Read Better, Preach Better

4. Epistles.

Preaching evangelistically from an epistle can be great. For one thing, you can select a passage that deals directly with the death and resurrection of Jesus, and by-pass the whole issue that I touched on earlier: whether or not to ‘import’ ideas from outside the text. So if you want a talk to focus on the cross, you can choose something that gets right at it. Likewise Jesus’ resurrection.

But, there are a number of potential drawbacks when preaching evangelistically from epistles. First, the talk may end up being a bit too conceptual, since some things will require explanation. Second, epistles usually lack characters, story, plot, etc., which means the preacher needs to work hard to keep people engaged. Third, it takes extra effort to show why the text relates to normal people. As such, I think a decent rule of thumb is that preaching from epistles may require more illustrations and application than preaching from narrative.

There’s also the issue of plucking a few verses out of their context. This doesn’t need to be as concerning as it sounds, however. I remember Peter Jensen once saying in a class that it wouldn’t hurt us to preach evangelistically from one verse every now and then. He said that he understands the importance of handing the verse appropriately according to its context, but there’s no reason why the full context needs to be part of the evangelistic talk. I think that’s good advice!

Posted by Con Campbell