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Tongues Aflame: Learning to Preach from the Apostles
- Roger Wagner
- 384 pages
- Christian Focus Publications
- 2003
Remember when you left seminary or took up your present pastorate, and you were going to set the church aflame with your sound biblical exposition, your sweeping theological insights and your homiletical eloquence? Roger Wagner suggests that maybe it is time to re-examine the preaching of Paul, Peter and Stephen and reconsider what it was in their preaching that not only set the Church aflame but set the world on fire as well.
Wagner sets out to give you the insights you need to preach like those closest to Jesus. He first looks at the characteristics of New Testament preaching and then looks in more detail at ten sermons preached in Acts by Peter, Paul, and Stephen. An appendix deals with how to preach to the modern, pluralist, materialist, pagan society we live in. Dissatisfied with your sermons? You too can preach like an Apostle!
Roger Wagner is Pastor of Bayview Orthodox Presbyterian Church, Chula Vista California. He has been there for over 20 years.
As a Bible believing minister you are already accustomed to using the Scriptures for the content of your messages. Now I am calling you to examine the way the sermons in Acts can also give you insights into how to shape the form of your messages, and let the apostolic preachers become your examples of how to deliver sermons that will be powerful and effective.
—Roger Wagner, from the introduction
Preachers dissatisfied with archaic, ingrown traditionalism on the one hand and with relativistic contextualization on the other will find in Tongues Aflame a biblical alternative that is faithful to Scripture, personally challenging, and stimulating in its passionate confidence that preaching as Peter, Stephen, and Paul did will advance Christ's reign of grace in the 21st century, as it did in the first.
— Dennis E. Johnson, Professor of Practical Theology, Westminster Seminary in California, Escondido, California |
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The God-Centered Preacher: Developing a Pulpit Ministry Approved by God
- Robert Reymond
- 352 pages
- Christian Focus Publications
- 2003
Walk into most Christian churches in the western world today, and the chances of you hearing a biblically based and penetrating relevant message is, to be polite, slim. Even churches claiming to be evangelical or reformed all too often tend towards market led, comforting talks
on the one hand and impenetrable, jargon-filled theological lectures on the other. How can preachers maintain a sensible balance?
Robert Reymond has trained hundreds of pastors, and has an intimate understanding of the areas where preachers are inclined to fail. He points to eight qualities that all pastors should aspire to in their ministries, qualities that are all too often lacking. These include the need
for a scripturally grounded pulpit, the need for a theologically articulate pulpit and the need for an evangelistic pulpit.
Robert L. Reymond taught for more than 25 years on the faculties of Covenant Theological Seminary, St. Louis, Missouri and Knox Theological Seminary, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. He holds B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. degrees from Bob Jones University and did post-doctoral studies at Fuller Seminary, New York University, Union Seminary, New York, Tyndale House, Cambridge, and Rutherford House, Edinburgh. Currently he is the Emeritus Professor of Systematic Theology at Knox Theological Seminary, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.
I would highly recommend this book to preachers. The theological points are well argued and very relevant to our own day. It is the sort of book that one may refer to time and again, benefiting from studying individual chapters. Above all, the emphasis that preaching and worship should be God-centered and God-glorifying is refreshing.
— The Evangelical Times
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