Letters to My Students: Volume 1: On Preaching

Table of Contents

Preface

Section 1: Preparing to Be a Preacher

Chapter 1: Certainty in Your Calling

Chapter 2: Develop a Theology of Preaching

Chapter 3: Cultivate Your Ability to Preach

Chapter 4: Resolve to Preach with Authority

Chapter 5: Preach Expository Sermons, Part 1

Chapter 6: Preach Expository Sermons, Part 2

Chapter 7: Getting Started: Eight Tips for Beginning Preachers

Section 2: Preparing Your Sermon

Chapter 8: Familiarize Yourself

Chapter 9: Interpret the Text

Chapter 10: Assemble Your Sermon

Chapter 11: Amplify Your Main Points

Chapter 12: Connect Your Sermon to Christ

Chapter 13: Some Thoughts on Words

Section 3: Growing in Your Preaching

Chapter 14: Whether to Engage Cultural Concerns

Chapter 15: When to Engage Cultural Concerns

Chapter 16: The Public Invitation

Chapter 17: Preaching Is Not Ranting

Chapter 18: Maturing as a Preacher

Chapter 19: A Final Checklist before You Preach

Chapter 20: Persevering as a Preacher

Conclusion

Notes

In the tradition of Spurgeon’s famous Lectures to My Students, Jason Allen gives us Letters to My Students: On Preaching. Each of the twenty chapters is a short, succinct treatment broadly covering in summary fashion three crucial areas: Preparing to Be a Preacher; Preparing Your Sermon; and Growing in Your Preaching. Every young preacher (old ones too!) will find practical benefit and encouragement from this helpful book.

David L. Allen, Dean of the School of Preaching, Southwestern Seminary

Jason Allen knows preaching, preaching students, and the Prince of Preachers. So there’s no one better equipped to give us a volume that extends this great preaching legacy. Allen helps preachers to start well, practice well, and finish well in the ministry of the Word through text-driven, gospel-centered, and listener-friendly sermons. With the feel of a fireside chat, this book makes for a buffet from which all of us who preach can and should feast repeatedly. Whether you’re running your first leg or your last leg of the preaching race, mine this gem for its potent, practical, and timely treasures.

Jim Shaddix, PhD, DMin, W. A. Criswell Professor of Expository Preaching and Senior Fellow of the Center for Preaching and Pastoral Leadership, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary

This is a book written to help men preparing for or just beginning a ministry of preaching. Mission accomplished! I wish this book had been available in the early days of my ministry. If it had been, I would have been a better preacher then, and I wouldn’t have had to learn by a longer and harder way many of the lessons Jason Allen presents here.

Donald S. Whitney, Professor of Biblical Spirituality and Associate Dean, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary; author of Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life and Praying the Bible

For almost fifty years now, Spurgeon’s Lectures to My Students has been a constant companion. I have read it, re-read it, referred to it in lectures, and quoted it often in my own attempts to write about preaching. Now, Dr. Allen has done us a wonderful service. His book Letters to My Students: On Preaching is a helpful, current discussion of the sacred task of preaching the Word of God. Should I have fifty more years of ministry, I’m sure this volume by Dr. Allen would be a constant reference. I am glad that those who will have those fifty years will be able to use it as such!

Jerry Vines

All of us who preach have a challenging and demanding task entrusted to us by God. Those who are committed to the pulpit are students throughout their lives. Jason Allen has given to us a masterful, practical, and helpful resource on the essentials of preaching. These principles will enable you to be a better student of God’s Word and a more effective communicator of His truths.

Mac Brunson, Senior Pastor of Valleydale Church in Birmingham, Alabama

The task of preaching—authoritatively explaining and applying God’s Word to God’s people—is both glorious and grueling. It is certainly easier to criticize than to do. And preparing the sermon isn’t even the whole task, for the minister must also prepare his soul. The sheer weight of this stewardship is why I’m so grateful for Jason Allen’s Letters to My Students: On Preaching. This practical and compelling manual explores the various dynamics related to pulpit proclamation—from discerning the call to developing the gift to delivering the message. Whether you stand behind the sacred desk each Sunday or you desire to one day, this book will serve you well.

Matt Smethurst, Managing Editor, The Gospel Coalition; author, Before You Open Your Bible: Nine Heart Postures for Approaching God’s Word and 1–2 Thessalonians: A 12-Week Study

This new volume is not simply another theoretical treatise but is filled with practical principles beaten out on the anvil of personal experience by one of the brightest new lights in Christian higher education today. I hope every young preacher reads and heeds the truths found within these pages.

