finished by mid November. While I am waiting for the approval of that chapter, I will write my two concluding chapters of about 50- 60 pages. My goal is to have the whole dissertation written by December 15th. Then it will go to other professors (Dr. Greg Heisler and Danny Akin of SEBTS ,and Dr. David Allen of SWBTS) for their approval until sometime in Feb. (it will take them that long to read it because of the Christmas break). I will hopefully defend my dissertation in late Feb./early March. I cannot believe the whole Ph.D. thing is wrapping up. It has definitely been hard. There have been times during my writing that I have asked myself, “How is this going to win anyone to Jesus?” I know, I know, it is all about further preparation. However, I have pressed through and have no regrets. Only a couple more weeks of writing.
2) Last week I kept one of our nursery classes of about 13 children during the Sunday morning service. Yes, you read that correctly. I thought it was very important to demonstrate that children matter to me and to God. It was awesome. The reaction from the church family was extremely positive. And, no, I didn’t keep the nursery because I didn’t have a sermon prepared! We planned this out in advance, of course. I love children and believe that the “childlike faith” Jesus speaks of should be brought to our attention more.
3) I preached at “revival” services at a church nearby several weeks ago. I enjoyed my time there. Calvary’s choir came for two of the nights and did an outstanding job. I am glad we still had some of their CDs to give away! During one of my sermons, I think I scared them when I said, “I do not know if God cares whether or not we have revival meetings or not. Aren’t we, in some sense, scheduling a movement of God, on our timetable when we say, ‘God, we are having revival on this particular week, but don’t mess with us the rest of the year.’” It was a great night with much response.
4) Calvary is in the midst of setting up a new website. It should be up in the next several weeks….
5) Recently, SEBTS hosted a preaching conference with Dr. Robert Smith as the plenary speaker. I am continually amazed at Dr. Smith’s ability to wed great exposition with such an engaging style. He needs to be at Southeastern. If I could preach like a black man I wouldn’t be so white…
6) I am 125.55% convinced that the New England Patriots cheated when they crushed my Redskins last Sunday. No doubt about it.
7) I am involved in two fantasy football leagues. I am 4-4 (4 game losing streak) in one and 3-5 (two game winning streak) in the other.
My apologies to all my faithful readers who have been more faithful checking out this site than I have been posting to it. Here as some updates of what is going on in the Brammer household:
1) My dissertation writing has taken precedent over this site. I am cruising towards completion of this beast. For some reason I have an incredible amount of energy in writing this thing. I recently had Dr. Akin approve my 3rd chapter, so I have about 100-150 pages to go (total of 200-250 pages). My goal is to finish writing the dissertation by Dec. 27th before I head off to my first trip to Israel. So as of the end of December, all I have to do is make any needed corrections and defend the dissertation. I will graduate in May.
2) I am going with my father-in-law on one of his Israel tours. While we are busing to all the Holy land sites, Dr. Page will be on one bus and I on the other. We will be providing devotionals on the way to each site. He’s crazy. I have never been and he expects me to tell 100 people what we are about to see! It’s going to be so awesome. My wife was going to go but she did not want to miss out on the growth spurt of our now almost 11th month old son, Zachary. She has already been twice. Then I may head off in 2008 to the Czech Republic, Hawaii, and/or Africa again.
3) Our (actually it’s God’s) church is rockin! We have increased numbers just about every Sunday and God is moving throughout the church body. Right now, I am preaching a sermon series that has me going through each book of the Bible and showing how they each point to Jesus Christ.
4) I cannot believe I ordered NFL Gameday Ticket. I have gotten fed up with being only 5 hours from DC and having to watch the Carolina Panthers every Sunday. Not any more! Hail to those Redskins! Except last Sunday. Ouch.
5) I have been playing tennis alot. If you want to challenge me, bring your A game and prepare for some Federev like destruction. I wish there was an actual tennis league in Rocky Mount. I guess this is one of the negatives of a smaller city.
