Last month I attended a workshop by Dr Rod Wilson of Regent College.  I appreciated a couple of his introductory comments which I will share with you this morning, “We have a message, but we need a method – the Holy Spirit is not an excuse.”

I’m very hesitant to limit the field of homiletics to methodology, but I agree with what he was saying.  The fact is that we don’t have to come up with some sort of core message, we have that already, and no matter how badly we may preach, the message we have is still awesome.  However, simply having the truth does not make for great teaching or preaching.  And how many people lean on the Holy Spirit as an excuse to not prepare, to not develop in ministry, etc?  I find that homiletics is not pure methodology – in reality it tends to be a field in which many other aspects of biblical, theological, spiritual and ministry-related subjects converge.  Yet I would not deny that methodology is important, and I do get a bit concerned by the apparently popular dismissive tone toward homiletics.

Content and method both matter.  But then there is something else too.  Last week I enjoyed fellowshipping with Chip Kirk from OM in the USA (www.chipkirk.com) and appreciated his comment in conversation: “I know that if my ministry is going to achieve anything, I either need an angle, or I need fire.  I don’t want to find an angle.”  Amen to that.

Content matters.  Method matters.  “Anointing” matters.  Three core and critical building blocks of a preaching ministry.