“From the very beginning, immense pressure was exerted to tone down the gospel and make it something else than an exclusive gospel, to take out of it what Dr. Thomas Chalmers liked to describe as ‘the grand particularities’ of the gospel” (Macartney, Preaching Without Notes, pp. 14-15)
Building to the Top
“The Apostle Paul was fond of what we might describe as the acculmulating climax, or the pyramidical sentence. He delighted in placing one great proposition and truth upon another, until from one grand and solid base he reached an exalted and sublime apex” (Clarence Macartney, Preaching Without Notes, p. 12)
Avoiding the Sermonic Weasel
“Passive and subjunctive verbs and prepositional phrases cut the life out of oral speech. No wonder the narratives of the Old Testament preach so easily. They are alive with strong nouns and active verbs” (Lowry, The Homiletical Plot, p. 111)
Gospel, Not Hectoring
“The awfulness of human guilt needs redemption, not a lecture” (Lowry, The Homiletical Plot, p. 86).
The Moment of Resolution
“The crucial moment in the sermon as homiletical bind is not in the ‘asking’ but in the revelation stage when matters are turned upside down, and thereby seen in a new way . . . Most literary plots find their climax in the moment of resolution sometime before the ending” (Lowry, The Homiletical Plot, p. …
The Devil You Say
It is initially curious to some that fundamentalists will say, in their statements of faith, that they believe in a personal devil. At first glance it might appear to be a statement about the inspiration of the Bible — since the devil is such an obvious reality in Scripture, and since the liberals were engaged …
And Inside Out
“The fundamental mistake of the liberal Protestant pulpit of the last forty years is that it presumes that the gospel is continuous with human experience. It would be closer to the truth to say that the gospel is continuous with human experience after the gospel has turned human experience upside down” (Lowry, The Homiletical Plot, …
A Long Tunnel is Still a Tunnel
“Unfortunately, the more we know about a subject, the more apt we are to stay locked into our assumptions, and hence to become blind to alternative perspectives” (Lowry, The Homiletical Plot, p. 61).
No Open Vision
INTRODUCTION:And so we are expecting the rise of Samuel, and the fall of the house of Eli. Eli warned his sons of this, and a prophet warned Eli. And now the word of the Lord comes to Samuel for the first time, and it is a word that highlights the loneliness of a prophetic calling. …
How Sudden Turns Teach
“Although not every joke form contains as radical a reversal . . . nonetheless, the humor is occasioned by the sudden shift which is unexpected . . . This sudden reversal in preaching comes as the clue to resolution reverses the train of diagnostic thought. The resultant shock does not come in the form of …