6) I am a bachelor this week. My wife and son went to Greenville, SC. Laura was homecoming queen at her high school so she was invited back to her school’s 50th anniversary celebration. I enjoyed the quietness the first two days but then I started going crazy and mold began appearing in the kitchen sink, nothing was in the refrigerator, and my bed was loney without my sweet wife. In other words, I have diagnosed myself as psychotic as of now. They are coming home soon and it will be sweet. I even caught myself watching Elmo in the early morning just to remember my son. Come home buddy!
7) I have been asked to serve on a pretty cool committee for the North Carolina Baptists next year. I will definitely be the youngest, so I plan to keep my mouth shut, and when asked something, to give one word answers 
8) One of my dearest friends, Josh Via, has just released a CD, Return Worship, with a church from Charlotte, NC. You can check it out at www.returnworship.com Josh and I have known each other since day 1 (literally, I am one year older and I saw him when he was a day old) and have been close friends ever since. His song, “King on the Way” is one the those songs that makes you drop everything to raise your hands to the Coming King Jesus. Keep rolling Josh…
9) Oh yeah, preaching still matters. I will write hopefully every week with my thoughts on preaching and other life updates. One more thought…
I believe we all attempt, in some way or another, to plan our life. A young professional may plant to work an entry-level position and then move up the ladder, and so on. We may get up in the morning and make arrangements to do a certain number of tasks in a particular order. Recently, I have been guilty of this. I have realized (and will continue to learn) that at times God crashes our arrangements. He says this is what I have planned for you today or for you now. Follow me.
I am learning not to question God when He “crashes our arrangements” with something unexpected. If my kingdom is unraveled or upset, and it is because God’s kingdom is advancing, then I must step in line. I am discovering when you step in line with our Lord, His arrangements can be exciting, joyful, and peaceful. Col. 3:15 has meant a lot to me recently: “Let the peace of God reign in your heart… and be thankful.”
After a grueling two hour session with Drs. Akin, McDill and Bush on Friday, they gave me a high pass on my comprehensive exams. What a relief! Honestly, studying for these exams was probably the hardest thing I have ever done. Though, the sense of accomplishment is out of this world.
As many of you know, Dr. Russ Bush is battling cancer (a battle in which he will win). He voluntarily changed his chemo schedule so he could be at my orals. I cannot express my gratitude to this man. His energy level and graciousness was awesome. Continue praying for him.
Now I am off to Baltimore to catch an Orioles/Athletics game at Cameden Yards and spend a couple days with my family who has sacrificed much! Then I will be off to the Outer Banks (early May) with my wife before heading off to Zambia (May 20-30) with my church for 10 days. After Zambia then its off to San Antonio for the SBC (June 12-15) and then to Canada (July) for a church mission trip.
Please pray that I will be a good steward of my time so I can turn in my research prospectus by July. We are jam packed busy at Calvary as well. God is blessing our church! I love them…
Last week I took my written exams for my PhD degree at Southeastern Seminary. This week, Friday from 2-4pm, I sit for my orals. The faculty that will “grill” me will be Russ Bush, Wayne McDill and Danny Akin. The preparation for this, of course, has been time consuming but I hope it will all be worth it. Please pray for me!
Is a personal hermeneutic necessary for correctly interpreting and applying God’s Word? Can one “get away” with ignoring the original intended meaning of the text and supplant it with an interpretation that fits today’s needs? What do you think?
For all those who are not aware, check out www.americanrhetoric.com
This is a cool site that allows you to hear the many great speeches in America’s history and has plenty of learning resources on rhetoric.
The other day I had to take an item back to the grocery store because I got the wrong brand (this is typical for me when shopping for my wife). I drove to Harris Teeter, got out of the car, took the bag with the wrong item, entered the store and went straight customer service. I told the clerk that I came here yesterday and bought the wrong item for my wife. The clerk asked for my receipt and I realized I had left it at home. I told the clerk I had left it at home and she told me to go back home and get it! She then told me they had a new policy which does not allow returns or exchanges without a receipt. I tried to sweet talk her but it didn’t work. I had to go home, with my tail between my legs, and grab the receipt and then bring it back to the store. I know you’ve been there. I brought the receipt back with me and was allowed to exchange the item. The receipt gave me the power to exchange. It gave me authority. Without it, I could only tell the clerk my experience of coming to their store. Without the receipt, there was nothing to prove my experience true.
