Christ-Centered Preaching: Redeeming the Expository Sermon, 3rd ed.

by Bryan Chapell

Publisher:

Baker Academic

, 2018

Overview

In this complete guide to expository preaching, Bryan Chapell teaches the basics of preparation, organization, and delivery—the trademarks of great preaching. This new edition of a bestselling resource, now updated and revised throughout, shows how Chapell’s case for expository preaching reaches twenty-first-century readers.

This complete guide to expository preaching teaches the basics of preparation, organization, and delivery—the trademarks of great preaching. With the help of charts and creative learning exercises, Chapell shows how expository preaching can reveal the redemptive aims of Scripture and offers a comprehensive approach to the theory and practice of preaching. He also provides help for special preaching situations.

Key Features

• Contains insights and research from the best thinkers in contemporary homiletics
• Explores how to preach expository messages that mine the grace from all Scripture
• Focuses on themes of authority and redemption

Contents

Part 1: Principles for Expository Preaching

• Word and Witness
• Obligations of the Sermon
• The Priority of the Text
• Components of Exposition

Part 2: Preparation of Expository Sermons

• The Process of Explanation
• Outlining and Structure
• The Pattern of Illustration
• The Practice of Application
• Introductions, Conclusions, and Transitions

Part 3: A Theology of Christ-Centered Messages

• A Redemptive Approach to Preaching
• Developing Redemptive Sermons

Top Highlights

“When preachers perceive the power that the Word holds, confidence in their calling grows even as pride in their performance withers. We need not fear our ineffectiveness when we speak truths God has empowered to perform his purposes. At the same time, acting as though our talents are responsible for spiritual change is like a messenger claiming credit for ending a war because he delivered the peace documents. The messenger has a noble task to perform, but he jeopardizes his mission and belittles the true victor with claims of personal achievement. Credit, honor, and glory for preaching’s effects belong to Christ alone because his Word alone saves and transforms.” (Pages 7–8)

“The riches of God’s Word are no one’s private treasure, and when we share its wealth, we participate in its highest purposes. Whether your studies take place through a seminary, a Bible college, or a program of personal reading, they will be more rewarding when you realize how each element prepares you to preach with accuracy and authority for the sake of others’ growth in grace. Every biblical discipline reaches a pinnacle purpose when we use it not merely to expand our minds but also to further the priorities of the gospel.” (Page 3)

“The Fallen Condition Focus (FCF) is the mutual human condition that contemporary persons share with those to or about whom the text was written that requires the grace of the passage for God’s people to glorify and enjoy him.” (Page 30)

“An expository sermon may be defined as a message whose structure and thought are developed from a biblical text, covering its scope, in order to explain how the features and context of the text disclose enduring principles for faithful thinking, living, and worship intended by the Spirit, who inspired the text.” (Pages 8–9)

Contributors

Bryan Chapell’s Christ-Centered Preaching was a pathbreaking book in 1994. While some writers had been urging preachers to treat every text within the redemptive flow of biblical history—always culminating in Jesus Christ—this book was the first one to tell us how to do it. Though one of many classic manuals on expository preaching, it has always been the most detailed, analytic, practical, and comprehensive of them all. This third edition has been updated to address current issues and challenges preachers face and includes many new resources, only making this volume more invaluable.

—Tim Keller, pastor emeritus, the Redeemer Presbyterian Churches of New York City

One of my favorite books on preaching just got even better! In this classic text on the foundations for Christ-centered expository preaching, Dr. Chapell serves us in a number of ways. He articulates the essential theological convictions for Christ-centered exposition, and he also walks the reader through the practical process of sermon preparation. As you follow this seasoned pastor and scholar, you will learn to read the Bible with a sensitivity to the character of God who provides redemption and the nature of humanity who needs redemption; to study the text with both a magnifying glass and a wide-angle lens; and to give people real and lasting hope in every sermon. Not only will these insights improve your preaching, but you will also find yourself in moments of worship as you consider the unsearchable riches of Christ’s grace.

Tony Merida, pastor for preaching and vision, Imago Dei Church, Raleigh, North Carolina; author of The Christ-Centered Expositor

‘Good, better, best!’ That is how I describe editions one, two, and three of Bryan Chapell’s Christ-Centered Preaching. The insights, wisdom, prescriptions, and balance that have for decades made this our foundational preaching textbook at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School have been updated, clarified, reinforced, nuanced, and thoroughly documented. Dr. Chapell expertly and seamlessly includes more material throughout. I especially value his reinforcements to those parts of expository preaching that need extra attention just now, namely studying the biblical text itself and preaching Christ without distorting or neglecting how God designed the chosen preaching portion to function. I am eager for my students—and every serious preacher--to read this new edition and let its rich and comprehensive contribution bear lasting fruit in faithful preaching.

—Greg R. Scharf, professor of homiletics, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School

Product Details

• Title: Christ-Centered Preaching: Redeeming the Expository Sermon (Third Edition)
• Author: Bryan Chapell
• Edition: Third Edition
• Publisher: Baker Academic
• Print Publication Date: 2018
• Logos Release Date: 2019
• Pages: 442
• Language: English
• Resources: 1
• Format: Digital › Logos Research Edition
• Subjects: Preaching; Bible › Homiletical use
• ISBNs: 9781493418503, 9780801099748, 9780801027987, 1493418505, 0801099749, 0801027985
• Resource ID: LLS:CHRCENPRCH3ED
• Resource Type: Monograph
• Metadata Last Updated: 2023-09-29T17:50:48Z

About Bryan Chapell

Dr. Bryan Chapell is the senior pastor of Grace Presbyterian Church in Peoria, Illinois and president emeritus at Covenant Theological Seminary in St. Louis, Missouri, where he has served in leadership capacities since 1985. Dr. Chapell is an internationally renowned preacher, teacher, and speaker, and the author of many books, including Christ-Centered Worship, Each for the Other, Holiness by Grace, Praying Backwards, The Hardest Sermons You’ll Ever Have to Preach, and Christ-Centered Preaching, a preaching textbook now in multiple editions and many languages that has established him as one of the nation’s foremost teachers of homiletics. He and his wife, Kathy, have four children.