Reading: Applying Chapter 14

APPLYING CHAPTER 14 

1. How do you decide what to preach for a given service? 

2. How well do most of your sermons accomplish the four purposes of preaching: 

a. Proclaim a truth? 

b. Explain its meaning? 

c. Apply it to life? 

d. Encourage action? 

e. Which come naturally, and which do you have to work to include? 

3. The chapter lists nine keys to using the Bible. 

a. Which of these do you need to work on more? 

b. How will you do that? 

4. Who are your favorite preachers? 

a. What can you learn from them about how to preach? 

b. What works for them but doesn’t seem natural for you? 

5. The chapter lists the following eleven tensions in preaching. For each one, do your sermons tend to lie on one end or the other, or somewhere in between? 

a. Emotional or intellectual? 

b. Prepared or spontaneous? 

c. Evangelistic or teaching or exhorting? 

d. Narrative or linear? 

e. Topical or expository? 

f. Focusing on eternal truths or current events? 

g. Encouraging engagement with the world or separation from the world? 

h. Covering the whole Bible or focusing on certain passages? 

i. Emphasizing personal holiness or God’s forgiveness? 

j. Including mainly the chosen few or every tribe and tongue? 

k. Telling people what God says or teaching people to hear God? 

6. What did this exercise tell you about your preaching style? 

7. In areas where you are close to one side, what will you do to increase your communication with listeners who are on the other? 

8. Do you tend toward any of the “don’ts”? If so, what will you do about it? 

9. List ways you can learn more about the practice of preaching. Which will you do first?