The issue of authority must not be layed aside when discussing the preaching event. Some have God’s Word as their authority. Others see the audience’s experience as authority. A. Mohler states that God has spoken. Thus, preachers have a mandate to preach because God has spoken. The preacher has divine authority as God’s spokesman when he speaks what God has spoken. Without this authority the preacher is on his own authority.
In the context of human history, authority has been questioned ever since the Enlightenment. David Allen in “A Tale of Two Roads” states “Enlightenment modernity distrusted authority. Radical postmodernity dismantles authority. Edward Farley’s oft-repeated statement sums up the late twentieth-century scenario: ‘the house of authority has collapsed.’ For many, great was the fall of it.” Joel Gregory credits the rejection of authority as one of the reasons why preaching has declined in the 20/21st centuries. The issue of authority seems to be the most significant issue which distinguishes the new homiletic from expository preaching.
The New Homiletic and Authority (for an excellent resource see DavidAllen’s “Tale of Two Roads: Homiletics and Biblical Authority” in JETS 43 (2000)
The term “new homiletic” was coined by David Randolph in his 1969 book, The Renewal of Preaching. He defined the “new homiletic” as “the event in which the biblical text is interpreted in order that its meaning will come to expression in the concrete situation of the hearers.” One will read this and agree with it, right? Let’s read furthe
“The sermon is becoming understood as event, and event means encounter, engagement, and dialogue: the end of “monologue” in the pulpit. Preaching as a one-man affair is a thing of the past, to be replaced by that kind of participatory experience in which those present themselves involved, even though only one man may be vocalizing at the time. The sermon is being understood asa event, and the consequences of this are beginning to be understood in a new way” (Contextually, “new” means different from the kerygmatic teaching of Karl Barth).
For Randolph, the perspective of the hearer was signigicant. If not, too significant. Following Randolph was Fred Craddock whose 1971 book As One Without Authority further expanded the possibilities of the New Homiletic. Craddock’s background in the New Testament was influenced by Bultmann. Also, on a sabbatical at Tubingen, he studied under Ebeling, one of the founders of the new hermeneutic. Later Craddock was introduced to the writing of Soren Kierkegaard. For Craddock, God’s Word is God’s Word to the reader/listener, not a word about God gleaned frm the documents. Preaching is, thus, and experienced event. The preacher and the listeners are co-crators, of the sermonic experience. More important than imparting knowledge, the sermon seeks to affect an experience by cultivating the surprise of the gospel through the preacher’s ability to embed the experience in the familiar word of the congregation (once again, it seems that the audience take precedence. Craddock’s emphasis on induction, plot, and movement in the sermon has inspired preachers in their conceotion and practice of sermon structure. (see Scott Gibson, “Critique of the New Homiletic”)
Following Craddock was David Buttrick and his work Homiletics. His concern is what happens when language in a sermon interacts with the consciousness of the listeners (phenomenological approach). His sermon style consists of a sequence of five or six plotted ideational units culminating in a conclusion. This is sequence is called movement.
Eugene Lowry emphasized what he called the “homiletical plot.”. He comments, “As an evocative event, the sermon’s sequence follows the logic of listening , not just the consistency of conceptual categories.” His intention is the ordering of experience within a narrative plot. The overall common feature of the new homiletic is experience.
Scott Gibson, in an insightful critique of the New Homiletic, provides several presuppositions of those influenced by the New Homiletic:
1. The Interpreter and the Text
The interpreter realizes that he comes to the text with presuppositions. The
text is not considered to be the object with the interpreter as the subject.
Instead, the interpreter is himself the object of interpretation. The text then
is spoken into and creates the community of faith. Thus, the center
of authority does not lie in the text but with the listener(s) in the context of
community. Authority, then, is not located in a particular place but rather in
the relationship between the preacher, the text, and the congregation..Some advocates of the New Homiletic appear to dispense altogether with the
use of the biblial text. Read this from David Buttrick and let your jaw drop: We must not say that preaching from Scripture is requisite for
sermons to be the Word of God (Homiletics).” Further, in A Captive Voice, Buttrick states, “For the better part of the twentieth
century, preaching and the Bible have been wrapped up in a kind of
incestuous relationship.”
