The Witness Of Preaching Summary

Thomas Long, in the first chapter of the book, The Witness of Preaching provides the crucial ingredients of preaching. This outline of the ingredients of preaching helped me understand what it takes to give a good sermon. According to Long, there are four main pieces to preaching. To me, two of them are so obvious that it is easy to overlook, but Long includes them. The four pieces of preaching: Someone to listen (Long, 15), A preacher or preachers (Long, 16), a sermon (Long, 16), and the presence of Christ (Long, 16). The congregation and the preacher are the two more obvious things, you need someone to listen, and you need someone to speak to the listeners. The sermon, Long explains, is not as straightforward as a speech. Instead,
(Mitchell, 13) He then states that biblical text should be carefully chosen to include behavioral purpose, brevity, and guidance in a specific human need. (Mitchell, 13) Not all texts have a specified behavioral purpose, such as the parable of the good samaritan, which implies the behavioral purpose of compassion. (Mitchell, 13) Mitchell is very careful to state that if a verse has more than one behavioral goal, then the entire verse does not have to be preached. (Mitchell, 14) One important point that Mitchell made is that it can be helpful to use tools like the Revised Common Lectionary. (Mitchell, 15) He states that although some people may find them restricting, they can be an amazing guideline to keep a rotation through the Bible and therefore prevent repetition. (Mitchell, 15) Preventing repetition is important because it is easy to just pick one part of the Bible and focus on just a handful of parts. (Mitchell,
The first of these is a geographical difference between the way preaching developed in Jerusalem versus how it developed in Athens. In Jerusalem, the focus of preaching was solely on the words of the preacher, or what was being said, instead of how it was being said. (Hogan, 17-18) However, in Athens, the focus was on rhetoric and how to make the preaching more interesting and memorable. In short, Athens developed a style of preaching that was meant to win over the audiences. (Hogan, 19-22) The second tension that Hogan covers is over qualifications and the examples of Peter and Paul are used. Hogan explains that Peter was called by Jesus to be the Rock and, like Peter, some people are called to be preachers and don’t necessarily need anything more. (Hogan, 24-25) On the other hand, Paul had the credentials for preaching and used his experience to become a preacher, very similarly to how many people go to seminary to become pastors. (Hogan,