About Preaching

I've been reading Bryan Chapell's Christ Centered Preaching (which apparently is coming out in a second edition in March. He advocates two practices that I think are helpful in keeping a sermon from being theoretical and moralistic. One is the identification of the "FCF" or Fallen Condition Focus. This step involves asking what the passage says, what concerns the text addresses, and what the intended audience shares in common with either the original readers and/or the biblical author. The second practice relates to discovering the Redemptive Message in the text. While this is not necessarily easy, it forces the preacher to focus on how the text relates to God's redemptive plan. Recommended reading.