O. S. Hawkins, Former Pastor, First Baptist Church in Dallas; author of the Code Series devotionals

What a great read. Academics tend to forget that most of us who labor in the pulpit need to be mindful of our firm foundation. Jason Allen has not forgotten the call to equip those who labor each Sunday. His writing is clear and his words are very encouraging. I especially commend the preacher’s checklist (chapter 19). Read this and be motivated to sweat in service of the calling and work of preaching.

Steven Smith, Senior Pastor, Immanuel Baptist Church in Little Rock, Arkansas; author of Dying to Preach and Recapturing the Voice of God; coauthor of Preaching for the Rest of Us

Copyright © 2019 by Jason K. Allen

All rights reserved.

Printed in the United States of America

978-1-5359-4114-3

Published by B&H Publishing Group

Nashville, Tennessee

Dewey Decimal Classification: 253

Subject Heading: PASTORAL THEOLOGY / CLERGY / MINISTRY

Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture is taken from the New American Standard Bible, copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation.

Also used English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

Also used: King James Version (kjv), public domain.

Cover design by Brian Bobel.

Photography by Cole Gorman.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 • 23 22 21 20 19

Dedication

This book is dedicated, with deep appreciation, to Dr. Steven J. Lawson. It was under Dr. Lawson’s ministry that while a sophomore in college, as a recently converted Christian, I first encountered expository preaching. In those early, formative years his pulpit ministry deepened my love for God’s Word, shaped my convictions for expository preaching, and sparked God’s call to ministry in my own life. He quickly became a ministerial mentor, counseling and encouraging me onward in ministry.

He took me under his wing, taught me how to preach, and gave me my first ministerial staff position. At the personal level, he married my wife, Karen, and I, and has, from the earliest of days, taken a special interest in me, my calling, and my family. He continues to be a source of encouragement and support, and for that I’m ever indebted to him.

Yet, I dedicate this book to him not merely because of his kind influence on my life, but because of how effectively, and passionately, he has championed the message of this book. His is a voice crying out to a new generation of ministers, encouraging them, as he did me, to preach the Word.

Acknowledgments

One clear sign of God’s favor on my life is the people He’s brought into it. Each of the following family members, friends, and colleagues is a tremendous source of blessing, encouragement, and support.

At the personal level, my life and ministry are enabled and enriched by the prayers and encouragement of my family. God has abundantly blessed me with a wife in Karen, and children in Anne-Marie, Caroline, William, Alden, and Elizabeth, who have surpassed my every hope and dream as to what they’d be and mean to me. They are a constant source of love, joy, and support. To my favorite six people on the planet, thank you.

At the institutional level, my colleagues and office staff, likewise, are an invaluable source of support and encouragement. Most especially, I’m thankful for Patrick Hudson, Tyler Sykora, Dawn Philbrick, and Catherine Crouse. These men and women are an absolute delight to serve with, and they go about their daily tasks with graciousness and competence. Thank you.

Furthermore, I’m thankful to the team at B&H Publishers, most especially Jennifer Lyell, Devin Maddox, and Taylor Combs. Thank you, dear friends, for believing in this project and for working with me to bring it to fruition.

Last, and most of all, I’m indebted to my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Like every other ministerial undertaking, none of this would be possible without His grace, calling, and enabling. May this book, and all that I do, bring Him much glory.

Preface

Good books are like good friends. Both bring with them words of instruction and counsel. They are companions on life’s journey, providing insight and encouragement along the way.

For the Christian minister this is doubly true. To be a minister is to be a reader. You read books to know the Bible and to mature as a teacher of it. And, like a friend, God often brings a book into our lives at just the right time. That’s exactly what God did for me.

In my earliest days of ministry, while still processing God’s call and exploring what a life of ministry would entail, a friend gave me Charles Spurgeon’s Lectures to My Students. Spurgeon walked into my life at precisely the right time. Lectures to My Students proved not only helpful but also transformative. I would come to learn that Lectures to My Students, and the man who authored it, had equipped and inspired generations of ministers like me. I was hooked.

Who Was Charles Spurgeon?

In the words of Carl F. H. Henry, Charles Spurgeon was one of evangelical Christianity’s immortals.¹ Henry so labeled Spurgeon due to the expansiveness of his ministry and its continued reverberation after his death.

Spurgeon was a phenom. He