Preaching

Jeremy Ryan Williams

The aim of the project was to enhance the project director’s skills in expository preaching from Old Testament historical narrative at Black Creek Baptist Church, Collinsville, Alabama. The proposed project follows the preaching-skills enhancement model. The project director researched the field of expository preaching for best practices. An expert in the field of expository preaching evaluated the best practices. Based on best practices, the project director developed a series of sermons for evaluation by an expert in the field of preaching and an expert in the Old Testament before they are delivered. After feedback, the project director delivered the developed sermons to the Black Creek Baptist Church congregation. Selected congregants provided input to the project director through listening guides. An expert in expository preaching evaluated the sermons through a video presentation. In the end, a final evaluation took place by the project director to determine the level of enhancement in the preaching skills in the field of expository preaching from historical narrative portions of Scripture.

Robert Kevin Mims

The project’s purpose addressed text-driven preaching as one of the methods available to pastors and church leaders searching for a remedy or program to help revive the local church. Church revitalization has become critical as pastors eagerly search for ways and means to church renewal. Opportunities to reach congregations concerning church revitalization during the most populous gatherings, those occurring on Sunday morning, are missed. This project enhanced the project director's skill in text-driven preaching in conveying and convicting the congregation at Ridgeview Baptist Church in Danville, Illinois, of the understanding and need for church revitalization and, most importantly, participating in the church’s renewal.

Elizabeth Wright Anderson D.Min.

Preachers who have not received theological training can learn to prepare expository biblical sermons using an inductive dual authorial intent hermeneutic. A method to do so was devised based on inductive Bible study techniques and a dual authorial intent hermeneutic. This method took into account the intents and purposes of the Bibles original authors and the ultimate divine author. The method used was published as Thoughtful Proclaimer: a Bottom-up Guide to Preparing Bible Messages that Transform You From the Inside Out. This method was taught in week-long seminars in the United States and finally tested by training preachers in Nigeria.

James David Matlock II D.Min.

This project argues that the first step to church revitalization is the revitalization of the pulpit ministry. Then, it explores the biblical basis for text-driven preaching and its role in the revitalization of the local church.
Chapter 1 introduces the thesis of the project, explaining the need for pulpit revitalization in the life of the church today.
Chapter 2 explores the role of preaching from a biblical and theological perspective as it relates to the need for evangelism and church revitalization.
Chapter 3 explore the vital role that preaching plays in the ministry of church revitalization.
Chapter 4 examines the need to apply sound hermeneutics and improving homiletical skills in the effort to revitalize the student’s pulpit ministry.
Chapter 5 is an evaluation of the project, which includes feedback from pastors and professors who critiqued selected sermons preached by the student.

Robert Eloy Martinez D.Min.

The purpose of this project is to develop a healthy text-driven preaching and learning culture among the disciples at Redemption Hill Baptist Church in Albany, NY. Chapter 1 introduces the ministry context and story of Redemption Hill Baptist Church, along with the overall goals represented in this project. Chapter 2 shows the biblical and theological support for developing a text-driven preaching and learning culture within the local church through an exegesis of three passages of Scripture (Ephesians 4:11-13; 2 Timothy 3:16-17; 2 Timothy 4:1-4). Chapter 3 presents historical and practical support for the need of a healthy church culture that is centered on text-driven preaching and learning. Chapter 4 moves to describe the actual project implemented, concentrating on the biblical content, and the teaching methodology within the course that was developed and taught over a twelve-week period of time. Finally, chapter 5 is focused on evaluating the project that was completed while also regarding the success of the goals implemented, along with any variations desired.

Ryan James Lawrence Dr. D.Min.

In this portfolio the writer explored his ministry journey and identity through the lens of time, looking at his past, future, and present, in order to plot a course forward. In considering his past he examined how his theology of preaching had arisen out of his experiences and the relationship between biography and theology. In considering his future, he explored how the imagination could be used to help lead people and institutions to new horizons. In considering his present he researched how the COVID-19 pandemic had impacted preachers in his denomination, The Canadian Baptists of Ontario and Quebec (CBOQ), and how group story sharing could be used to aid in their healing and recovery. The research portion of this portfolio used a narrative study, the heart of which was a focus group meeting of five pastors, followed up by interviews in which participants contributed to the evaluation of the project. The key finding was that participants endured many common struggles and hardships, including the experience of “preaching into a void,” which described the hardship of speaking without a connection to one’s audience. Sharing their stories helped participants to understand and normalize these experiences, aiding in their healing.

