Summer 2009 | Volume 67, No. 4

Preacher Hatchery

by Keith Collier

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President Paige Patterson on his travels meets many people who ask him what he does for a living. His response: “I preside over a preacher hatchery. The churches send us the eggs and we sit on them until they hatch.” His metaphor is not far from the truth. Southwestern provides an ideal environment for ministers to incubate and develop their preaching ability and then pushes them out of the nest to preach the Word.

Southwestern accomplishes this task through formative instruction by skilled professors and opportunities for students to preach in revivals, pulpit supply, and local pastorates. At every turn, Southwestern seeks to produce an ardent army of text-driven preachers to serve in churches across North America and to the ends of the earth.

Preaching Lab
Two classes serve as the foundation to prepare students for the preaching ministry. Introduction to Expository Preaching is a core class for all Master of Divinity (M.Div.) students and focuses on text-driven preaching with an emphasis on exegesis using the original languages. Students preparing for a ministry that includes preaching or teaching also take Advanced Expository Preaching, a class that provides opportunities for students to further hone their skills and preach additional biblical genres.

Elective courses, such as Theology of Preaching, Evangelistic Preaching, and Voice and Speech Improvement, provide more in-depth study and practice of certain preaching issues. M.Div. students who complete three elective courses in addition to the introduction and advanced classes can earn a concentration in preaching.

In each class, professors emphasize a proper doctrine of revelation and theology of preaching, which forms the basis for any preaching ministry. Students are also trained on how to prepare and deliver creative text-driven sermons. Through interactive classroom discussion, students discuss passages of Scripture and aid one another in developing sermons. Students then deliver sermons in the preaching lab and receive feedback from peers as well as the professor.

“We want a student to learn from his peers,” says preaching professor Steven Smith. “You don’t get this any other time in your life, to have 20 other students pitch in and say, ‘Work on this.’”

Students receive immediate feedback on their sermons from the professor through the means of digital technology. As the student preaches to the class, the professor sits in a sound booth connected to the preaching lab. A video technician records the sermon to a DVD for the student to review and critique himself later.

While the student is preaching, the professor speaks into a microphone, adding a voice-over track on the DVD that offers advice or instruction. When the sermon is complete, the professor records a brief synopsis of his thoughts about the sermon, including what the student did well and what needs improvement. After the student has had a chance to watch the DVD, he meets with his professor one-on-one outside of class to discuss the sermon and answer questions.

A frequently heard statement in Southwestern’s preaching classes is “The breadth of your creativity is born out of the depth of your exegesis.” This statement summarizes the need to understand the text fully and then communicate it effectively to one’s audience.

A common fear is that text-driven, Christ-centered preaching is boring.

“By definition, that’s oxymoronic,” says Smith, “because if preaching is driven by the text, the text is exciting, and I bring the boredom to it. There are a lot of preachers out there who are right but bore you out of your skull, or they’re right but they’re imitating a famous preacher.

We want a man who is being creative, interesting, and compelling, but still being driven by the text.”

Southwestern professors define creativity as “getting so deep in the text that you mine it out for all its riches because the text is creative.” Their goal is to produce students who can ultimately work out what God has worked in them.

Preaching serves as the convergence of all of the various disciplines a student learns at Southwestern. His systematic theology, his New Testament and Old Testament, his hermeneutics, and his languages—they are all worked out in the sermon, providing a type of oral exam for the M.Div. program.

All ministry settings—whether preaching, discipling, counseling, or evangelizing—are a ministry of the Word. Southwestern prepares students to exposit the text properly  regardless of the context.

Taking Preaching to the Next Level
For those looking to maximize their preaching prowess without having to move to Fort Worth, Southwestern offers the Doctor of Ministry (D.Min.) with a concentration in expository preaching. This degree exists to enhance the practice of ministry for those who are currently engaged in positions of ministerial leadership.

The expository preaching concentration focuses on applying preaching and exegetical skills to proclaiming the various genres of Scripture. Top-tier preaching professors serve as mentors to equip pastor-scholars to handle these texts of Scripture with confidence, accuracy, and boldness.

The D.Min. program emphasizes the importance of a relational, or cohort, system of education. Students are assigned to a cohort based upon their area of ministry and geographical proximity to encourage interaction and mutual accountability throughout the program cycle. Southwestern uses the Internet to connect professors and students and facilitate ongoing interaction between them.

Through collegial support, technology, educational mentoring, and ministry application, Southwestern’s D.Min. prepares men to be scholarly in the Scriptures, sound in the proclamation of God’s Word, and skillful in ministry.

Preaching Opportunities
Southwestern provides students with a host of preaching opportunities throughout the semester. In addition to the annual Spring Evangelism Practicum, which sends students across the country to preach revivals in churches outside of the Bible Belt, Southwestern offers trained student preachers to churches for pulpit supply, interim pastorates, and revival meetings.

At the end of April this year, students and faculty traveled west from Fort Worth and volunteered to preach in 18 churches in the Cross Timbers Baptist Association. These churches, which had experienced no baptisms in the previous year, invited Southwesterners to do door-to-door evangelism on Saturday and to preach in their pulpits on Sunday morning.

In 2008, Southwestern revived a program that gave students the opportunity to preach to their peers in chapel. The seminary’s preaching professors select a student from one of their preaching classes based on the excellence of his sermon preparation and delivery in class.

According to David Allen, dean of the School of Theology, the Student Preaching Day recognizes capable preaching students by letting them speak before their peers, and it also “fosters genuine expository preaching.”

Training students to deliver expository sermons is “what we are about here at Southwestern,” he said.

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