Bryan Chapell spoke on Christ Centered Preaching at the 2009 SMBC Preaching Conference. An integral aspect of his material is that each passage of Scripture relates to Christ through the presence of a Fallen Condition Focus. This is not to say that every passage in the Bible mentions Jesus directly or indirectly, but that as Jesus Himself did in Luke 24 ‘with Moses and all the Prophets, He interpreted to them [the Emmaus travellers] in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself.’
The Fallen Condition Focus directs us to discern in each passage of Scripture: ‘the mutual condition that contemporary believers share with those for whom the text was written that requires the grace of the passage to manifest God’s glory to his people.’
The FCF helps us to go beyond looking at the Bible as the Gospel plus principles for living added on, but rather: ‘Since fallen creatures cannot correct or remove their own fallenness, identification of the FCF forces a sermon to honor God as the only source of hope rather than merely promoting human fix-its or behavior change… The acknowledgment of human fallenness that undergirds the text’s explanation and the sermon’s development automatically requires the preacher to acknowledge the bankruptcy of merely human efforts and to honor the wonders of the divine provision’. It helps us to avoid preaching despair inducing condemnation; legalism or moralism or from giving the impression that the principal purpose of the Bible is God telling us what we should and shouldn’t do. (Thus avoiding the delightfully named interloper to the great Reformation principles ‘sola bootstrapsa’.)
(Thought the statements in quotes were made by Dr. Chapell in our lectures I have copied the actual quotes from Milton Stanley’s site ‘Transforming Sermons’.)
This could be the easiest report I ever have to write, though. Dr. Chapell’s presentations on Christ Centered Preaching are all available at the Covenant Seminary website. In a remarkable display of generosity and committment to the equipping of the saints for mission and ministry, their World Wide Classroom contains notes and mp3s for download. You can’t get a degree by doing this, but you can get a degree level education.
The link is: http://worldwide-classroom.com/courses/info/cm099/
Covenant Seminary’s homepage is: http://www.covenantseminary.edu/
The page of the World Wide Classroom that contains Dr. Chapell’s syllabus on Christ Centered Preaching provides the following introductory paragraph: Dr. Bryan Chapell explores the unifying principle of grace that binds all Scripture together. He outlines and demonstrates the principles and practice of sermon crafting and delivery to illuminate the message of grace in each passage, and to submit it to God’s Spirit for the transformation of lives through preaching.
Links on this page will avail you of twenty-seven lessons covering twenty-five topics. The lessons outline the practical methodology of the process of crafting a sermon from text to delivery. The latter lessons seem to address the material covered in the presentations at the Conference. Some material that I definitely want to download is lessons 13; 14; and 15. These cover illustration and application. Dr. Chapell’s skill as an illustrator was much appreciated. The skill with which he incorporated illustrations into his talks and sermons, and the appropriate way in which they helped to illuminate the truth at hand without overpowering it, without distracting us from the matter at hand.
So, if your are a preacher or Bible teacher, go and start downloading. Your proclamation will be enhanced and you will be blessed just engaging with the material. If you listen to sermons, you will learn much about discerning whether what you are hearing is truly Christ centered and Gospel focused and therefore truly biblical. Go now. Don’t wait.
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