Preaching to Be Heard

Delivering Sermons That

Command Attention

Lucas O’Neill

Preaching to Be Heard: Delivering Sermons That Command Attention

Copyright 2019 Lucas O’Neill

Lexham Press, 1313 Commercial St., Bellingham, WA 98225

LexhamPress.com

All rights reserved. You may use brief quotations from this resource in presentations, articles, and books. For all other uses, please write Lexham Press for permission. Email us at permissions@lexhampress.com.

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Print ISBN 978-1-683592365

Digital ISBN 978-1-683592372

Lexham Editorial Team: Jennifer Edwards, Elliot Ritzema, and Christy Callahan

Cover Design: Jim LePage

To my wife, Tina: you are my crown (Prov 12:4).

And to my children, Raquel, Elias, Lincoln, and Elinor:

you are truly my heritage and my reward (Ps 127:3).

Contents

Foreword by Bryan Chapell

Preface

Chapter 1

Preaching That Commands Attention

Chapter 2

Discover the Problem-Solution

Chapter 3

Determine the Structure

Chapter 4

Disclose the Ultimate Solution

Chapter 5

Introducing Tension

Conclusion

Exercise 1: Practice Determining Thesis Statements

Exercise 2: Practice Choosing Sermon Structures

Appendix A: Resolving to Preach Expositionally

Appendix B: Sample Map of a Sermon Series on Exodus

Appendix C: Sample Sermon Outlines

Name/Subject Index

Scripture Index

Foreword

We are at an opportune moment in the teaching of homiletics. We are beyond the era of Puritan messages that devised a method to wring doctrine and duty from the topical comparisons of individual texts. We are beyond the acceptance of running commentaries that claimed to be expositions of texts—though they were little more than data dumps for theological hobbyists—or weekly penance for congregants whose consciences required that they go to a church that “focused on the Bible” regardless of its apparent applicability to their lives. Thankfully, we are also beyond the so-called New Homiletic that claimed to offer a pragmatic alternative to “textual preaching” through experiential understanding of the ethical themes of Scripture.

In the heyday of the New Homiletic, those identified as the “best guides” for the future of engaging preaching were those unwilling to acknowledge—and actually were opposed to acknowledging—the reality of transcendent truth. Many would not even concede the possibility of transferable truth, denying that we could really know another’s meaning beyond our own experiential horizons.

Inductive and narrative methods driven by theories of human communication that rooted understanding in the shared experience of an existential moment were championed for their effectiveness in garnering the attention of listeners whose only measure of truth was self-significance. For the last three decades, homiletics instructors of every theological stripe ...