A Theology of Preaching

When I decided to spend my life pursuing preaching ministry, I became very curious about the enterprise. When Harding University added the preaching degree, I added it as a 2nd major along with my standard Bible major in the College of Bible & Religion. I searched out & read books that were dubbed seminal on the subject of preaching. I studied many of the different well-known preaching methods & forms. And still, despite my pursuit, what I found lacking was the amount of material written about the idea of what exactly we're doing when we're preaching. Not how someone thinks I should do it, or multiple ways to do it. Or how some other guy did it. But what preaching accomplishes & should intend to accomplish at each preaching moment as well as throughout a lifetime of preaching ministry.

My pursuit led me to write a research paper on the Theology of Preaching. I dug it up last night & made it into a PDF document that you guys can access. Geocities, the host for this document, does have a bandwidth limit. I have no idea what that limit is. So if for some wild reason the document is inaccessible, give it an hour & come back later to download it.

It's one of the things I spent time doing in academia that meant something to me. The Turabian may be shoddy. Some of the points stand to be expanded upon & fleshed out more fully. But I'm pretty proud of it, and it still helps inform & guide what I do to this day. If you've at all struggled with the issue(s) of what is we are exactly attempting to do when we preach, I commend to you my paper. Hope it helps.

The Un-Beattitudes

You won't find these in Matthew 5. You can call it the 21st Century American's Cultural Values:

Blessed are the wealthy, for they will never be found in need.

Blessed are those in the majority, for they will get their way.

Blessed are the well-armed and powerful, because they will win the war.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for power, prestige, prominence, and position, because they will be on top at the end.

Blessed are the complainers, because by-golly they will get EXACTLY what they desire.

Blessed are the ones who wear the right sweater and the right shoes and drive the right car, because they have it all together.

Blessed are the ambitious, for they will go far.

Blessed are you when you have a good time and when the road is smooth and easy, because that is what life is all about.

(I give credit to Jason Ashlock for these. Don't know if he got them somewhere else, but I originally heard him present these in a Harding Chapel Talk)

The Harding Rap

Alright HU alum's. Are you ready for this?

Check out Kodak & D'Lee at PureVolume.com. Click on the song "It's Goin Down (Harding University)" and prepare to laugh your socks off.