A couple of months back I finally finished a book that had been on my reading list for some time: Christ-Centered Preaching by Bryan Chapell. Chapell is the president of Covenant Theological Seminary in St. Louis, Missouri. In his work on preaching, he presents a useful and helpful homiletical model that will benefit both the seasoned preacher and seminarian alike. It goes like this:
Explanation---> Illustration--->Application
The careful preacher will weave a web of all three components to most effectively communicate the content of God's Word.
There is a singular statement that stands out to me in Chapell's book: "Explanation is for application." While application cannot properly be done until the Word is explained, application is not merely some component of exposition that can be eschewed under some misguided solus spiritus principle. The audience has the right to ask, "So what?" Many well-meaning, young Reformed preachers (of whom I am one) would do well to heed Chapell's advice here because the temptation to turn a sermon into an "oral essay" is strong. By following Chapell's model of redemptive preaching, sermons will avoid this pitfall. However, by emphasizing each chain of the so called "double helix", the preacher will avoid turning his sermons into therapuetic drivel as well. In his irenic way, Chapell avoids the extremes of turning preaching into either a lecture or a psychological pep talk. To put it simply, he is balanced and that alone should make his discussion of preaching appealing.
Many homiletic texts read in a cumbersome fashion because of the technical language that the discipline involves. Chapell's style, however, is both at once meticulous and perspicuous. He writes in a way that is understandable without marginalizing the reader who is coming to such concepts for the first time. In addition to this, Chapell provides useful helps in the appendices at the end of the book. It does not matter if you are a young preacher or a veteran preacher. Get this book in your library!
1 comment:
I especially appreciated Chapell's explanation of the Fallen Condition Focus (FCF). The FCF is the aspect of our human condition that requires the provision of God in his word. God gave his word to complete us (2 Tim. 3:16-17), and when we seek to discover how a particular passage meets a need that we have on account of our fallen condition, we are well on our way to making a Christ-centered application of our exposition.
Post a Comment