The Kerygmatic Spirit
apostolic preaching in the 21st century
Amos Yong
Edited by Josh P. S. Samuel
Reflections and Afterword by Tony Richie
THE KERYGMATIC SPIRIT
Apostolic Preaching in the 21st Century
Copyright 2018 Amos Yong. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, W. th Ave., Suite , Eugene, OR 97401 .
Cascade Books
An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers
W. th Ave., Suite
Eugene, OR 97401
www.wipfandstock.com
paperback isbn: 978-1-4982-9817-9
hardcover isbn: 978-1-4982-9818-6
ebook isbn: 978-1-5326-5697-2
Cataloguing-in-Publication data:
Names: Yong, Amos, author. | Samuel, Josh P. S., editor. | Richie, Tony, author.
Title: The kerygmatic spirit : apostolic preaching in the 21st century / Amos Yong, edited by Josh P. S. Samuel, with reflections and an afterword by Tony Richie.
Description: Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2018 | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: isbn 978-1-4982-9817-9 ( paperback ) | isbn 978-1-4982-9818-6 ( hardcover ) | isbn 978-1-5326-5697-2 ( ebook )
Subjects: LCSH: Preaching | Pentecostalism | Pentecostalssermons | Sermons, American.
Classification: BX8762.Z6 Y66 2018 ( print ) | BX8762.Z6 ( ebook )
Manufactured in the U.S.A. November 19, 2018
Table of Contents
To
Bob & Nancy Jonsson
Ralph Herbert & Anita Killebrew
Steve & Tara Overman
~ Preachers after Pentecost ~
Preface
I consider this a fourth volume in a series published by Cascade Books, following my The Dialogical Spirit (2014), The Missiological Spirit (2014), and The Hermeneutical Spirit (2017). Whereas the previous three are largely reprints of previously published journal articles and essays, this one is a collection of previously preached sermons. However, as I do not write out my sermons, the book you hold in your hands results from the hard transcription work of volume editor Josh P. S. Samuel. I had met Josh at a Society for Pentecostal Studies meeting before and knew he had worked in his doctoral thesis on Pentecostal preaching and worship, so I inquired about his interest in helping me get these sermons transcribed for publication. Along the way, Tony Richie, a Holiness-Pentecostal Church of God (Cleveland, Tennessee) pastor and theologian who has been a co-conspirator in many things Pentecostal-theological, agreed to include some perspective as a seasoned Pentecostal preacher.
The appendix provides a full list of Yong sermons preached since 1999, a record that I began to maintain electronically in that year. Most of the sermons since 1999 exist in outline and note form electronically, far fewer are archived either in audio or video format, and even of the latter bunch, far fewer are of the quality that enabled transcription. In my last move (from Virginia to California in the summer of 2014), I threw out handwritten notes that I had kept for the dozens of sermons I had preached prior to 1999, reaching back at least to the mid-1980s when I traveled with Bethany Bible Colleges Team Ministries group that went out to churches in the Northern Bay Area on weekends.
The published version of the sermons in this volume were transcribed and edited initially by Josh Samuel and then edited again by me. The audio of fourteen of these sermons are made available by Fuller Theological Seminary on Soundcloud at http://bit.ly/amos_yong_audio for those interested in listening to their delivery beyond reading their content. Three of these fourteen sermons, numbers 2, 9, and 12, are available in video format on Youtube at http://bit.ly/amos_yong_video. Unfortunately no usable audio or video archive of sermon 3, preached at All Nations Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota in March 2010, remain.
Editorially for the printed sermons in this volume, we have attempted to be consistent regarding the following guidelines:
The grammar has been smoothed over and punctuation decisions have been made keeping readability and comprehensibility chiefly in mind.
Brackets indicate added text, usually by editor, not found in the recordings.
Ellipses indicate words, phrases, or portions of the recordings not preserved in the transcriptions.
Footnotes have been added (identified as being from the editor when by Josh Samuel) for explanatory, contextual, and content purposes.
Numbers have been spelled out mostly, except when referring to scriptural chapters and verses or to large figures.
At the end of my first year in youth ministry (on 5 June 1988), the Fairfield Assembly of God youth group gave me a farewell gift, a name-engraved, leather-bound, thin-line edition of the New International Version (NIV) of the Bible (1978; rev. ed. 1983), that I preached from for approximately the next two decades plus. The first few sermons in this book used the NIV. However, for my theological publications, I switched over to the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) of the Bible and in the last few years, have been preaching from the 2006 pocket edition published by Oxford University Press. Most of the scriptural quotations in this book are noted as being either from the NIV or NRSV, although on occasion other versions are cited and will be identified as such. Note also that the transcriptions of scriptural passages attempt to preserve what is spoken, and these do not always match verbatim the published version.
Acknowledgments
I (Amos) wish to thanks to Robert Graves and The Foundation for Pentecostal Scholarship for a grant that facilitated transcription of the sermons.
I am grateful for the collegiality of Josh Samuel, especially his labor of love in helping me get this collection of sermons into print and his expert analysis of my preaching vis--vis the wider scholarly literature in this arena, and the pentecostal preaching tradition. I also appreciate Tony Richie; I am thankful for his long friendship and grateful for his partnership in all things Pentecostal and theological.
Thanks also to Nok Kam, my graduate assistant here at Fuller Theological Seminary for help with various aspects of the manuscript, including proofreading, conforming to preferred publisher style, indexing, etc.
Robin Parry and others at Cascade/Wipf & Stock were professional at every turn; I am grateful to have this as the fourth installment of books on method I had not set out to write but that have emerged over the course of my publishing essays and articles, in various venues. The first three The Dialogical Spirit (2014), The Missiological Spirit (2014), and The Hermeneutical Spirit (2017)have focused on theological, missiological, and hermeneutical methods respectively, all from my pentecostal perspective (albeit one that is connected to the Day of Pentecost narrative in Acts as much as, if not even more than, any aspect of the modern Pentecostal movement); this volume is suggestive for homiletical methods, although readers should be forewarned that outside of one class on preaching during my undergraduate years over thirty years ago, I have no formal training in this arena.
I am grateful to my wife, Alma Yong, for her patience, love, and support, all of which makes my scholarship, and ministry, possible.
This book is dedicated to three preacher couples. Robert (Bob) and Nancy Jonsson were pastors of Olivet Baptist Church in Crystal, Minnesota, which Alma and I attended during our tenure at Bethel University from 19992005. Bob invited me to preach regularly and had us involved in his small group. He has epitomized to Alma and I what pastor means. We continue to miss his and Nancys friendship, and pastoral care.
