Now go, and I, even I, will be with your mouth and teach you what you should speak. This assurance of the Lord's sovereign provision comforted me again and again during my seminary journey when I was struggling with. The completion of this dissertation is tangible evidence that the called can still rely on the empowering presence of the Lord. Just as the Lord graciously provided Aaron to help Moses in his task, He provided many "Aarons" to me.
The Lord gave her to me just before I embarked on this journey and she has been close by my side every step of the way. But the impossibilities of the situation pushed me to trust in the Lord's possibilities.
INTRODUCTION
The message of the Bible is a message of spiritual truth addressed to the human mind. This symmetry is in the interest of developing a well-balanced picture of the three aspects. The third characteristic element of expository preaching is that the preacher explains important grammatical and/or syntactic aspects of the passage.
The sixth characteristic element of expository preaching is that the preacher offers thoughtful application to the hearers from the implications of the passage. It can demonstrate the power of the doctrine applied to the lives of biblical saints.
Prayer
Such scoring allows for a full range of outcomes while allowing the evaluator sufficient differences to assign values to each question. On a personal level, the evaluator must be aware of his need for insight and alert to the spiritual danger of listening to Christian preaching in a purely academic way. Sermon evaluation is a privileged task where the evaluator has the opportunity to hear God's word even while working.
If the discipline of analyzing sermons has a numbing effect on the evaluator regarding God's message, he would be better off leaving the work to someone else. Even where the final evaluation may present serious criticism of a sermon, the evaluator's first position should recognize the privilege and responsibility of hearing Christian preaching. Further, attempting to evaluate in a detached, cold manner can destroy the ability of the evaluator to hear the content as it is intended to be heard.
With these considerations in mind, the evaluator's best means of directing the right mindset is prayer. At the interpersonal level, the evaluator must be alert to the danger of being unfair, careless, or unclear, so that the value of his evaluation to others is diminished. The evaluation task includes an ethical standard that requires the evaluator to strive to be fair and diligent in his judgments.
Therefore, the evaluator needs an unbiased orientation towards the preacher, a quality interaction with the content and clearly. A failure to execute on any of these needs can significantly reduce the value of the entire activity. Given these personal and interpersonal needs of sermon evaluation, the following sample prayer may guide the evaluator in his petition.14.
Listening and Notation
They should be answered only after the evaluator has listened carefully to the entire sermon. If the evaluator does not have an exceptional memory, he will not be able to answer the. His notes should also15 show the logical movement and organization of the sermon as much as possible.
The notes can contain various quotes from the preacher and of course any content that the evaluator recognizes as relevant to the evaluation questions. In short, the notes must effectively capture the entire development of the sermon from beginning to end. It is recognized in qualitative analysis that a project's distinct priorities.
A live sermon, in which the evaluator is present in the congregation, has some obvious benefits in terms of understanding. Not only can the evaluator see and hear the preacher, but he also participates in other preaching dynamics that contribute to understanding, such as audience interaction and awareness raising. Without the option to pause or replay, the evaluator may lose content while recording his notes.
Furthermore, if the evaluator is present in the congregation, his work space is likely to be limited and the convenience of a computer may be unavailable or inconvenient. With a recorded sermon, the evaluator is able to hear the inflections and timing of delivery that contribute to understanding. He is also able to pause or replay parts of the message for the sake of understanding or taking notes.
Evaluating the Central Concerns
To meet the central concern of expository preaching, the evaluator must answer the following questions: “Was the sermon thoroughly involved in revealing the meaning and. Much” (40 points): The entire sermon focused on a legitimate unit of exposition in Scripture. The direction of the sermon was influenced by the Bible, although the contributions of such content were not necessarily great.
Furthermore, the direction of the sermon was based on something other than the original message of a Bible writer. Was the sermon thoroughly devoted to teaching matters of established Christian dogma? The following descriptions serve as a guide to this determination. Very” (40 points): The entire sermon focused on dogmatic Christian matters in which the preacher clearly presented and embraced a central position and demonstrated its importance in an orderly manner.
A lot” (30 points): The sermon was not entirely devoted to the treatment of dogmatic Christian matters. Some (20 points): Part of the sermon was devoted to doctrinal matters in the form of supplementary doctrinal excursus or short explanations related to the development of thinking. Little” (10 points): The preacher discussed some doctrinal matters or made some doctrinal claims, but did not make much effort to explain them and they were not important in the overall development of the sermon.
But if such a challenge arose, the doctrinal assessment of the sermon should be diminished. To address the central concern of Christ-centered preaching, the evaluator must answer the following question: "Was the sermon thoroughly developed to point to God's redeeming grace found solely in Christ?" The following descriptions serve as a guide to this. Not really” (0 points): The preacher may or may not have mentioned Jesus at some point in the sermon, but he did not make any legitimate effort to explain or emphasize aspects of the gospel, or Jesus may have received much discussion, but the emphases were not based on God's redeeming grace, or the entire sermon was legalistic or oppressive.
Evaluating the Distinctive Elements
The response ranges from a sermon with a thorough and accurate presentation of the content and logic of the passage to a sermon that blatantly ignores the biblical author's thoughts on the subject. The response ranges from a sermon with a thoughtful presentation of important grammatical/syntax details that really aid interpretation and add insight to the message, to a sermon that lacks such details entirely. The response ranges from a sermon with a thoughtful presentation of important literary/historical explanations that really help the interpretation and add insight to the message, to a sermon that completely lacks such details.
The answer varies from a sermon with explicitly stated principles that are prominently and clearly drawn from the passage to a sermon that offers a muddled presentation of timeless truth that lacks meaningful identifiable principles. The answer varies from a sermon with a clear central doctrinal statement or set of statements that receives diligent attention to a sermon with no recognizable focus on propositional doctrinal statements. The answer ranges from a sermon with clear, biblical, well-reasoned justification for any doctrines presented to a sermon that offers no legitimate justification for its teachings.
The answer ranges from a sermon in which doctrines are clearly applied in specific ways to the contemporary situation of listeners, individually or corporately, to a. The answer ranges from a sermon in which aspects of God's character are powerfully explained and magnified to a sermon in which no significant attention is paid to God's character. The answer varies from a sermon that powerfully explains and magnifies aspects of the person or work of Christ to a sermon that pays no significant attention to Christ.
The answer ranges from a sermon that presents clear and insightful aspects of the redemptive-historical context to a sermon that makes no legitimate attempt to address redemptive-historical considerations. The answer ranges from a sermon in which gospel-related promises are essential to the message and are paid attention to, to a sermon in which no mention of gospel-related promises is made. With regard to the Holy Spirit, it can be discussed in several ways that relate to the distinctive elements of Christ-centered preaching.
Labeling and Reflection
However, the above method provides a legitimate analysis of important issues related to three aspects. The main purpose of this chapter is to focus on the value of the method. Jim Cymbala: Cymbala is the pastor of The Brooklyn Tabernacle in New York, New York.
In the final results, exactly twenty percent (12 out of 60) of the sermons are in this series. So more than one third of the pastors preached at least one sermon that was weak in all three aspects. More than half of the pastors preached at least one sermon that was strong in all three aspects.
In all three aspects, the entire right side of the table significantly favors the New Testament sermons. These results can be examined to determine the average combined weight of the three sermons of each minister. The average combined weight of the three sermons of each minister Combined weight Average9 pastors.
First, the reliability of the method is strengthened by the fact that the evaluations appear to be. There was no attempt to influence the supporting points in the sermon by the features of the text. Perhaps the key oversight regarding the seriousness of the sermon was his neglect of the first characteristic element of expository preaching.
