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What Makes a Good Sermon:
A Pentecostal Perspective
Cheryl Bridges Johns
Church of God Theological Seminary, Cleveland, Tennessee
Within the Pentecostal tradition the highest compliment one can pay a preacher is to remark that her or his sermon was “anointed.” We Pentecostals know an anointed sermon when we hear one, but when pressed to describe the dynamics involved, we seem to have difficulty doing so.1 There is little wonder that it is difficult for Pentecostals to unpack the meaning of phrases such as “the anointing.” For the most part, it has been nearly impossible to describe a Pentecostal sermon utilizing modern Enlightenment categories. This is because Pentecostal worship, with its highly dynamic and experiential liturgy, has been metaphysically incorrect. As a consequence, there has been no adequate language with which to convey the dynamics of preaching within a Pentecostal worship service. Traditional Protestant forms of ministry, designed to address the culture of modernity, have centered on certain Enlightenment ideals: the elevation of reason, the drive to clarity, the human as subject and belief in sameness (not disruption). In the area of preaching, these Enlightenment values led to the development of what Edward Farley calls the “bridge paradigm.” Preaching within the “bridge paradigm,” for the most part, involves a deductive approach in which the preacher attempts to connect rationally the meaning of biblical passages to the world of the hearers. This paradigm, which at times attempted to span a wide chasm between the modern world and the ancient text, provided no vocabulary by which to describe, “anointed preaching.” Perhaps the emerging “new homiletical paradigm” that allows for greater emphasis on the inductive and mysterious nature of preaching and the effects of preaching will provide some space for Pentecostals to engage in fruitful dialogue with the larger homiletical tradition.2 This “Copernican revolution” in preaching has turned attention to the orality of the preaching event and made it possible to consider the dynamic and conflictual nature of both the biblical text and human existence. It should be observed here that while the fields of biblical studies, hermeneutics, and homiletics experienced a Copernican revolution, simultaneously there has been a Copernican revolution of Christianity itself. This revolution, which, during the twentieth century went largely unnoticed by most Christians in North America, has now come to the foreground. It is a revolution that Philip Jenkins describes as return to supernaturalism, “toward the ancient world view expressed in the New Testament…”3 Preaching within the context of this “coming Christendom” does not follow the old bridge paradigm. It moves far beyond the Barthian revolution in preaching, which took the field of homiletics from rhetoric to Word of God (from words to Word).4 Rather, preaching within the “next Christianity” points toward a revolution from Word to Spirit-Word. It points beyond “dancing on the edge of mystery” to a world in which the preacher and the congregation are overwhelmed and transformed by the sheer interruptive power of mystery itself. It is this world that I will attempt to describe. Therefore, with some fear that I will fail to be understood, but with anticipation
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that the space created by the “new homiletic” will provide a forum, I shall attempt to unpack what we Pentecostals mean when we say, “the anointing makes the difference between a sermon and a very good sermon.” It is my understanding that good Pentecostal preaching takes place within the space of eschatological time. Under this sacred canopy, the worship service becomes sacramental, fusing time, space, the sacred, and the profane. Such fusion creates a zone of revelatory, efficacious grace that causes the sermon to convey transformative power. The sermon is delivered through five hermeneutical movements that fuse historical time with eschatological time.
The Context: Eschatological Time Pentecostals hold a worldview that Jackie Johns has described as “God-centered.” Johns observes that within this God-centered worldview, “All things relate to God and God relates to all things.”5 God is fused with the phenomenological in a manner that does not collapse God into creation, but God is seen at work in, with, through, above and beyond all events.6 Such a worldview sees a deep relationality of all things being held together by the Holy Spirit.7 The world, therefore, is “Spirit-world” and does not contain the traditional dichotomies between the spiritual and the material, heaven and earth, human and divine. Within this worldview the natural world is always potentially a vehicle for a visitation of the supernatural. The most ordinary of spaces can become sacred space. The most common people are potentially saints and the mundane can provide opportunity for the miraculous. Ordinary chronos time is potentially kairos time. A Pentecostal worldview is characterized by an overarching apocalyptic vision that understands all things as moving toward the Parousia. In turn, the future is breaking upon the present in such a manner that “everyday time is kairos for those upon whom the end of the ages has come.”8 Believers live in the tension of historical time and kairos time. They experience what Land describes as “a fusion of space and time in the prophetic reckoning created and sustained by the Spirit of the end. Here and now, there and then are telescoped and traversed by the Spirit.”9 This tension of the already but not yet surrounds the lives of Pentecostals and defines the parameters of Pentecostal worship. Worship is an event in historical time. Its participants are historical actors whose lives are defined by the parameters of temporality. If time is, as Frederick Jameson claimed, “the way we live in the world,”10 then worship becomes a “way in the world.” For Pentecostals, worship also provides a way into eternity. It becomes a portal into what the Russian philosopher, Nicholas Berdyaev would describe as “the quantitative depth of existential time.”11 In this dimension, time is drawn as a vertical line as well as a horizontal one. For Berdyaev, there are three kinds of time: cosmic time, historical time, and existential time. Cosmic time is tied to the motion of the earth around the sun. It reckons days, months, and years in a circular movement in which a return is always taking place. Cosmic time is subject to calculation and is torn apart into past, present, and future. Such time inevitably leads to death. Within the parameters of cosmic time there is no victory over death. Historical time is subject to cosmic time but does not move in circles. Rather, it stretches forward. Unlike in cosmic time, there is no returning in historical time. It is a dimension of “becoming.” Historical time is
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connected to the past (with memory and tradition), yet it moves in determination toward what is yet to be. Existential time, for Berdyaev, is a profound time. It is not a circle (cosmic time), nor is it a line (historical). Rather it is a point of inward time. It is the world of subjectivity, and therefore cannot be calculated like cosmic time or divided into parts like historical time. In addition to existential time being subjective time, Berdyaev understood that it also is an emergence into the eternal, thereby freeing persons from the slavery of historical and cosmic time. Existential time creates a portal through which the “light from the future streams into the present.”12 What Berdyaev calls existential time I would want to term eschatological time. It is the presence of eschatological time that makes possible anointed worship and the emergence of eternity into the present. Pentecostal worship takes place at the intersection of cosmic (ongoing, scheduled services that are set), historical (connecting to moments in people’s historical existence and shaping those moments), and eschatological time (the moment in which the future breaks into the present). Within this intersection of times, worship becomes an eschatological event in which the people of God are seated together in heavenly places with Christ Jesus (Ephesians 2:6). Pentecostal discourse is rich with imagery of worship services creating zones of “heaven on earth.” Phrases such as “feasting at the table of the Lord,” or “basking in the presence of the Lord” fill Pentecostal testimonies. By this it is meant that the distinctions between immanent and transcendent, sacred and profane space are relativized. The human world of historical and cosmic time shares space with the spirit world of the angelic/demonic.
The Space: Sacramental It seems that Protestant worship as a whole conveys cosmic and historical time. What has been missing is the acknowledgement of eschatological time. As a result, we might say that Protestant worship has become a slave to historical time, neglecting the sacramental nature of worship. The Protestant Reformation’s attempt to correct the perceived Catholic tendency toward a “sacramental idolatry,” became, in its extreme forms, opportunity to destroy the sacramental nature of reality.13 The results of this destruction removed mystery, presence, and wonder from Protestant worship services. Reason became the primary vehicle through which the holy could make itself known. The Eucharist and Baptism remained as “sacramental” events, but even these lost most of their power to transform reality. In this context, preaching focused on delivery and on the rational presentation of a message. Furthermore, the tradition of “word and sacrament” which has been qualitatively Contrasted within Protestantism, has taken away the sacramental canopy covering the whole of worship. It has provided little space for the vertical dimension of time to break in upon the horizontal. Frank Macchia observes that Pentecostal worship offers a form of sacramental spirituality that forges a third way between the typically Protestant emphasis of the freedom of the Spirit and the importance of divine initiative in religious experience (what Tillich referred to as the “Protestant Principle”), and the Catholic emphasis on visible means of grace.14 Macchia’s work, which focuses on the sacramental nature of glossolalia, points us toward an understanding of tongues as a “linguistic symbol of the sacred, which says, “God is here.”15 The reality signified by tongues becomes
