What Makes a Sermon ‘Good’? An Interview With Jeff Jones and Jeff Manning (Part I of II)
by Jacob Riggs “The preacher . . . is the only one who is in a position to deal with the greatest need of the world” (Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Preaching and Preachers, 40). Preaching is the pastor’s primary task, but often viewed subjectively. Two people of similar backgrounds could listen to the same sermon and be impacted in different ways. One might believe the sermon to have been excellent, and the other may have slept through it or...
Reflections on the 2015 Theological Symposium
This past Monday and Tuesday, numerous students, scholars, and ministry leaders gathered in Mabee Hall on the campus of Hillsdale Free Will Baptist College for the annual Free Will Baptist Theological Symposium. The theme of this year’s program was “The Theology of Discipleship.” As eight participants of various scholarly backgrounds presented papers on a diversity of subjects, it was rewarding to see how each subject not only bore...
Free Will Baptist National Convention: Reflections from Grand Rapids
by the Helwys Society Forum This past week, over 3,000 Free Will Baptist (FWB) youth, parents, pastors, exhibitors, and church leaders converged on the beautiful northern city of Grand Rapids, Michigan for their 79th annual National Convention. While the overall attendance was down from the prior year, it was a noteworthy and significant event. Five of the six Forum contributors were among those attending, and we were blessed to...
Recommended Books (Summer 2015)
You may have noticed that a sizable proportion of books carried by bookstores (Christian and non-Christian alike) are very poor in quality. The reason, of course, is that cheap easy books sell better than more demanding titles. As Donald Stauffer wrote in The Nature of Poetry, “A debased currency will always drive out the genuine article, and there are plenty of ways today to get others to do our thinking and our feeling for us.”[1]...
Preaching and Teaching 2nd Corinthians: Challenges and Opportunities
My congregation and I recently completed a 7-month, 23-message journey through the book of 2 Corinthians on Sunday mornings.[1] Like past Forum contributor Jeff Manning, I believe that expositional preaching is the most effective means of communicating God’s truth in a faithful, balanced way over time. While this approach to preaching doesn’t exclusively require going through entire books of the Bible, I find that the expositional...
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