Recapturing the Voice of God: Shaping Sermons Like Scripture, by Dr. Steven W. Smith
It can be among your early morning readings Recapturing The Voice Of God: Shaping Sermons Like Scripture, By Dr. Steven W. Smith This is a soft documents book that can be got by downloading and install from on the internet book. As understood, in this sophisticated age, modern technology will alleviate you in doing some tasks. Also it is just checking out the presence of book soft file of Recapturing The Voice Of God: Shaping Sermons Like Scripture, By Dr. Steven W. Smith can be extra function to open up. It is not just to open and conserve in the gadget. This time in the early morning and also various other spare time are to review the book Recapturing The Voice Of God: Shaping Sermons Like Scripture, By Dr. Steven W. Smith
Recapturing the Voice of God: Shaping Sermons Like Scripture, by Dr. Steven W. Smith
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There is a difference between preaching from the Bible and preaching that allows the Bible to drive the substance, structure, and spirit of the sermon. A text-driven sermon allows the structure of the text to become buoyant, to come to the surface so that the sermon can be built around that structure. In this way the word of God (the meaning of the text) is presented in a way that is influenced by the voice of God (the genre of the text). In Recapturing the Voice of God, veteran preacher Steven W. Smith teaches how to preach genre-sensitive, text-driven sermons—to allow the structure of the text to be the structure of the sermon. To do so, one must understand the genre of the literature in which God has chosen to reveal Himself. After a brief defense of genre-sensitive preaching, Smith categorizes Scripture genres according to their structure: story, poem, or letter. From these macro-level genres, each individual genre is explored for its unique features (law, prophecy, epistles, etc.). Smith then offers practical help in structuring a text-driven sermon and includes sample sermons as illustrations.
Recapturing the Voice of God: Shaping Sermons Like Scripture, by Dr. Steven W. Smith - Amazon Sales Rank: #102797 in Books
- Brand: Smith, Steven W.
- Published on: 2015-06-01
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.00" h x .50" w x 6.00" l, .0 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 240 pages
Recapturing the Voice of God: Shaping Sermons Like Scripture, by Dr. Steven W. Smith About the Author Steven W. Smith (PhD Regent University) is vice president of Student Services and Communications and professor of Preaching at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. He is the author of Dying to Preach (Kregel, 2009).
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful. Back to Square [3] By E. J. Boston This is an area of discussion much needed for today’s pulpits… unfortunately I wish this book had been postponed another couple months. We need people talking about this, but not talking about it poorly. Steven Smith’s Recapturing the Voice of God: Shaping Sermons like Scripture needed another pass with the editor, and a bit of interaction with some dissidents. All in all, I give this book a 7/10 or 3/5 (rounded down) because the content is there, but it’s not quite there, wrapped with bow.Book thesis:“The humble ambition of this book is to show a preacher or teacher how the genre influences the meaning of the text and give practical help for those who want to know how we can shape our sermons to reflect this meaning.Smith writes to pastors and teachers with the caveat that this book is an introduction—and this is testified over-and-over again with recommended resources for further study at the end of every chapter, and a voluminous bibliography in the back. In fact, its sheer size may be a point of anxiety for the pastor who wants the few best resources to look into… not the whole gamut of scholarship since the 50s. Smith supports his thesis a bit vaguely at times—showing the Bible expositor how the genres of Scripture tend toward a kind of sermon structure best suited to re-animate the biblical authors meaning.Smith loosely categorizes 9 genres into 3 major categories. Story contains OT Narrative, Law, Gospels/Acts, and Parables. Poem/Wisdom contains Psalms, the Wisdom Literature, and Prophecy. And Letter contains Epistles and Revelation. Again, they are loose categories with some overlap but Smith makes a pretty compelling case for categorizing them where he does. The macrostructure of Story applies to the genres therein (even Law—because Law is given in the context of narrative), and there are microstructures singular to the particular subgenres. Similarly with Poem/Wisdom (though there is great diversity between the Song of Solomon, Proverbs, Eccelesiastes, and Job). Truth be told, the Letter category seems a bit arbitrary since Revelation is all over the board, and the Epistles bear resemblance to the Prophetic literature.Each chapter breaks down into Interpretation, Communication, and Structuring a Sermon; it ended with a sample sermon, study questions, and recommended resources. I found that the Interpretation section often asserted things without interacting with dissidents/counterarguments. And at the risk of wanting my cake and eating it too: I was surprised to find Smith prolonging his pen so often in the interpretation sections and swiftly passing through the Structure sections. Truly, you must understand the text before you know how to convey its meaning, but the Structure sections (the apparent thrust of the book) remains scant to my eyes. I think the readers would be better equipped if these sections included multiple examples of sermon outlines from the genre in question. Smith offers a sample sermon in each chapter, but the benefits could be multiplied if confused pastors could see the variety even a single genre provides… after all different texts reveal different structures. On