Preachers find the hardest part of the sermon to craft that bit of the end. No wait: actually, I think we preachers would find it hard if we spent any significant time doing it! Also, I have to say we do a rather one dimensional job of it when we do get to this point.
I was prompted by a youth work book I once read to think of the application as touching on three aspects - because 'spiritual development/maturity' also ought to touch on these three aspects. They are:
KNOWING
FEELING
DOING
We need to move from knowledge about God to a deeper knowledge OF God himself.
We need to move from our experiences of God to a deep affection for him.
We need to move from legalism and disobedience into a life overflowing with good works.
Now, each sermon doesn't have to touch on each of these. But it is a helpful guide, to ask at the end: what did I ask people to do (or as a listener, what was I asked to do) in terms of each of the three aspects. And most sermons could touch on each of these in some way.
4 comments:
Off topic, but it would be good if you made a comment to this post at Elizaphanian.
Still off-topic, but I wondered what you (and Neil) made of this old post of mine.
any significant time
To my mind, application should suffuse the entire sermon. Preaching itself is an application of NT teaching, isn't it?
The best sermons, from my point of view, are those that are so intertwined, reading and application (reading [or listening] is an application, and not an abstract operation) that it resists any superficial 'this bit is my interpretation and that bit is the application'.
Or am I totally off track here?
Yes, people have made this very point to me before. I like the principle I guess. In practice this is just how the sermon genre works.
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