After reading A Legacy of Preaching, there were numerous preachers that I found
inspiring. I was also able to see several of McDill’s skills being used. For this
discussion post I choose to analyze the sermon’s of Harry Emerson Fosdick and
John Stott.
Harry Emerson Fosdick was a North American preacher who used several styles
of McDill’s 12 Essential Skills for Great Preaching. The first is drawing pictures,
telling stories. Telling stories is important during preaching because “No word
pictures and stories essential to good speech communication, but they are also
inherent to the revelation of God in Scripture.”1 Fosdick would combine
illustrations (story telling) with natural analogies (human experiences). “His use of
illustrations have been described as being psychological rather than theological,
drawing extensively from human experience.[149] Boyer contends that Fosdick
used the Bible more for its illustrations than for exegetical reasons.[150] He was a
gifted storyteller and often employed personal illustrations and human-interest
stories from the past and present.[151] He was an artist with words, each sermon
adding to his gallery of aptly drawn comparisons, personifications, allusions, and
illustrations.”2 This is demonstrated in his sermon The Church Must Go Beyond
Modernism, when he said; “We have already largely won the battle we started out
to win; we have adjusted the Christian faith to the best intelligence of our day and
have won the strongest minds and the best abilities of the churches to our side.”3
He also employed Preaching for Faith skill. “He believed that the task of the
preacher was to place premium value on humanity, and to instill faith and hope in
the lives of the audience.”4
John Stott uses McDill’s skill of Aiming for a Faith Response. Stott was known to
be immersed in scripture and his theology was formed by reading scripture.5 In his
sermon excerpt, Good News of Reconciliation, Stott is always referring each point
back to God and how reconciliation is only possible through God. For example,
“God is the author of the reconciliation…. Christ is the agent of reconciliation…. as
we implore people to be reconciled to God, it is God himself who is making his
appeal through us.”6 McDill defines a faith response as “Since biblical faith is
objective, the focus of preaching must be the object of faith, the person of God.
The preacher enhances faith by pointing his hearers to God, his character, his
capabilities, his intentions, and his record.”7 By directing the reconciliation as only
being possible through God’s work, not ours, Stott is applying a faith response
from his hearers.
e Wayne McDill, 12 Essential Skills for Great Preaching (B & H Publishing
Group, 2015), 152.
Benjamin K Forrest, Kevin L. King and William J. Curtis , A Legacy of Preaching,
Volume Two: Enlightenment to the Present Day (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2019),
373.
3Ibid.
4Ibid., 371.
5Ibid., 342.
6Ibid., 351-352.
McDill, 12 Essential Skills, 189.
