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The preaching helps and sermons for Advent this year are provided by Dr. Steve Estep. Steve recently completed a doctoral program in preaching and is serving as senior pastor of the Harrisonville, Missouri, Church of the Nazarene.
Advent means coming. During this season we anticipate the Second Advent, and
celebrate the first. But it’s also a time when we see the advent, or
coming of people, to the sanctuary who aren’t often there. After a decade
of Advent preaching, I continue to be frustrated when folks come for the Christmas
program or Cantata and never get it that Jesus’ coming was supposed
to make an every-day difference for all of us. It causes me to keep asking,
“How can our Advent preaching help people get it?” Somehow, we
have got to preach sermons that help people not only hear, but also experience
the gospel.
Experiential preaching requires the preacher to give attention to the hearer’s
emotive process. According to Dr. Frank Thomas, appeal to the senses begets
identification.1 If hearers identify with the preacher, it opens the door
for emotional involvement. Once the hearer is emotionally engaged, they will
be interested in whatever else the preacher has to say, and as a result their
mind and heart are open to new possibilities. In other words, a hearer who
identifies with the preacher, becomes emotionally engaged in the sermon, and
has an interest in what is being said, is a hearer who will be receptive to
change. Attention to this emotive process calls the preacher to be intentional
in sermon design, so hearers are given the opportunity fully to experience
and willingly embrace the implications of the gospel—which more often
than not call for some kind of change.
Advent, maybe more so than any other season of the Christian year, is full
of possibilities for the preacher to engage the hearers through sense appeal.
The sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and touches people experience throughout
Advent can be a deep well from which the preacher can draw to evoke identification
from the congregation. In a season where so many non-Christians make their
annual obligatory visit to church, it is imperative that we preachers make
connections that at least open the door for life change to happen. This sermon
series is designed to capitalize on the sense appeal of Advent so emotionally
engaged hearers might not just hear, but experience the God who has come to
dwell among us.
The sermons for the weeks between Epiphany and Lent are provided by Dr. Brad Estep (no relation, as far as they know). Brad is senior pastor of the Winter Haven, Florida, Church of the Nazarene. He holds a Ph.D. in homiletics from Union Theological Seminary.
If the weeks of the year were divided like a pizza into 10 slices, these Sundays
(January 14-February 11, 2007) would probably not be the first slice chosen
and devoured. In the Christian calendar, they are squeezed between Epiphany
(which occurs on Saturday, January 6 but would be celebrated in most churches
on Sunday, January 7) and Transfiguration Sunday (February 18; the last Sunday
before Ash Wednesday on February 21). This portion of the year is called “Ordinary
Time.”
For many churches, other factors influence these weeks much more than issues
related to the Christian calendar. These weeks at the beginning of the year
are sometimes devoted to stewardship campaigns or to revival preparation or
to “priority evaluation.” In America, these are the weeks of football
playoffs and Super Bowl hype. Also, these are the weeks in which the frantic
preparations for Christmas and the exhausting celebrations of the New Year
meet the letdown of resolutions made and already broken.
Because this series of sermons is not tied to the lectionary readings for
these particular Sundays, it would be possible to move them a week forward
and therefore begin them on the first Sunday of the new year (January 7) or
move them backward and have the series conclude on the last Sunday before
the beginning of the Lenten season (February 18). These kinds of decisions
are best made well in advance and are subject to the idiosyncrasies and circumstances
of particular congregations and settings for ministry.