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present and is experienced through the visible sign in the process of signification.16 The act of preaching becomes sacramental when the spoken words of the sermon “make present” the reality that they signify. Preaching thus becomes an occasion for the emergence into eschatological time and provides a portal for the “light which streams from the end.” Preaching, by its very nature as a new and fresh word, opposes every fixation and objectification of the sacramental. Yet, as Tillich point out, prophetic criticism “cannot do away with the sacramental background; indeed prophetic criticism itself is possible only by virtue of this background.”17
The Text: Spirit-Word For Pentecostals the text of Scripture is not one-dimensional. Rather, Scripture is best viewed as multi-dimensional Spirit-Word. In this understanding there is a marriage of Spirit and Word to the degree that they are fused.18 Failure to understand this important aspect of Pentecostal beliefs often leads outsiders to lump Pentecostalism into the category of fundamentalism. As an heir of Enlightenment rationalism, Protestant fundamentalism reads Scripture in order to deduce laws and principles for human behavior. The Holy Spirit is subjugated to Scripture, leaving the only significant role of the Spirit as that of witness to the Bible. Within Pentecostalism, the Protestant dictum “sola Scriptura ” is revised to “solus Spiritus-Word.19 Scripture is to be understood within the context of the ongoing revelation of God by the Spirit. As canon, Scripture serves as the standard and primary witness of revelation, but the Spirit is not made a prisoner of the Word, limited to speaking Scripturally. The Spirit is liberated to speak to the church in a variety of ways. Reflecting upon the dynamic fusion of Spirit and Word, Land makes the following observations:
Does this, however, mean that Pentecostals place the Spirit above the Word and thus elevate experience from the category of source of theology to that of norm? Theansweris ‘Yes’ and ‘No.’ Yes, the Spirit is prior to the written Word of God, but the Spirit inspires, preserves and illumines that Word within the communion of those who are formed, corrected, nurtured and equipped by that Word. Yes, the Spirit does not exist only to illumine Scripture and apply the benefits of salvation to the believer. The gifting and guiding of persons in community and the community as a whole is the ongoing, daily task of the Spirit. The signs and powers of the Spirit is not an optional addition for a church that would engage principalities and powers and suffer unto death.20
The liberation of the Spirit to speak in a variety of ways calls for the liberation of the laity. Macchia points out that “what is at stake here is the liberation of the laity. If the Scripture alone reveals Christ, then those gifted in scriptural preaching and teaching, namely, the clergy, will come to overwhelmingly dominate the Spirit’s work in the church to the near silencing of the laity.21 Because Scripture is Spirit-Word, it is a fusion of subject-object. As an objectified , textual landscape it is approached utilizing a variety of hermeneutical and literary tools. As subject, Scripture is Living Word, joining the presence of God with the Word of God. The Spirit-Word is an agent in the knowing event.
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When the subject-object dichotomy is overcome by the Spirit, the biblical text becomes a means whereby occurs what Lyle Dabney describes as a “transjective stance” (vs. objective or subjective) of the human knower. In this position “individuals are transcended, engaged, oriented beyond ourselves.”22 The transjective position allows for the text of Scripture to serve as a portal of inter-personal engagement between God’s ongoing revelation and human need.
The Shape of a Pentecostal Sermon: Five Movements in Time What follows is a description of the sermonic structure of a Pentecostal sermon. I have plotted the progression through five hermeneutical movements.23 These movements should be understood as a journey in time but also as an interface with eschatological time. First Movement: Hearing the Word. An anointed sermon begins with the reading of the text by the preacher.24 The act of “speaking the text” is a means of introducing the Scripture as Spirit-Word. It is an act in which the agency of the Word is established. This movement is therefore a critical pneumatalogical starting point. Through it the preacher and congregation discern the presence of Spirit and discern that the Word, born by the power of the Spirit, is a fresh, living and present Word. The initial fusion of time takes place here, bringing together the ancient world described in the text and the present world of the hearers. In the act of speaking the text, the preacher is joined to the Spirit-Word. The sermon, which began as a co-creative process between preacher and the Holy Spirit, is now to be preached as a co-creative process. Beyond the joining of preacher to Spirit-Word, there is in this movement the call for the congregation to join in the delicate dance of meaning that is about to transpire. The reading of the text is therefore an invitation, a bidding or a call. The text as Spirit-Word issues a call to hear, conveying in this the more ancient concept of “harkening.”25 This movement serves as the doorway into the dimension of eschatological time. The door is opened here, inviting the congregation to enter the world described by the text. However, the congregation is also acutely aware of the pull of historical time. The preacher and congregation feel the tension between these worlds. In the background there is the threat of the void, the possibility of no words of good news arriving. But there is also the hope of transformation that pushes the preacher and the congregation forward. Second Movement: Naming the Present. While the door to the mysterious realm of eschatalogical time is opened in the first movement, there is the acute awareness of the “not yet” of historical time. The second movement, naming the present, locates the sermon in this dialectical location. Persons live in a dialectical maze: they know, but do not yet know all things; they are in the world but not of the world; they are troubled, but they have the peace of Christ. The congregation is therefore a rich ecology of brokenness and wholeness. It is composed of persons whose lives are riddled with paradox. By naming the present, with its paradoxes and fears, the preacher acknowledges the landscape of historical existence. The biblical text both names this world and points to another. Having reflected on the manner in which the passage and the needs of the people interact, the preacher dwells awhile in the conflict. “We are here,” notes the preacher. “Here” may be a place of illness, confusion, economic problems or grief.