William Stevens D.Min.

God’s Givers:
A Preaching/Teaching Curriculum Based on Old Testament Narratives
Drawn from the Pentateuch and Historical Books

This dissertation project focuses on the biblical theology of giving as expressed in the Old Testament. There are four main goals: content creation; publication of the content; distribution of content for teaching/preaching; and engagement with the content – presentations to targeted market segments. The application of the dissertation project is to communicate that the practice of giving in the church community today can be informed, enriched, and inspired by the biblical patterns and principles found in Old Testament narratives. The core of the dissertation project is the drafting of a preaching/teaching series on profiles of giving in the Old Testament based on a selection of historical narratives drawn from the Pentateuch and Historical Books. To complement the teaching series, the project will create ancillary educational resources: blogs, published articles, videos, and a book.

William J. Stevens, D. Min.
Matthew McKellar, Ph.D., Advisor
School of Theology
Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2022

Seung Ju Jung

The purpose of this project is to enhancing the project director's expository preaching skills at Happy Church of Daejeon, South Korea, in order to enhance congregational awareness of the biblical text. Through the entire process if planning and implementing the project, the results of the project director's expository preaching skill improvement and the congregation's awareness of the biblical text were presented.

The project director looked at the current situation of ministry in this age and recognized that the word of God must be properly proclaimed through the language of the preachers. There are many ways to deliver God's words, but in this project adopted the principle of expository preaching, which correctly interprets and explains the biblical text. In order to discover common theories of expository preaching, traditional expository preaching theories were analyzed, and based on these, more advanced alternatives were found and methods to be applied to expository preaching texts were studies. Based on the theories discovered through study, a preaching text written by applying modern preaching to the traditional expository preaching theory was preached and was evaluated by congregations of Happy Baptist Church. Throughout the entire process of the project, this project was implemented with a focus on enhancing the project director's research on the biblical text, improving the skill of writing expository preaching, and enhancing the congregation's awareness of the biblical text.

Jay Joye

The purpose of this study is to explore how a preacher appeals to emotions to impact congregants as it correlates with cognitive neuroscience findings.
Countless Biblical texts highlight the importance of emotions in the life of a believer. Likewise, homiletics has long encouraged emotional preaching, calling communicators to wed together logos and pathos. Recent advancements in cognitive neuroscience stress emotions’ importance. Despite the Biblical, homiletical, neuroscientific, and cultural emphases, a lack of expression of emotion may be characteristic of homiletical methodology in the dominant American Protestant church culture.
This study utilized a qualitative design using semi-structured interviews with six pastors of different races from reformed denominations. All six pastors were committed to emotional appeals in their preaching. The literature review and constant-comparative analysis of the six interviewees focused on four research questions: how does a preacher appeal to emotions, how is the impact of a sermon measured, what obstacles stand in the way of emotional preaching, and how do these appeals correlate to cognitive neuroscience?
The literature review focused on three key areas to understand a preacher’s appeal to emotions: homiletics’ emphasis on the use of emotions, cognitive neuroscience’s support for appeals to emotions, and the doctrine of illumination.
This study concluded four things regarding appeals to emotion in preaching.
Consensus exists between homileticians, neuroscientists, and practitioners regarding the importance of appealing to emotions. The effectiveness of emotional preaching outweighs the risks associated with it. No appeals to emotion are likely apart from preachers identifying with the emotions of others. The mystery of the Holy Spirit in illumination does not mitigate the necessity of emotional appeals.
Four practices are recommended for preachers: Know your emotional God. Know your emotional self. Know the emotion of your scripture text. Know your emotional contexts.

Jeryl Salmond

Like so many other congregations, small churches are suffering from declining membership, and many have closed their doors. This decline has caused many pastors to be concerned about their ability to survive. As a consequence, churches have focused on survival tactics which result in an inward focused church in order to safeguard their limited resources. This inward focus minimizes missional ministry and ignores the pain and brokenness of people in the community that surrounds the church. This issue is particularly impactful in the urban context, where social challenges are prevalent and evidenced by the visible amount of homelessness, hunger, and poverty in the community. This thesis investigates the utilization of preaching stewardship to encourage growth in missional outreach in a small urban church. The preacher must be intentional about developing and delivering sermons that demonstrate the symmetry between stewardship and outreach ministry. This project focused on a small urban church and seeks to demonstrate that preaching stewardship is influential in encouraging growth in missional outreach to offset the needs of the community beyond the church.