Being a chaplain for the Salvation Army myself, I was very interested in reading
about Catherine Booth. I had read some about her husband William but not
much on her. I believe that she had good, strong, and well written sermons.
Catherine’s sermons “began with a biblical text and a challenging title.”[1] This
relates to McDill’s fourth skill naming the text idea. I also believe that
Catherine Booth did an excellent job with McDill’s fifth skill, bridging from text
to sermon. Catherine took some difficult concepts from the Bible and made
them understandable to her listeners. She preached on sanctification, holiness,
and restoration. These topics are sometimes difficult to understand, yet as she
put them into her sermon she made them understandable to the public.
d d d d d d d d d Robert M ’Cheyne also was able to bridge the text to the sermon
as well as diagram his text structure. Although it is not exactly like McDill’s he
did write his sermon out and had one central theme. M ‘Cheyne preached
mainly on the glory and greatness of Christ as Christ is the main thing in the
gospel. He lived only 29 years but his legacy lives on.
d d d d d d d d d Philips Brooks stated that “Preaching is the communication of truth
by man to man. It has in two essential elements, truth, and personality. Neither
of those can it spare and still be preaching.”[2] Brooks wanted to take truths
from the Bible and personalize them so his listeners could understand the
context and content of the text. He wanted his listeners to know God on a
personal level. One of McDill’s stages he uses is naming the text, which asks
the preacher to decide on one topic and use that to build the sermon on.
Brooks did this very well.
d d d d d d d d d The last preacher I read was Billy Sunday. I enjoyed reading about
him and was amazed at the number of people who heard him speak and who
were influenced by him. Sunday was a professional baseball player turned
preacher who had never taken a course in theology. He spoke about Christ and
believed that faith in Christ was the answer to everything. I think that Billy
Sunday was masterful at bridging the text to the sermon by using direct
biblical authority and making his idea and his purpose the same. He delivered
powerful sermons around the country and supposedly was heard by millions
without the use of television, radio, or any other device we may use now.
[1] Benjamin K. Forrest, Kevin L. King, Bill Curtis, Dwayne Millioni, Ed. A Legacy
of Preaching : Enlightenment to the Present Day. [Grand Rapids, Michigan:
Zondervan, 2018: 98]
[2] Ibid. 230
