Saturday, March 14, 2009

More on Johnny Can't Preach

Thanks to blog of Kevin DeYoung at Reformed Forum.

Gordon gives several pieces of evidence for his negative conclusion.

1) Anecdotally, he estimates that only 15% of the sermons he’s heard in the past 25 years had a discernible point. And of those 15%, less than 10% had a point based on the text of Scripture.

2) Most churchgoers wants shorter sermons, not because they have short attention spans, but because their preacher, God bless him, can’t preach very well.

3) Gordon looks at Robert Dabney’s Lectures on Rhetoric from the 19th century and concludes that Dabney's “seven cardinal requisites of preaching” are missing from most of our pulpits: textual fidelity, unity, evangelical tone (is the minister eager to bless the congregation or scold them?), instructiveness, movement, point, and order. These are not subjective measures, mind you. These are basic fundamentals. No one in the history of homiletics has encouraged disunity in the sermon. These are things we can all agree on. And yet, they aren't there.

Friday, March 13, 2009

Why Johnny Can't Preach

David Gordon talks about his book, Why Johnny Can't Preach.

Challenging and excellent stuff!

Monday, March 02, 2009

Theological Word of the Day