the other hand, the study questions were at the perfect level of cognition—requiring enough thought to solidify the ideas presented without being obscure or menial. Additionally, I was pleasantly surprised with how well Smith handled some of the more complex or ‘scary’ genres: prophecy, Psalms, and Revelation; and yet I was dissatisfied with his mediocre treatment of Luke, Acts, and some epistles.So let me get to my biggest dissatisfactions…1. Editing. I found an uncanny number of typos and inconsistent/confusing headings. But really they were all things that are entirely amendable, things that the college English professor docks you for because it shouldn’t have happened. I think just a couple more weeks before the book hit the printer would have given the time for another spell, grammar, and outline check and would have presented the book in a much more professional manner. Most of the content is there, but it’s still sitting in the store-given plastic bag, unappealing.2. The Introductory matters. Chapters 1-3 could use some revision. Again this seems like someone was on a time-crunch. Like the author had written the first draft and never got around to checking it out and revamping his arguments. Occasionally the author would give an example to ‘prove’ his point without telling you what the point was! We had no lens to interpret. At times he leaves his question ultimately unanswered—he gets into the discussion but leaves it vague; he seems to start writing about something only to end up saying, “But we all already know the rest” or “we aren’t going to talk about this.” And he seems to assume things he shouldn’t. This sort of ‘unworked’ feel pops up a couple places in the remainder of the book (e.g. 185 where he states, “Let’s deal with a few strategies,” but that is the final sentence of the section… and he doesn’t explicitly answer this in the remaining sections), but it is predominant in Chapters 1-3. In fact, I think the book would have been better if it simply had the Introduction followed by chapters 4-12.All that being said, I have found this book beneficial for myself. I learned some things. I saw some things for the first time. I captured a pithy proverb or two about preaching. I am confident about a foray into the book of Revelation. And so I give this book 3 stars… recognizing its potential value, and hoping for soon updated editions… with a few of my suggestions taken into consideration.I recommend it [the updated edition] to pastors who feel they’ve run themselves into a rut in the pulpit. The ones for whom every sermon seems the same with three alliterated points and the same conclusion each time. Unfortunately it’s the ones who haven’t realized they’re driving themselves into that rut that need this most and who are most unlikely to read it.I also recommend it to students of Scripture who aspire to the pulpit one day. And to teachers of small groups (though for this group I think it has least immediate application).One of the benefits of this book is its introductory level—not just to sermon structure but to genre interpretation. I would show persons this book alongside Preaching with Variety by Jeffrey Arthurs and Preaching God’s Word by Duvall and Hays. Of course each book has its niche, and so should it be; this niche relates to conveying the text through appropriate structures. After all “we preach a text, not a sermon.”I received a copy of this book from the publisher for review; all thoughts are my own.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful. Advancing the Discussion on Preaching Genres as They are Given By Craig P. Hurst “If Scripture gives life, then our sermon forms should be the open windows through which the breath of life blows.”Genre. All books on hermeneutics and many books on preaching discuss the various genres in the Bible. Understanding the various genres in Scripture is central to not only interpreting but also preaching Scripture. If you interpret a genre wrong then you can bet you will preach the text wrong.Many preachers are taught two things when it comes to preaching: (1) how to interpret genres and (2) how to preach expositionally. Both are good and necessary. What many preachers are given is a template to apply to their text. Unfortunately, this template does not have much flexibility and usually fits better with one genre. Sometimes preaching a text with the same template can be like trying to fit a square peg into a circle – it just doesn’t fit. So how does the preacher preach expositionally with the various genres in mind?This is exactly what Steven W. Smith, preaching professor at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Forth Worth, TX, helps preachers navigate in his new book Recapturing the Voice of God: Shaping Sermons Like Scripture (B&H, 2015). Smith’s argument is that while we want to exposit the text we are preaching, we don’t want to make the text fit an unnatural expositional template (which is often inspired by how epistle genre texts function). Smith asks, “What if a model of preaching is good for some texts but not all texts?” (10)Exposition & Genre in HarmonyFor Smith, preaching is fundamentally “re-presenting” the text of Scripture to a new audience. “Preaching is more than explaining Scripture, but it is no less,” writes Smith. “The question then is, do I have a sermon structure that allows me to re-present the text in the way it was originally presented?” (2) While this may seem like a small distinction, Smith’s nuance has big implications for how one preaches narrative as opposed to epistle. All genres are to be preached expositionally, but the template for each will look different. Instead of a template telling one how to preach a text, sermons need to “represent the form that is already in the text.” (10) When we preach a template instead of the text then we do not preach the text. In fact, Smith argues, to do so is idolatry. “If we compromise the text for a structure