I have just had the joy of doing a short introductory course on homiletics at College. It was a very brief course for the first year students, aimed at giving them the basic tools and skills they need to prepare a short expository message. In the last class I covered, very briefly, sermon outlines, introductions and conclusions and thought I would post those three features here over the next three days, starting with introductions - which I encouraged them to prepare last of all!
You can download the pdf here but, by way of an appetiser, here’s a quote from Stuart Olyott on sermon introduction:
“Somehow or other, we have got to get every person ready to listen to what we have got to say. We have got to overcome inertia, to arouse attention, to excite interest and to prepare the way. We have got to get people from where they are to the point where they will give us a ready hearing.”[1]
A Prayer of George Whitefield:
““Yea…that we shall see the great Head of the Church once more . . . raise up unto Himself certain young men whom He may use in this glorious employ. And what manner of men will they be? Men mighty in the Scriptures, their lives dominated by a sense of the greatness, the majesty and holiness of God, and their minds and hearts aglow with the great truths of the doctrines of grace. They will be men who have learned what it is to die to self, to human aims and personal ambitions; men who are willing to be ‘fools for Christ’s sake’, who will bear reproach and falsehood, who will labor and suffer, and whose supreme desire will be, not to gain earth’s accolades, but to win the Master’s approbation when they appear before His awesome judgment seat. They will be men who will preach with broken hearts and tear-filled eyes, and upon whose ministries God will grant an extraordinary effusion of the Holy Spirit, and who will witness ‘signs and wonders following’ in the transformation of multitudes of human lives.”
