“Listening to a sermon is not at all like reading a book, so you have to present material for the ear.

“A sermon should have one main point,” says Dr. Dennis Prutow, professor of homiletics and pastoral theology for the Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary (RPTS), who will release his book on the procedures of sermon preparation entitled, So Pastor, What’s Your Point? $36.00, with the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals this September.

With more than 30 years ministering as a military chaplain and church pastor, and over 175,000 downloads of his one thousand-plus sermons on SermonAudio.com, Dr. Prutow has developed a method that he teaches at RPTS and in his forthcoming book. A main objection that he encounters to his preaching procedures is the assumption that sermons in the Bible don’t have one main point.

“Sermons in the Bible do have a central point,” says Prutow. “Take the Sermon on the Mount. It is universally accepted that its theme is the Kingdom of God, and Jesus Christ develops different aspects of this one theme.”

Prutow has observed a difference in the response from people in the pews to his finely tuned one-point sermons.

“One of the members of my last congregation told my wife that she always had something very concrete to chew on after my sermons and that she was feeling a lack of this clarity after I left.” He cites preaching professor Andrew Blackwood quoting a study with church members and elders asking whether they go out from worship with a concrete point, the most common answer being “no”.

Prutow’s sermon preparation procedure is winning students over. He points to a recent pastor who is a Doctor of Ministry candidate at RPTS sharing how his Presbyterian Church in America congregation was very appreciative after implementing the newly learned method. Another local Pittsburgh pastor who audited his Intro to Preaching class told Prutow that it revolutionized his preaching.

“Putting together a sermon is not like writing a paper, because a sermon is a supremely oral activity,” Prutow explains.

“Listening to a sermon is not at all like reading a book, so you have to present material for the ear. We need to learn to put the exegetical material and applications in a form that people readily receive as they hear these things.”

Source: http://www.christiannewswire.com/news/3266714717.html