Around the Horn

At first, Michael Horton writes on pastoral task of study and preaching. He warns against farming out one of the primary tasks of preaching, the task of study. Perhaps there’s a fine line between paying someone directly to do research (“Here’s $X; give me a paper on this passage”) and paying someone indirectly (pulling a commentary off the shelf). But as pastors, we need to guard ourselves against the tendency towards shortcuts by preaching other people’s study.

At second, Phil Campbell at Matthias Media has a good piece on the preaching task here. It is well worth your time. A great many of us regular preaching pastors could stand to be tighter and more focused in our preaching. While you might not resort to manuscripting as Phil does, the thoughts he shares will help towards the much needed goal of clarity in preaching.

At third, a dissertation by Jason Allen comparing the “The Christ-Centered Homiletics of Edmund Clowney and Sidney Greidanus in Contrast with the Human Author-Centered Hermeneutics of Walter Kaiser.” It should prove to be a good read. Related to this is a blog article about the dissertation, which I post mostly for the lengthy comment section showing how people interact about the topic. I think what is highlighted there is a major issue—the difference between typology and allegory. While Greidanus and Clowney disavow allegory, I am not yet convinced that their method does not actually lead one in that direction. But I shall read this dissertation with interest. (When’s the last time you heard that line?)

Last, and well worth making it to the end, Thabiti Anyabwile posts about pastoral wisdom in a great little piece called Everything I Know About Pastoral Ministry I Learned Riding with Pastors. Which reminds me of this: The best wisdom and guidance for just about anything in life does not come from long expositions of ideas, but from short conversations with people who have “been there and done that.”