Book: Christ Centered Preaching: Redeeming the Expository Sermon by Bryan Chapell

Description of the Reading

This is a textbook that basically delivers instruction on how to develop and preach an expository sermon.  The book suggests that sermon has the basic structure of “explanation,” “illustration,” and “application.”  The book builds around this structure as it seeks to explain how to create a sermon faithful to the original intention of the text.  The book treats the subject of preaching as something that is well done when it is handled as a step-by-step process in which the preacher exposes the text in a way that resembles a sort of “Indiana Jones” type of exhuming original meaning.  The text explains everything from picking a text, developing introductions and conclusions, determining main and subpoints and effectively transitioning between these points as well as how to illustrate and apply the text.  The book has as a continuous thread the use of a proposition statement that depicts how the text’s Fallen Condition Focus (FCF) will be brought forth to the listeners.

Central Concerns of the Author

I know Bryan Chapell; he is what I call a pure preacher.  He is gifted and passionate about sermon preparation and is a master of sermon delivery.  If the church was a baseball team, Bryan would be a designated hitter as these are usually the guys who are pure hitters and don’t have to practice fielding to ball.  Bryan usually hits it out of the park.  I say all this to enhance my remarks on what I think Bryan’s concern are in writing this book. It is my belief that the author is concerned with the proper preparation of faithful and effective sermons and how they are delivered in our preaching to a contemporary congregation.  He wants sermons to be about the grace of God and the work of Christ and he wants the preacher to reach the audience in a way that touches the heart and communicates not just the sin of man but also God’s remedy; I believe he is continually stressing the need for sermons to be relevant to fallen people.  He writes a “basic training” manual for preaching and to me that says that he wants preachers to give thought to each part of the process and not just grab a text, say a prayer for understanding and just start preaching.  He wants the preacher to do the work it takes to present a well prepared meal for people who need to hear a true word from God.  He understands that we live in a society where people don’t pay attention to well and very few want to be told that they need to be saved by God or surrendered to God.  Therefore, he sees the need for our preaching to reach out and grab the listener quickly and hold on to them unto the final application is made.

How the Book may affect my preaching

I intend to employ as many principles from the book as I can.   I believe I am at the point where I can assume that the Lord has given me this text to make some adjustments to my preparation process.  The book is simple and easy to follow.  I attended the required homiletics classes during my seminary years, but never really got the hang of preparing a sermon as a step-by-step-process; as a result I see that I may be omitting some very important steps such as “formally” developing a fallen condition focus based on man’s needs and God’s gracious solution.  I tend to pick the text and eventually bump into the FCF somewhere during the process. I also tend to preach from narratives, so I was especially interested in the chapter that talked about using narratives to bring out biblical principles.  I believe that the book has caused me to think about the amount of time that I am putting into sermon preparation and whether I am using the time as efficiently as possible.