Tag Archives: homiletics

Events

Still Time to Register

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There is still time to register for next week’s Symposium presented by the Biblical and Theological studies department of Providence Theological Seminary featuring my presentation “Imagining a Better Way: Towards a Theology of Transformative Preaching.” I’ve been told that there has been a great response so far and that we are quickly approaching the room capacity. (It’s amazing what a free lunch can do!) However, there is no limit to the number of people who can join on Zoom. To register, visit:
Seminary Symposium – Providence University College and Theological Seminary

Publications

“The Heresy of Relevance” Published in Pro Ecclesia

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The electronic version of my article “The Heresy of Relevance: Bonhoeffer’s Warning to Preachers” has just been published on the Sage Journals website.  It will be appearing in print in the February 2022 edition of Pro Eccleisa: A Journal of Catholic and Evangelical Theology.  If you have personal or library access to Sage articles, you can read it here. Continue reading “The Heresy of Relevance” Published in Pro Ecclesia →

Quotes, Reflections

The Preacher as Bridge-Builder: A Misguided Metaphor

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Photo by kyler trautner on Unsplash

One of the more prominent homiletical metaphors that is operative in the imaginations of preachers of many different stripes and backgrounds is that of the preacher as a bridge-builder between the ancient world of Scripture and our current cultural moment.  Through careful rhetorical engineering, the preacher is able to construct a bridge that is capable of carrying the biblical freight across the chasm of the ages, in the process demonstrating its relevance for today.  Continue reading The Preacher as Bridge-Builder: A Misguided Metaphor →

Quotes

The Pulpit is a Prow

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“Yet the preacher of the gospel of grace cannot be a mere minstrel, grinning good cheer in an age of despair.  The preacher’s struggle against the darkness of this present world must be furnished with a full kit: the Bible, the sword of the Spirit, understandable now as it was not understood prior to modernity;1 the history of God’s peaceable Israel old and ongoing (called in Scripture the preparation of the gospel of peace); and supremely (though like the Trinity never so named in Scripture) the primary theology that gives our sermon its center, its raison d’être, its point. Continue reading The Pulpit is a Prow →

  1. While not denying the gains of modern biblical scholarship, I would be inclined to see the legacy of the historical critical method of interpreting the Bible in more ambiguous terms than McClendon seems to at this point. ↩
Public Lectures

Back in Toronto: Upcoming CSPH Conference

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I am going to be back in Toronto on the weekend of September 29 to present a paper at the Canadian Society of Presbyterian History annual conference at Knox College.  The subject of my paper is the curious case of J.J.A. Proudfoot, the son of the distinguished 19th century Southwestern Ontario Presbyterian church planter William Proudfoot. Continue reading Back in Toronto: Upcoming CSPH Conference →