Message to Movement: A Preaching Intensive

Description:

Transform your preaching from information delivery to life-changing communication. This 4-session intensive takes you through the first building blocks of powerful sermon craft, from crystallizing your core message to designing sermons’ scenarios that move hearts and minds.

In Session 1, you'll learn to identify and sharpen the vigorous idea at the heart of every great sermon, using Davis and Robinson's analytical framework alongside Long's dual focus on function and message. Session 2 explores the deductive, expository approach with Robinson and Chapell, giving you tools to unfold biblical texts with clarity and authority. Session 3 bridges the gap between Scripture and daily life through Scott Wilson's Four-Page Sermon structure, ensuring your preaching connects doctrine to lived experience. Finally, Session 4 introduces the New Homiletics through Lowry's narrative plot model, teaching you to craft sermons as compelling stories that create tension, anticipation, and resolution.

Whether you're refining your craft or building foundational skills, this seminar equips you to preach sermons that don't just inform—they inspire movement.

Steps:

1. The Vigorous Idea – Finding Your Sermon's Core
   Every powerful sermon begins with one clear, compelling idea. Learn to identify and articulate the central message of your text using Davis and Robinson's analytical tools. Discover how Long's concepts of function and focus help you clarify not just what you're saying, but what you want to change for your listeners.
2. The Expository Path – Unfolding Biblical Truth
   Master the art of expository preaching with proven frameworks from Robinson and Chapell. Explore how to structure deductive sermons that systematically unfold Scripture's meaning with clarity and authority. Build confidence in letting the biblical text drive your message from introduction to application.
3. The Bridge Builder – From Scripture to Daily Life
   Bridge the gap between the Bible and modern experience using Scott Wilson's Four-Page Sermon structure. Learn to move seamlessly from biblical truth to contemporary relevance, ensuring your congregation sees how doctrine connects to their Monday morning realities.
4. The Sermon as Story – Crafting Narrative Flow
   Transform your sermons into compelling narratives using Lowry's plot-based homiletic approach. Discover how to create tension, build anticipation, and deliver resolution that keeps listeners engaged from start to finish. Move beyond three points and a poem to preaching that unfolds like a journey your congregation wants to take.

Learning Objectives:

List three or four general learning objectives for the seminar:

1. Analyze and articulate the core message of biblical texts using established homiletical frameworks (Davis, Robinson, Long), demonstrating the ability to identify a sermon's central idea, its intended function, and its theological focus.
2. Design and construct sermons using multiple homiletical approaches (deductive-expository, four-page structure, narrative plot), showing competence in selecting and applying the method best suited to the text, audience, and communicative goal.
3. Integrate biblical exegesis with contemporary application, creating sermons that maintain theological integrity while effectively bridging the gap between Scripture and the lived experience of modern listeners.

Evaluation Method

Assessment is based on the quality of written contributions and active participation in discussions.

• Written contributions:
  Each participant writes one contribution of approximately 4,000 characters (including spaces) for each of the four stages.
  These texts are published on the forum during the first week of each stage and constitute the core of the student’s personal work.
• Participation in discussions:
  During the second week, students engage on the forum (and possibly in videoconference) to comment on, expand, and discuss one another’s contributions.
  The quality of dialogue, depth of reflection, and ability to connect personal insights with studied sources are key evaluation criteria.
• Final grade:
  The final grade takes into account both:
  1. the consistency and quality of written contributions; and
  2. the richness and relevance of exchanges on the forum.