David Allen: How I Preach
David Allen: And this is How I Preach …
[I’m delighted to present David Allen, Dean of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, at Ft. Worth, next door to Dallas. A good thinker of preaching, and a fellow-member of the Evangelical Homiletics Society, his zeal for preaching and for training the next generation of preachers is well acclaimed and appreciated. Here’s David ….]
David L. Allen
Dean and Professor of Preaching
Director
Happiness!
Grumble, grumble, grumble.
You know what I’m talking about. That class is horrible, that prof rotten, and those classmates … That job is lousy, that boss is impossible, those co-workers …. Aw, I don’t want to see that bad movie.
And we grumble.
But we are forced to sit through the class, take on that job, watch that movie, and we do, preparing ourselves to hate every second of it … and it turns out to be pretty fun.
Surprise!
And that seems to be the key to enjoyment.
Waste!
A few years ago 4,000 British adults ranging in age from 18 to 85 were asked to rank the 100 most important inventions in the world.
The wheel was #1. Understandable. I’d say OK to #3, the lightbulb, and even to #7, penicillin.
#8 was the iPhone! Honestly! Not even Mr. Jobs, himself quite partial to hyperbole, went that far. The eighth most important invention of all time? Outranking the internal combustion engine (#10), laptops (#35), paper (#38), teabags (#54), make-up
Genesis 1:1−2:3
God exercises his sovereignty over the cosmic Temple over which he reigns, deputizing humans bearing his image, to represent him to the rest of the cosmos.
The first chapters of Genesis contain a theology of creation that asserts the bankruptcy of the contemporary pagan creation stories of the cultures surrounding Israel, with their mistaken notions of the nature of deity, the idolatry of astronomical bodies and natural entities, and a misunderstanding of the place and
Neighbor!
They are often bothersome. Neighbors. Loud noises. Wild partying. Crazy pets. And all manner of other inconsiderate activities directed against you and the rest of those on their block.
Maybe you’ve felt like moving. Or you’ve been praying they will move. Your blood pressure suffers. Your adrenaline is wasted. And you think you’ll die sooner because of their antics.
Well, it seems there’s a connection between your neighbor and your heart. At least that’s what a
Shoulder!
Walter Isaacson wrote an article for TIME recently. Mr. Isaacson, who worked for the magazine once, as its managing editor, and as CEO fro CNN, is now president of Aspen Institute, a non-partisan thinktank in Washington, DC. He is the acclaimed author of Steve Jobs (2011), as well as biographies of Einstein, Ben Franklin, and Henry Kissinger.
Mr. Isaacson’s recent article is about your shoulder. Yup, your shoulder. And how someone is looking over it. Over your shoulder.
Call!
Trust a Texas mom to take action. Sharon Standifird, of Houston, and a military vet, was, like any concerned mother, mad.
Once again, she called. No reply. And again, she texted. No reply.
Her teenager, Bradley, was not answering her calls or texts.
She was mad!
(Not unusual. There are a lot of mad parents out there, I’m told, who are in the same predicament, stuck with unresponsive teenagers.)
So she got to work. Seriously. Said Standifird:
We need to develop an app that
Abe Kuruvilla is the Carl E. Bates Professor of Christian Preaching at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (Louisville, KY), and a dermatologist in private practice. His passion is to explore, explain, and exemplify preaching.