After readingA 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’s12 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.”1Fosdick 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.”2This is
demonstrated in his sermonThe 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.”3He 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 ofAiming for a Faith Response. Stott was
known to be immersed in scripture and his theology was formed by
reading scripture.5In 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.”6McDill 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.”7By directing the
reconciliation as only being possible through God’s work, not ours, Stott is
applying a faith response from his hearers.
Wayne McDill,12 Essential Skills for GreatPreaching (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.
