The Following is a guest post by Dr. David Allen:
Pastors love to preach and love to listen to preaching! Every year Southern Baptists converge at the annual Southern Baptist Convention Pastor’s Conference to hear good preaching.
This year’s Pastor’s Conference will be a first! Twelve pastors will preach paragraph by paragraph through Philippians. When I first heard of President Dave Miller’s brainchild, I was excited and skeptical—excited that Dave would foster expositional preaching through a book of the Bible at the Pastor’s Conference; but skeptical as to how it might work.
Dave wanted to bring the twelve pastors to SWBTS’s School of Preaching for a two-day training in how to do text-driven preaching through Philippians. I was honored to facilitate the training and was thoroughly impressed with the men chosen to preach at this year’s Pastor’s Conference.
Having divided Philippians into twelve preaching paragraphs close to the paragraph breaks in the Greek New Testament, we worked our way through the text. Our plenary sessions focused on defining text-driven preaching and sermon methodology. Some of our faculty, along with Drs. Mark Tolbert and Adam Hughes from New Orleans Seminary, led break-out sessions working on each preacher’s assigned text. The workshop was a whopping success!
I am often asked, “What is the difference, if any, between Text-Driven Preaching and Expository Preaching?” The answer may surprise you! “We are not preaching sermons; we are preaching texts.”
On Sunday, June 11, I will lead a Pre-Conference mini-workshop on text-driven preaching from 4:00 – 5:45 pm at the Phoenix Convention Center, West Building, Room 301D. Students, pastors, and laypeople will learn about Text-Driven Preaching and how to do it. I will teach the same principles that were shared with the pastors preaching at this year’s Pastor’s Conference. The workshop is free to all who wish to attend.
See you in Phoenix!
David L. Allen
Dean of the School of Preaching
Distinguished Professor of Preaching
George W. Truett Chair of Ministry
Director, Center for Biblical Preaching
Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary