Expository Preaching in a World of Spiritual Nominalism


Book Description

The spiritual decay of nominalism threatens the established church worldwide. While spiritual lethargy is often addressed from the perspective of theology and discipleship, little attention has been given to the role of homiletics in revitalizing a congregation’s spiritual health. In this study, Dr. Johnson Raih explores the impact of preaching on members of Baptist churches in Imphal, Manipur, India, from 2000 to 2015. He utilizes interviews and questionnaires from pastors, church leaders, and lay members to assess the presence of nominalism within church congregations, along with the effects of various preaching methods on increasing or decreasing spiritual vitality. Combining this qualitative research with scriptural and theological insight, Raih suggests that expository preaching has the power to confront, and even eradicate, nominalism within the church. He draws on biblical examples, along with the methodology of John Stott and Timothy Keller, to offer ten practical recommendations for countering nominalism homiletically – whether in Imphal, India, or around the world.




Expository Preaching in a World of Spiritual Nominalism: Exploring the Churches in India's North East


Book Description

Nominalism threatens the church worldwide, yet little attention is given to the role of homiletics in revitalizing spiritual health. Johnson Raih suggests that expository preaching can confront and eradicate nominalism in the church.




Spirit-Led Preaching


Book Description

In the words of author Greg Heisler, “Spirit-Led Preaching is a call issued to preachers, pastors, and teachers of homiletics to recover the Holy Spirit for expository preaching in the same way we have recovered the biblical text. . . . My plan for doing this is to recover the doctrine of pneumatology (the study of spiritual beings/phenomena) for our theology of preaching, resulting in a renewed emphasis on the powerful combination of Word and Spirit working together as the catalyst for powerful expository preaching.” Heisler thoroughly examines how the Holy Spirit illuminates and empowers the preacher, opens the hearts of the hearers, and applies the message to their lives. Indeed, to ignore the Holy Spirit’s role in sermon preparation and delivery would be a considerable oversight.




Encountering God through Expository Preaching


Book Description

Preaching occurs when a holy man of God opens the Word of God and says to the people of God, “Come and experience God with me in this text.” Encountering God through Expository Preaching ushers preachers of all levels of experience through the practical steps necessary to preach with power. The authors not only cover the exegetical skills and homiletical techniques necessary for sound preaching, but they also dive deeper to emphasize how a pastor’s character and reliance upon the Holy Spirit are essential to preaching God’s word effectively. As the preacher encounters God in preaching, he will preach with spiritual power and see lives transformed and churches strengthened.




Reflections on My Call to Preach


Book Description

Travel with revered preacher and author Fred Craddock through his early years as he considers what made him take to the pulpit. ?For some reason, I felt I had to say ?Yes? or ?No? to the ministry so I could feel free again. My siblings and friends talked almost casually about options and preferences as to careers, but with no evident sense of urgency. Not so with me. I did not then nor do I now know whether the burden of choice was a trait of personality, a kind of super-conscientiousness, whether the calling to ministry itself carried a weight, a burden, peculiar to the task itself. Rightly or wrongly, when I thought of possibly becoming a journalist, that would be a choice, 100 percent mine. When I considered becoming a minister, that was not totally my decision; I was responding to God?s will for me. Of course, I had been told that journalists, lawyers, teachers, merchants, farmers?all could understand their lives as a vocation, a calling, but what I am telling you is that I perceived, I felt, I experienced the idea of being a preacher as different, and that difference was sobering, even burdensome. That?s why advice about not being in a hurry, taking my time, was not helpful even if wise. If it was my decision, why could I not make it now; if it was God?s decision, why did not God tell me, or at least tell my father or my mother? I prayed for the ache to leave me.? ?Excerpt from Reflections on My Call to Preach




The Theory of Preaching


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The Essential Principles of Expository Preaching


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"With great joy I highly recommend this book to you. It will encourage and equip you for effectiveness in your preaching." -- Dr. Elbert E. Elliott, BA, MA, MDiv, PhD The greatest need at this crucial hour is to equip a new generation of God-gripped and Spirit-filled expository preachers throughout the world. I am convinced after four decades of preaching that if my preaching is not God-centered (biblical), the temptation is to substitute with man-centered preaching, manipulating the message with pop psychology, extra-biblical revelations, worldview options, opinions of man, gimmickries, dummy shows, and money tricks. Today, with this kind of ministry culture, many preachers have muffled and muted the biblical message to a tragic trend. In contrast, the uniqueness of expository preaching is that the message (textual unit) is maximized and the preacher's pedantry is minimized. In other words, the matter becomes more important than the manner (style). This generation deserves to hear the greatest expository sermons preached under the unction of the Holy Spirit. A serious study of this book will ignite your passion to "Preach the Word" as an imperative from the Almighty God who inspired His Word by the Holy Spirit (2 Timothy 3:16-4:2). Oommen George Kutty, MTh, MSL, DDiv, DRS, is the Founder/President of Asia for Christ Ministry (USA), and Hope for Asia Bible College and Seminary (India). He currently holds the Master of Sacred Literature (MSL) and the Doctor of Religious Studies (DRS) in Pulpit Communication and Expository Preaching from Trinity College of the Bible and Trinity Theological Seminary, Newburgh, Indiana. He is the author of Driven with Destiny and Hallelujah. In addition to his international preaching engagements, he is also the Professor of Expository Preaching at Hope for Asia Bible College and Seminary, India.




Operation World


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The Beauty of the Cross


Book Description

Viladesau focuses on poetry and the visual arts as he seeks to understand 'The Beauty of the Cross' as it developed in theology and art from the early Christian era through the middle ages.




The Expository Times


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