The Reading And Preaching Of The Scriptures In The Worship Of The Christian Church Vol 7

The Reading and Preaching of the Scriptures in the Worship of the Christian Church is a multivolume study by Hughes Oliphant Old that canvasses the history of preaching from the words of Moses at Mount Sinai through modern times. In Volume 1, The Biblical Period, Old begins his survey by discussing the roots of the Christian ministry of the Word in the worship of Israel. He then examines the preaching of Christ and the Apostles. Finally, Old looks at the development and practice of Christian preaching in the second and third centuries, concluding with the ministry of Origen.

The Reading and Preaching of the Scriptures in the Worship of the Christian Church is a multivolume study by Hughes Oliphant Old that canvasses the history of preaching from the words of Moses at Mount Sinai through modern times. In Volume 1, The Biblical Period, Old begins his survey by discussing the roots of the Christian ministry of the Word in the worship of Israel. He then examines the preaching of Christ and the Apostles. Finally, Old looks at the development and practice of Christian preaching in the second and third centuries, concluding with the ministry of Origen.

This landmark work is the first academic study of a figure who played a defining role in the Australian evangelical movement of the late twentieth century—the inimitable preacher, evangelist, and churchman John C. Chapman. The study situates Chapman’s career within the secularizing Western cultures of the post-1960s—a period bringing momentous changes to the social and religious fabric of Western society. At the same time, global Evangelicalism was reviving, bringing vitality to large swathes in the Global South and a re-balancing in Western societies as conservative religious movements experienced growth and even renewal amidst wider secularizing trends. Against this backdrop the study explores the way in which, across a wide array of domestic and international fora, Chapman contended for the soteriological priority of the gospel in Christian life, mission, and thought. Accomplished via an absorbing blend of personal wit, impassioned oratory, innovative missiological strategy, and striking theological perception, the result was a stimulating history of public advocacy that sought a revival of confidence in Evangelicalism’s message, and a constantly reforming vision of Evangelicalism’s method. Such a legacy marks Chapman as a central figure within the generation of postwar leaders whose work has given Australian Evangelicalism its contemporary shape and dynamism.

In this volume, Hughes Oliphant Old begins his survey of the history of preaching by discussing the roots of the Christian ministry of the Word in the worship of Israel. He then examines the preaching of Christ, the Apostles, and early church leaders.l

Biblical proclamation is central to Christian worship. The Bible witnesses to the foundational experiences of the Church. Its proclamation invites worshippers into encounter with Christ, the living Word. "The Bible in Worship" seeks to make visible how the Bible is encountered in the worship of mainstream Western churches. Focusing in turn on the Roman Catholic, Reformed and Anglican traditions, Victoria Raymer offers a detailed and lively consideration of the contemporary practices of proclamation in each, considers their respective patterns of reading the Bible as part of public worship, and reflects on the place the Bible takes in daily prayer. Raymer also draws our attention towards the role the psalms play in contemporary formal liturgy, and offers a chapter on how the Bible is weaved into less formal forms of worship, including contemporary sung worship. Offering a truly holistic study of the scripture in worship, the book will resource readers to reflect on how proclamation invites response in understanding and resolve, and to consider how it might do so more effectively.

Hughes Oliphant Old surveys the history of preaching in the Greek schools of Alexandria and Antioch, in the Syriac church, and throughout the Christian Empire, concluding with the preaching of Leo the Great, Peter Chrysologos, and Gregory.l

Preaching is dramatic. Through it, we hear the voice of the living God as he speaks to us both through the reading and the preaching of the word of God. But where do the hearers of sermons fit into the drama? This book suggests ways in which the drama metaphor may help to address age old questions about the centrality of the gospel and the place of the hearer in preaching. As God in Christ is the central character in the biblical drama of redemption, he also calls hearers to understand their role in creatively, yet faithfully living according to the biblical script. Thus, no sermon is complete until God's redemptive work is powerfully proclaimed, and his people are instructed in how they too are participating in the Missio Dei. In this work, Hebrews 11 is employed as a means of showing how God not only reveals his redemptive work to his people, but also through them. As postmodernism sets the stage of contemporary preaching, The Drama of Preaching interacts with some of the particular challenges preachers face in engaging postmodern listeners, that they might not only be hearers, but doers of the preached word.

Jong Hun Joo offers a model of how both solid biblical understanding and effective practice of worship can be realised in churches today by exploring the theology and practice of Matthew Henry (1662-1714). Matthew Henry is one of the most famous biblical commentators in the English-speaking world. He was, however, also a pastor who was liturgical in negotiating the political and religious landmines of his day. This all but overlooked aspect of Henry's biography and writings is both a window into his life and times, and an insightful view into the pastoral dimensions of Christian rituals and practices in the home and church. Joo discerns how Henry understood and practised English Presbyterian worship as an example of Reformed worship in hiscontext and suggests how contemporary churches can appropriately develop and articulate their own worship in their own contexts, making the case for worship renewal.