Preaching Hermeneutics

To understand how Scripture is being used at the “grass roots” level, one need only look to the pulpit. This is often where creativity is stimulated forming new trends, and where strategies with a longer history are affirmed and kept in play. The Sunday sermon also shapes the way the congregation will read and use their Bible. We often uncritically pick up our strategies from the preacher.

For those of us who preach, this highlights a function that we will all inevitably fulfill. In expounding, reading, and applying the scriptures, we are teaching others how to. Is this perhaps a reason for making the process more transparent and viewable in our preaching? It is certainly a warning to us that we need to do so responsibly and well, and not to search for the quick application.