2. The superiority of self.
The emphasis on application has caused a shift from the objective use of the
Bible to the subjective. Craddock argues, “It is, therefore, pointless, to
speak of the gospel as Truth in and of itself, the gospel is Truth for
us.”As Yandall Woodfin in “The Theology of Preaching: A Search for the
Authentic” (Scottish Journal of Theology, 23, 1990) states,
“The belief that preaching, created by the living Word of Scripture, may
itself under God’s sovereign grace become God’s Word can only be
sustained by an existential impresssion and response which is auto-
pistic or self-validating.” Thus, in light of the first two points, the final
presupposition is…
3. The authority of experience.
Whereas in classical homiletics the preacher brought the meaning and
application of the text to the congregation, in the New Homiletic the
listeners and preacher altogether create the experience of meaning. One
advocate of the New Homiletic boldly states:
“One of the reasons we must alert our eyes to keener sight and
feel the bodily weight of truth is that if we do not ground our
sermons in the actuality of experience, the authority of what we
say will be suspect. Appeals to the Bible or tradition do not carry
sufficient weight in themselves.” -Thomas H. Troger, Imagining a Sermon, 1990.
Summarizing it all, Scott Gibson states, “The emphasis on
experience certainly raises questions about the movement’s dependence
upon the modern liberal paradigm and presuppositions.”Expository Preaching and AuthorityFor expository preaching, its authority derives from God. We speak because God has spoken. Expository preaching attempts to expose Scripture and let God speak. Thus, the expository sermon has authority because it speaks what God speaks. Peter Adam states there is often a direct link between one’s theology of Scripture and a theology of preaching.
H.C. Brown in Steps to the Sermon points out that the connection of the sermon with a text is its basis for authority. He described four kinds of authority for the sermon based on the extent which it reflects the subject and purpose of the text:
1. The sermon has direct biblical authority when its central idea and
purpose are the same as that of the text.
2. Indirect biblical authority comes to the sermon when a secondary
theme of the text is the main idea of the sermon.
3. Beyond that the sermon has only casual biblical authority or
even corrupted biblical authority when it does not reflect the
central idea and purpose of the text at all.Wayne McDill in 12 Essential Skills for Great Preaching(1993, 2006), states, “There is no doubt that the connection between the text and the sermon will make a difference in the authority with which the preacher speaks. If we believe the Bible is authoritative for the Christian community, we will want our preaching to draw on that authority. A faithful messenger must report what he is given to say, not declare a message of his own, however he may think it is.”Authority matters. There are many of us who are unknowingly influenced by the New Homiletic. While being careful to generalize, it seems that preachers of the emergent tradition are advocates of the New Homiletic. Doug Padgitt, Dan Kimball, Brian Maclaren (though even emergent leaders admit he is going off the theological deep end), and others are huge critics of propositional Aristotilean preaching. They have been influenced by the theology of Schleirmacher and Hans Frei (maybe unknowingly) and seemed to overreact against propositional preaching.
When one preaches according to the audience’s experience, then the authority becomes the audience. Thus, the preacher fails to fulfill his original biblical duty to speak what God has spoken. However, those who preach expository sermons rest on the solid foundation of God’s authority in His Word.
David Allen concludes:
“A high view of biblical authority creates a solid foundation for
expositional preaching. Such exposition will respect and reflect the
various literary genres in which God was pleased to reveal His Word. But the
view of biblical authority adovcated here requires that the umbrella term for
preaching today should not be “narrative,” “topical,” or any approach to
preaching other than the expository method. Biblical exposition week
after week from the pulpit is, as far as I am concerned, the logical outcome of ahigh view of biblical authority and the most effective means of fulfilling Paul’s mandate to ‘preach the Word.’”
We, as preachers and stewards of God’s Word have a divine mandate to preach what God has spoken. When we do this, then we possess the authority to call our audience to repentance and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. One must be faithful to the subject, structure, and substance of the biblical text. If that means the text is of the narrative genre, then by all means, structure it as a story. However, do not be afraid of propositional truth. We must preach for a verdict. In other words, hell is too hot and people are too precious for us to tell stories without any direction for repentance, without any urgency for truth.
