Robinson - Biblical preaching: the development and delivery of expository messages

L ewis Chafer began the preface to his massive eight-volume set on theology with the simple words, To be read. In this preface I would like to give credit to people and forces that have shaped my approach to biblical preaching, and I would appreciate if you would read it.

I have been fascinated with preaching since I was in my early teens. As a boy I began a series of diaries that recorded the tedious events of a fairly humdrum life. Years later when cleaning out my fathers apartment, I came across one of those diaries. Apparently on a Thursday evening I had gone to a service at the First Baptist Church in New York City to hear Dr. Harry Ironside preach. Ironside was the pastor of the Moody Church in Chicago. I cant imagine what attracted me to a religious gathering on a Thursday evening. At the time I was sure that God kept office hours on Sunday morning. Yet I wrote in my diary, Some preachers preach for an hour and it seems like thirty minutes; others preach for thirty minutes and it seems like an hour. I wonder what the difference is?

I have spent my life trying to answer that question.

In college I spent many Friday evenings at the library reading books on preaching. I read several of the Yale lectures. I was swimming in deep waters, and though I didnt fully understand what I was reading, I read anyhow. When I arrived at Dallas Seminary after graduation, I was disappointed to find there wasnt much instruction offered on preaching. Dallas wasnt alone in slighting the practical disciplines. Most seminaries at the time did not have courses in Christian education, counseling, pedagogy, or preaching. It was assumed, I guess, that if you knew the content you could communicate it. During my senior year a few of my classmates asked me to teach a course in preaching on Tuesday evenings, and I agreed. I taught them all that I knew (and much I didnt know, for that matter), and in the process I learned more about the subject of homiletics than any of the other students in the group.

After graduation I served at the First Baptist Church in Medford, Oregon, and while I was there the administration at Dallas invited me to come back and help in the expanded preaching department. When I went back to my alma mater, I tried to figure out what I didnt know about the field of communication (an enormous amount) and preaching (not a subject that academics care much about). So while I taught at the seminary I earned a masters degree from Southern Methodist University and after that a PhD at the University of Illinois. I minored in sociology at SMU, and in radio/TV at Illinois. It turned out that I have used my minors more than my majors. All this education was an attempt to answer the question, What makes a preacher interesting and a sermon effective?

While at the University of Illinois I began to work through the basic elements in the preparation of sermons. The subject was not addressed directly at the university, but my first basic insight came during a class on oral interpretation. We were studying a poem by e. e. cummings that I had been assigned to deliver to the class the following week. During my preparation I realized that we were asking the same kinds of questions to interpret the poem that we used at seminary to interpret a passage in the Bible.

During my first semester after I returned to Dallas I read Design for Preaching by H. Grady Davis. That book changed my concept of what a sermon should be. In later years when I was writing the first edition of Biblical Preaching , I went back to Daviss book to give him proper credit for his ideas, and I wondered whether he would have been complimented or insulted by my references to him. I owe him a great debt, though, for the way his book influenced me.

This is the third edition of Biblical Preaching . Why a third edition? Over the years I have received a great deal of feedback from teachers and readers of the book. Most of the response has been positive, and I thank God for the way he has used Biblical Preaching in the education of those who proclaim his Word. The negative responses centered on the exercises provided to reinforce the teaching in the book. For many readers they simply didnt work. Robert Permenter, a graduate of the DMin program at Gordon-Conwell and a teacher of preaching at Bethel Seminary, came to my aid. Bob contributed a number of new exercises for this edition, and the two of us have tested them with students in several classes at two different seminaries. I hope you will find them helpful in understanding the counsel offered throughout this book.