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Yet “here” is not where we choose to remain. As it names the dis-ease of human existence, the second movement will leave a question begging to be answered. It also laments the inability of humankind to provide adequate response and thereby calls for a “Word from the Lord.” Fourth Movement: Searching the Scriptures. In this movement the preacher and congregation enter the world of the Scriptures, searching that world for answers to the dilemma posed in the second movement. The ongoing fusion of Spirit-Word is critical here, for it enables the preacher to bring about another fusion, namely the fusion between text and congregation. Rather than building a bridge of meaning between the text and the congregation the preacher leads the congregation into the world of the text. Steven Land observes that the “Spirit acts as a kind of ‘time machine’ via the Word, enabling the believer to travel backward and forward in salvation history and imaginatively participate in the events that have been and are yet to be.”26 “Sermonic time travel” is made possible by the fusion of historical time with eschatological time. To imaginatively participate in the world of the biblical text is to experience afresh the present-ness of the Word. The preacher brings the congregation to the Word so that they together experience the “transjective” nature of the text in order to be transcended, engaged and oriented beyond themselves. The means whereby the preacher brings the congregation into the world of the text are varied. Some Pentecostal preachers utilize a narrative approach, carefully weaving a plot to a climax. Others utilize an expository style in which the literary- structural pattern of the text is revealed. (I am often amazed at how many Pentecostal preachers can do this without notes !) What is important is the inductive nature of this movement. Truth is waiting to be discovered. It is both revealed and hidden in the text. As SpiritWord this truth is not just an idea. It is personal. It is “I Am.” For Pentecostals it is important that the preacher’s delivery comes in both words and in the power and demonstration of the Spirit. It is important for the congregation to discern the fusion of Spirit-Word. Land describes this dynamic:
The Word comes in words and in the power and demonstration of the Spirit. If it is not communicated out of the fullness of the Spirit, the communication is not fully scriptural. If it is not scriptural, then no matter how apparently charismatic it is, it is not spiritual of the Holy Spirit. Of course discernment calls for a body of people who are formed in the Spirit by the whole counsel of God. Each person as bearer of the Spirit is hearer of the Word and viseversa . And all bearers of the Word are those who hear what the Spirit says to the church. If a Pentecostal congregation is not responsive to a preacher, it usually means that he or she is either not anointed or not preaching Word. Whenever the fusion is violated the congregation will register it by withholding the ‘amen.’27
Pentecostal congregations expect that the preaching of the Word will bring about the reality described in the text. If the sermon is about the miracles of Jesus, they expect to see Jesus present to heal. In his research on Pentecostalism, Richard Shaull discovered the Christ-centered nature of Pentecostal life and preaching. He notes: “it was…evident that, in conversations…as well as their preaching, there was something of crucial importance. They were always talking about Jesus…Someone who was not
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only very real and close to them but who could be counted on to do amazing things in their daily lives.”28 Further, Shaull discovered that in “Pentecostalism, poor and broken people discover that what they read in the Gospels is happening now in their midst. This same Jesus is present with them, doing what he did in Galilee two thousand years ago.”29 In his assessment of the Pentecostal experience of the risen Christ, Shaull rightfully observed that “it is through the Holy Spirit that Jesus enters history.”30 As a consequence, “the presence and power manifest in Jesus is no longer limited to one particular place at one particular moment in history but is accessible here and now, to the ends of the world and to the end of time.”31 Good Pentecostal preaching acknowledges the power of the Holy Spirit to make real the presence of the risen Christ. This means that the power that raised Jesus from the dead is present to open up a world for believers in which the sick are healed, broken lives are put together and desperate economic situations are changed. Good Pentecostal preaching takes one into this reality and provides a template through which people envision the possibilities of a new world and taste the power of that new world order. The vision of a new way of being creates transition to the fourth sermonic movement. The Fourth Movement: Yielding to the Spirit. This movement signals the move out of the world of the Bible and into historical existence. It is the time for the congregation to see and experience what Moore describes as “the realignment of all things.”32 Yielding to the Spirit calls for past, present and future to be freshly conceived in order to bring about “a stunning new reading of reality.”33 It calls for “a division in time so deep that it cuts the heart (Acts 2:37).”34 When all things are