One of the key factors for growth and outreach in the church is what we call Persuasive Preaching….Some people call this apologetic preaching but I don’t think that communicates what we are talking about. I gave a talk at this at FOCL a while ago. All of us who are preachers need to think about how we can preach ‘persuasively’….
Here is a short video of an attempted answer to the question – how can we preach persuasively?
Here is the whole video of the talk…
I know that it’s a hassle but is it possible to access the texts of these presentations. I’m probably in a minority here but I find it easier to interact with the written rather than the spoken word.
Hi Derek – I’m afraid I don’t have a text for them…but if I did I would let you have them…
Thanks for the prompt reply – ah well.
There’s probably software out there that can do that for you
Thank you – I’ll see what my kids can summon up.
Maybe the message itself needs to be persuasive. It isn’t. Surely if your message about Jesus was so obviously true we wouldn’t need persuading.
The message is persuasive – that’s the point of the talk…….the fact that you are not persuaded says more about you than it does about the message!
If you can persuade someone of the unsubstantiated premise that the Bible is God’s Word, then it follows they’ll accept anything based in scripture.
If not, then it’s unlikely any amount of preaching will make a difference.
It seems that most sermons fall into one of two camps. Either the sermon is nothing but stories to make us feel good, or they are biblical lectures with no appeal to belief. I believe it’s true that preaching has fallen on hard times.
Here’s an end to some “persuasive preaching” that, clearly, has not proved its efficacy :
https://www.cjnews.com/news/canada/anglican-church-of-canada-to-remove-prayer-for-jewish-conversion
Perhaps now the Sanhedrin might now remove from The Talmud the references to Jesus for which see Prof Peter Schafer’s excellent academic book, ‘Jesus in the Talmud’ :
https://press.princeton.edu/titles/8383.html