then we are practicing a form of idolatry that suggests that a sermon form is more important than the Scriptures.” (59)This difference is due to the fact that texts within genres look different. While expositional preaching is a good “theologically driven philosophy of preaching”, on its own it is not enough. It needs to be flexible to the changing of the text as one moves through Scripture. What Smith is proposing is to preach expositionally but to do so through “genre-sensitive preaching.” That is, “to show a preacher or teacher how the genre influences the meaning of the text and give practical help for those who want to know how we can shape our sermons to reflect the meaning.” (2)Far from cumbersome or burdening, Smith’s guidance on preaching texts (and not just templates) is very freeing for preachers. Smith writes,This simple truth has given me more freedom in preaching than anything else I can imagine. If a text has four points, I preach a sermon with four points. When I preach a narrative that has no easily discernible points, then my sermon has no points….For the rest of my life, how to structure a sermon will always be a secondary question. The primary question is always, How is the text structured?” (20)Allowing yourself to structure your message as the text presents itself is much more freeing because it feels more natural. You are not left trying to force a square peg template onto a circle text.Sermon Development Through GenreChapters 4-12 of the book address how to read and allow the various genres in Scripture to shape your message. Smith categorizes the nine genres of Scripture into three main categories:Story: OT Narrative, Law, Gospels/Acts & ParablesPoem: Psalms, Wisdom Literature, and ProphecyLetter: Epistles & RevelationEach chapter is divided into three main headings: (1) interpretation, (2) communication, and (3) structure. Of course, since each genre is different, what is discussed under each heading for each genre is different. Smith breaks down each genre to its parts and helps the reader see how each genre forms a sermon in its own unique way.Far from the typical treatment that genres receive in hermeneutics and preaching books, Smith is trying to do more. Smith is advancing the discussion and our thought process on genre all together. He is not just giving us the nuts and bolts to each genre but he is weaving them together with a theology and preaching philosophy for how to best preach each so that the text as it presents itself to the reader determines how it is preached.ConclusionFar from just “another” book on preaching method, Recapturing the Voice of God is a book that every pastor and teacher needs to have and read. Smith will help you take the next step in developing your sermons. This is a book that even seasoned preachers and teachers will benefit from. If you can see the relationship between genre and sermon structure the way Smith does then you will breath a breathe of fresh air into your preaching. You will never see or preach the text the same way again and your people eyes will be opened in new ways. Both preacher and parishioner will benefit from this book.I received this book for free from B&H for this review. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255 : “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. Simple but profound By josh engen Smith’s simple yet profound proposition is that, “the shape of the sermon should be influenced by the shape of the text”(3). The shape of the text refers to its genre, which communicates the “author-intended emotional design of the text”(2). The book serves as introductory reference guide to assist the preacher in correctly interpreting, communicating, and structuring a sermon according the to the text’s particular genre. Smith places each genre into a main category of story, poem, or letter. He then explains the unique characteristics of each particular genre and includes concrete examples and resources for further study.Critical AnalysisSmith clearly and effectively shows the importance of genre in interpretation and homiletics. Chapter one explains the deficiency of a one-size fit all sermon structure, because of the dynamic quality of Scripture (10). In chapter two, Smith argues that text-driven preaching is rooted in the “pastor’s responsibility to explain Scripture to his congregation” (22). From this observation, he concludes that preachers are only “re-presenting what God has already said” (25). Smith provides a strong argument with examples about the situational and moving nature of genres in chapter three (30). He shows how every genre is influenced by its immediate and macro context and how each genre points to Christ (40, 55, 68, 70, 91, 171, 197). In chapter 11, Smith illustrates the importance context by showing how the book of Hebrews cannot be fully understood without an understanding of Psalm 110 (180). Parables function similarly to narratives, but Smith points out that they are a “story about someone telling a story” (109). To effectively communicate the psalms and the prophets, Smith advises that we preach the text, not the story behind the text (135, 169). The wisdom literature genre is the most different from the other genres because some of them can be preached topically (148, 150), some include poems and narratives, and some things are to be read symbolically (156). The revelation genre is similar to the prophetic genre, and Smith focuses largely on Christ in revelation (199). Smith accomplishes his goal in this book and provides clear examples to support his argument. The genres of the books of the Bible definitely play a major role in interpretation and homiletics.
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Recapturing the Voice of God: Shaping Sermons Like Scripture, by Dr. Steven W. Smith
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Recapturing the Voice of God: Shaping Sermons Like Scripture, by Dr. Steven W. Smith