subject to realignment, the vision gives way to a convicting force. The conviction that is apparent in this movement is palatable. It is a call to obedience and a promise of transformation. The dissonance between “the already and the not yet” is highlighted. There is a figure-ground reversal that takes place. It is no longer the text that is under investigation. Rather, the preacher and congregation are objectified by the Spirit and scanned by the penetrating Word. It is another movement of dis-ease. Sometimes this movement contains gifts of the Spirit in operation among the congregation or through the preacher. There may be words of knowledge or tongues and interpretation. What is critical is that both preacher and congregation yield to the Spirit as Teacher and Guide. The Spirit knows all things and desires to bring about the possibilities named in the biblical text. Yet, the human will is never violated. The congregation is called upon to yield to the transforming power of the Spirit. A discerning congregation knows the difference between a response that is being “worked up” through emotional manipulation and when there is the awesome convicting presence of the Holy Spirit. Good preaching at this point in the sermon occurs when the preacher knows how to allow the Holy Spirit to lead in the dance of mystery and wonder that is taking place. It is a delicate dance, one in which the preacher both yields in silence and brings forth words. Each word at this point is pregnant with meaning and power. In many ways it is a movement that involves scanning. The preacher both scans the mysterious realm of the Holy and the historical world of the hearers. At the same time, all things (including the preacher) are being scanned by the Holy Spirit. It is in this movement that mystery overwhelms, transforms and negates the void of human existence.
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The Fifth Movement: Responding to the Call. One of the ever- present temptations of experiencing the transforming effects of eschatological time is the temptation to say, “it is good for us to be here. Let us make a dwelling”(Mark 9:5). Pentecostals have often fallen into this temptation. The taste of “the good coming from the future” that Pentecostals experience in the present may lead them to think that the demands of historical time are negated. A good Pentecostal sermon does not allow for the building of dwellings on the Mountain of Transfiguration. Rather, it moves the congregation back into the realities of historical existence. Good preaching should bring about what Land describes as “a passion for the kingdom.” This passion is the by-product of the realignment of the human heart to the missionary heart of God. This movement of the sermon calls upon the congregation to enter the world as subjects of history. As transformed subjects they now have a vision of the reality that sees God at work in all things. The congregation is called to participate in what God is doing in the world. As agents of grace they can now face the hard realities of historical existence with an assurance that God is at work in them and through them.
Postscript I want to end this article with some musing regarding the future of Christian preaching. At the onset I noted that I am attempting to describe the type of preaching that is located in what Philip Jenkins describes as “the coming Christendom.” This form of Christianity, which is rapidly growing in the southern hemisphere and among immigrants in the northern hemisphere, holds to the firm belief “that God intervenes directly in everyday life.”35 Preaching is based upon this one assumption. While Pentecostals are among the majority of these Christians, it should be noted that many “mainstream churches” are also involved. In many ways, therefore, I am describing a mainline sermon (southern hemisphere), not just a Pentecostal sermon. Those of us who are North American Pentecostals are aware that our faith and our preaching is quite often not what is described in this article. We find ourselves remarking that to hear a good Pentecostal sermon we must travel far south or deep into the inner city. So, for us in North America (and Europe), whether we are Pentecostal or mainline, the task of our future is to build bridges between us and this other world. In doing so we may find ourselves uncomfortable with the overwhelming otherness we find there. But I would dare imagine that within this otherness we would discover a fresh “Word from the Lord.”
Notes
‘The phrase “the anointing makes the difference” was the topic of a popular sermon preached by a leading Pentecostal preacher, Ray H. Hughes. This sermon became the prototype sermon, not only because of its style of delivery but also because its content made clear the distinctive of good Pentecostal ministry. 2Eugene Lowry, in referring to the new homiletic, observes that “it has been suggested that what makes
this paradigm shift noteworthy is in its turning to homiletical patterns and convictions that had been abandoned or marginalized by modernity.” Lowry refers to Robert Reid’s speculation that the postmodern era represents the recovery of a premodern paradigm of preaching. See Lowry, The Sermon: Dancing the Edge of Mystery (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1997), 19. See also, Reid, “Postmodernism and the Future of the New Homiletic in Post-Christendom Congregations,” Homiletic 20, no. 2 (Winter 1995): 1.
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3Philip Jenkins, “The Next Christianity,” Atlantic Monthly (October, 2002), 53-68. See also his The Next
Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). 4For an insightful analysis of the Barthian reorientation in preaching see James F. Kay, “Reorientation:
Homiletics as Theologically Authorized Rhetoric,” The Princeton Seminary Bulletin (Princeton: Princeton Theological Seminary, February 2003), 24, pp. 16-35. In this inaugural lecture for the Joe R. Engle chair at Princeton, Kay gave an insightful analysis of the return to rhetoric as represented in the work of Lucy Lind Hogan and Robert Reid. Kay attempts to dialectically relate the art of rhetoric to preaching as delivering the Word of God. 5Jackie Johns, “Pentecostalism and the Postmodern Worldview,” Journal of Pentecostal Theology, 7
(1995): 73-96. 6Ibid.
7A worldview that takes seriously the power of Spiritus Creator in creating and sustaining reality would
call for pnuematology as the starting point for theological reflection and consequently, the starting point for developing a theology of Pentecostal preaching. 8Steven J. Land, Pentecostal Spirituality (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993), 98.
9Land, 98.
10Eugene Lowry, who makes a case that the narrative nature of the sermon brings to the forefront the issue
of time, quotes Jameson. For Lowry, “a sermon is an ordered form of moving time.” He observes that “we need to understand the sermon as an event-in-time and hence shape people’s time with ideational movement.” The Sermon, 19-20,59. See also his Doing Time in the Pulpit (Nashville: Abingdon, 1985). “Nikolai Berdyaev, Slavery and Freedom, (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1944.) I am indebted to Dimitar Luchev, a student at the Church of God Theological Seminary, for acquainting me with the work of Berdyaev. l2Berdyaev, Slavery and Freedom, 261.
,3See Paul Tillich’s analysis of nature and sacrament, especially his analysis of “the word and the
sacrament” in The Protestant Era (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1948). Tillich attempted to forge a way for Protestants to recover the sacramental aspect of nature. He observed: “the solution of the problem of * nature and sacrament’ is today a task on which the very destiny of Protestantism depends” (112). 14Frank Macchia, “Tongues as a Sign: A Sacramental Understanding of Pentecostal Experience,”
Pneuma, 1993 (Spring), 61-76. ,5Ibid.
,6Ibid. Macchia is building upon Karl Rahner’s definition of the sacramental in which the reality signified
is made present in the process of signification. ,7Tillich, The Protestant Era, 109.
,8Land, 101.
19See Rickie D. Moore, “A Letter to Frank Macchia,” Journal of Pentecostal Theology, 17 (2000) 12-14.
See also Frank Macchia, “A Reply to Rickie Moore,” Journal of Pentecostal Theology, 17 (2000) 15-19. 20Land, 39.
21Macchia, “A Reply to Rickie Moore.”
22Lyle Dabney, “A First Theology for a Twenty-first Century,” in Miraslav Volf, Carmen Krieg, Thomas
Kucharz, eds. The Future of Theology, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), 159. 23These five movements are based upon four hermeneutical movements developed by Jackie Johns,
Rickie Moore and myself. The movements: Sharing our Testimony, Searching the Scripture, Yielding to the Spirit and Responding to the Call, were originally designed to facilitate group Bible study. John Gordy has adapted them for the context of Pentecostal preaching. See his “Toward a Theology of Pentecostal Preaching,” and unpublished paper, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. John helped me to see the significance of these movements for the context of preaching. 24Exceptions are when the preacher is illiterate. When this is the case a literate person in the congregation
may read the text. More often, however, the illiterate preacher memorizes the text and quotes it verbatim. 25I am indebted Rickie Moore for this insight.
26Land, 98
27Ibid., 101.
28Richard Shaull, Pentecostalism and The Future of the Christian Churches (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,
2000), 184.
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29Ibid, 185.
30Ibid, 186.
3,Ibid.
32Rickie Moore, “Deuteronomy: A Critical Charismatic Interpretation,” unpublished manuscript, 13.
33Ibid.
34Ibid.
35Jenkins, The Coming Christendom, 77.
